The Web services calls from the Office Add-On are relayed into the SAP environment, which also occurs within the Duet Extensions through the service bundling component. The engine on the client loads assemblies and metadata from the cache and interprets the metadata descriptions of applications to execute service calls, execute business logic, and construct and display the UI screen based on metadata, and interact with host software. The runtime engine uses an Outlook services library (using the standard programming features of Outlook) to integrate the following features and services:
* Action pane. The Duet action pane will mimic the behavior of the Office programmable task pane.
* Toolbar buttons. Custom buttons can be added to the application-level toolbar, and these buttons will trigger the execution of metadata-based actions.
* Context menu items. Custom context menu items can be added to folder and item context menus to trigger the execution of metadata-based actions.
* Outlook events. Selected standard Outlook events and behaviors are extended to automatically activate metadata-defined actions.
* Custom calendar views. Outlook tabbed forms and action panes are defined via metadata.
* Contact management. Additional tabs are added to contact objects for server-maintained data.
As for the security issues, the challenge Duet faces with authentication is that authentication needs to be separated from the authentication within the system. For authentication within the system, Duet reuses the authentication of the local user in the Microsoft Windows environment. This is generally implemented using Windows NT LAN (Local Area Network) Manager or Microsoft Active Directory, which most users are familiar with. Within Duet, SAP security experts have developed a module that is able to take the user token from the Windows environment and map it to the proper SAP user. In doing so, Duet is able to issue a single sign-on ticket enabling the client to communicate in a with the web services on the SAP side in a secure manner.
Once authentication is secured, standard SAP guidelines and principles take effect and the access is granted based on authorization profiles associated with the user in the underlying SAP system. For example, each profile is associated with a only a few of the cost centers that exist in the underlying system. A user can have access only to his or her own personal information based on service scenarios, while a manager is granted access only to his or her organizational unit within the entire system, and so on.
The Recent Duet Uptake
In any case, Duet's highly involved collaborative architecture that has shown the major "pains and gains" of SOA. (For more information, see SOA from a Management Perspective ). And it has resulted in a commercial product that is unequivocally priced (approximately, $125 [USD] per user, though this price does not include Microsoft Office and SAP licenses, but only for Duet functionality), that is sold and supported under no uncertain terms. With the most recent Duet 1.5 release, some drawbacks of Duet 1.0 have also been addressed, such as the number of supported languages, which has been extended to 16: Simplified Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Korean, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Hungarian, Norwegian, and Traditional Chinese. These are in addition to English, German, French, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese in Duet 1.0. A few more scenarios were added too (e.g., recruitment management, travel management, purchasing management, workflow approvals and reports and analytics), some of which run within a Excel UI screen too (as opposed to only within Outlook in the Duet 1.0 scenarios). One should imagine the inclusion of data from other back-end systems beside those of SAP, down the track.
In fact, the success of over 400,000 sold Duet licenses within 18 months has "shocked and awed" many competitors. The responses were numerous, as competitors began to trot out their own, comparable products. IBM cited its Project Harmony that features the integration of Lotus Notes and IBM Workplace (formerly Lotus Workplace) to SAP (and to many more SAP product releases than Duet), Google touted its no-brainer on-demand Google Enterprise applications, many other vendors said that they also have the Office-based (or Office-like) interface. Others flouted their Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) programming. Adobe/Macromedia Flex or simply an Internet browser also flagged their products with their familiar and intuitive interfaces (ironically, MSN Hotmail was one of the best deployments of AJAX).
In a particularly peculiar position was Microsoft, which certainly could not complain about royalties from 400,000 deployments (or at least acknowledgements) of Office, Exchange or Windows Server. However, the Microsoft Dynamics business applications group and the accompanying partner ecosystem probably didn't share the same enthusiasm, by any respect. To appease these constituencies, Microsoft released Microsoft Dynamics Snap applications n mid-2006. Microsoft Dynamics Snap, which, beside UI familiarity and simplicity for users, also provided in-context business data lookup in Microsoft Office programs. At the time, Microsoft pointed out that Dynamics Snap was a "shared source" initiative, because the vendor wanted to encourage its partners to build and customize these solutions for their customers, either for specific roles and verticals or to contribute in helping Microsoft build more solutions that enhance productivity and empower information workers. Microsoft emphasized its approach of doing this in a community environment, by distributing the Snap programs under a shared source license to enable people from other companies to modify and extend the programs at no charge. Since then, there have been reported over 18,000 downloads of Snap along with nearly 1,500 individual developers and companies that have joined the Dynamics shared source community. Although this continues to be a great way for Microsoft to understand the dynamics of a Web 2.0-style community (social networks) environment as it applies to business management software, there has been confusion about licensing to customers and what other products customer need to make use of the MS Dynamics Snap.
Even the developers from SAP Labs often express their love for the idea of mash-ups, which, according to Webopedia, is a term derived from the hip-hop music practice of mixing songs together. Mash-ups refer to a new breed of Web-based applications created (unfortunately) by hackers and programmers (typically on a volunteer basis) to mix at least two different services from disparate, and even competing, Web sites. A mash-up, for example, could overlay traffic data from one source on the Internet over maps from Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, or any content provider. Creating a mash-up from multiple sources into one dynamic entity is considered by many to represent the promise of the Web service standard and of on-demand computing (see SaaS-ing the Manufacturing Opportunity ). However, this business model has yet to create viable intellectual property and revenue streams for participants (given the dynamic nature of new product releases and versions), and especially in terms of a structured support and maintenance, which seems to be well spelled out in case of Duet.
