Teamware Group has announced their cooperation with SAP Finland in developing and providing portal solutions. Teamware complements mySAP Enterprise Portal with communication and publishing functionalities with the Teamware Pl@za® solution. The first mutual customer is currently piloting the solution. The Teamware Office™ groupware system is also integrated to it. The idea of the new portal solution is to store information once where it is produced after which it is accessible and reusable everywhere.

In its initial phase the cooperation is strongly focused on the public sector, where Teamware already has a large market share. More than 100 Finnish cities and municipalities use Teamware systems; in addition, SAP has nearly thirty public sector customers in Finland. SAP has in-depth knowledge in supporting collaborative e-government service processes across applications and organizations.

IT service providers Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Fujitsu Invia implement the joint portal solution by SAP and Teamware. Fujitsu Invia and Teamware have earlier announced their cooperation in the area of communication portals when Teamware acquired Invia’s NetCommunity product business in late 2002. Fujitsu Invia offers an ASP-based concept according to which the customer can purchase a communication and ERP solution as a service 'from the socket'. The first outsourced communication solutions have already been delivered to local government customers.

'Working together SAP and Teamware can provide a broad offering catering to the needs of public sector organizations. Our products complement each other, and a number of organizations have already shown a particular interest in the solution,' says CEO of Teamware Group, Mr. Rauno Toivonen, describing the active cooperation. A joint service portal guarantees browser-based integration to different user groups. It also offers single sign-on to a virtual desktop with role-based views, multichannel functionalities and applications hidden as services.

'Teamware is a strong player in publishing systems and collaborative applications. For example, a portal project room makes communications more efficient and forming virtual teams easier. Users can personify the content to suit their own needs. Furthermore, we can create joint user management in the system. Users do not need to know which applications they are using. The applications - including e.g. e-mail, calendar, document archive and virtual workspaces - are fully integrated,' says Mr. Jukka Sonninen, Managing Director of SAP Finland.