HP, Microsoft and SAP Team On Duet Appliance

Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and SAP are eager to prove that, at least in the case of their Duet collaboration, three is anything but a crowd.

The trio introduced a new appliance this week that aims to make it simpler for employees to tap into both SAP business processes and Microsoft Office data.The hardware, an HP Proliant server, comes bundled with a software package called Duet, which was designed by Microsoft and SAP and released last year. Duet lets workers tap into both Office applications and SAP processes.

Prospective customers can judge the value of the appliance to their organization by using preloaded scripts to build a "proof of concept" based on their own information.

The Duet appliance will ship next year.