* Action pane. The Duet action pane will mimic the behavior of the Office programmable task pane.
* Toolbar buttons. Custom buttons can be added to the application-level toolbar, and these buttons will trigger the execution of metadata-based actions.
* Context menu items. Custom context menu items can be added to folder and item context menus to trigger the execution of metadata-based actions.
* Outlook events. Selected standard Outlook events and behaviors are extended to automatically activate metadata-defined actions.
* Custom calendar views. Outlook tabbed forms and action panes are defined via metadata.
* Contact management. Additional tabs are added to contact objects for server-maintained data.
As for the security issues, the challenge Duet faces with authentication is that authentication needs to be separated from the authentication within the system. For authentication within the system, Duet reuses the authentication of the local user in the Microsoft Windows environment. This is generally implemented using Windows NT LAN (Local Area Network) Manager or Microsoft Active Directory, which most users are familiar with. Within Duet, SAP security experts have developed a module that is able to take the user token from the Windows environment and map it to the proper SAP user. In doing so, Duet is able to issue a single sign-on ticket enabling the client to communicate in a with the web services on the SAP side in a secure manner.
Once authentication is secured, standard SAP guidelines and principles take effect and the access is granted based on authorization profiles associated with the user in the underlying SAP system. For example, each profile is associated with a only a few of the cost centers that exist in the underlying system. A user can have access only to his or her own personal information based on service scenarios, while a manager is granted access only to his or her organizational unit within the entire system, and so on.
The Recent Duet Uptake
In any case, Duet's highly involved collaborative architecture that has shown the major "pains and gains" of SOA. (For more information, see SOA from a Management Perspective ). And it has resulted in a commercial product that is unequivocally priced (approximately, $125 [USD] per user, though this price does not include Microsoft Office and SAP licenses, but only for Duet functionality), that is sold and supported under no uncertain terms. With the most recent Duet 1.5 release, some drawbacks of Duet 1.0 have also been addressed, such as the number of supported languages, which has been extended to 16: Simplified Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Korean, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Hungarian, Norwegian, and Traditional Chinese. These are in addition to English, German, French, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese in Duet 1.0. A few more scenarios were added too (e.g., recruitment management, travel management, purchasing management, workflow approvals and reports and analytics), some of which run within a Excel UI screen too (as opposed to only within Outlook in the Duet 1.0 scenarios). One should imagine the inclusion of data from other back-end systems beside those of SAP, down the track.
In fact, the success of over 400,000 sold Duet licenses within 18 months has "shocked and awed" many competitors. The responses were numerous, as competitors began to trot out their own, comparable products. IBM cited its Project Harmony that features the integration of Lotus Notes and IBM Workplace (formerly Lotus Workplace) to SAP (and to many more SAP product releases than Duet), Google touted its no-brainer on-demand Google Enterprise applications, many other vendors said that they also have the Office-based (or Office-like) interface. Others flouted their Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) programming. Adobe/Macromedia Flex or simply an Internet browser also flagged their products with their familiar and intuitive interfaces (ironically, MSN Hotmail was one of the best deployments of AJAX).
In a particularly peculiar position was Microsoft, which certainly could not complain about royalties from 400,000 deployments (or at least acknowledgements) of Office, Exchange or Windows Server. However, the Microsoft Dynamics business applications group and the accompanying partner ecosystem probably didn't share the same enthusiasm, by any respect. To appease these constituencies, Microsoft released Microsoft Dynamics Snap applications n mid-2006. Microsoft Dynamics Snap, which, beside UI familiarity and simplicity for users, also provided in-context business data lookup in Microsoft Office programs. At the time, Microsoft pointed out that Dynamics Snap was a "shared source" initiative, because the vendor wanted to encourage its partners to build and customize these solutions for their customers, either for specific roles and verticals or to contribute in helping Microsoft build more solutions that enhance productivity and empower information workers. Microsoft emphasized its approach of doing this in a community environment, by distributing the Snap programs under a shared source license to enable people from other companies to modify and extend the programs at no charge. Since then, there have been reported over 18,000 downloads of Snap along with nearly 1,500 individual developers and companies that have joined the Dynamics shared source community. Although this continues to be a great way for Microsoft to understand the dynamics of a Web 2.0-style community (social networks) environment as it applies to business management software, there has been confusion about licensing to customers and what other products customer need to make use of the MS Dynamics Snap.
Even the developers from SAP Labs often express their love for the idea of mash-ups, which, according to Webopedia, is a term derived from the hip-hop music practice of mixing songs together. Mash-ups refer to a new breed of Web-based applications created (unfortunately) by hackers and programmers (typically on a volunteer basis) to mix at least two different services from disparate, and even competing, Web sites. A mash-up, for example, could overlay traffic data from one source on the Internet over maps from Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, or any content provider. Creating a mash-up from multiple sources into one dynamic entity is considered by many to represent the promise of the Web service standard and of on-demand computing (see SaaS-ing the Manufacturing Opportunity ). However, this business model has yet to create viable intellectual property and revenue streams for participants (given the dynamic nature of new product releases and versions), and especially in terms of a structured support and maintenance, which seems to be well spelled out in case of Duet.
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