Google has announced that SAP is launching a collaborative decision-making app StreamWork in Google Apps Marketplace which enables integration with Google Apps.

SAP's SaaS product StreamWork pools information spread across the web, desktop and business systems and uses business models like SWOT analysis, pro/con tables and polls to structure information for decision making. The integration with Google Apps will make familiar Google cloud tools like Google Docs and Google Calendar available on StreamWork environment. Direct integration will be available in the first half of 2011.

The app can be accessed directly from Google Apps, using Google App OpenID.

The SAP StreamWork differentiates itself from other cloud-based social applications, as it primarily structures communication spread across an organization for brainstorming and decision-making purposes.

The enterprise edition of StreamWork runs on Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.

The product partners include Evernote, Scribd and box.net.

SAP stated that it is targeting more than 3 million businesses that currently use Google Apps.

SAP had also revealed its PaaS strategy earlier this year which includes segmenting its cloud-computing strategy across various development platforms. One such platform is River for light weight applications while its more complex cloud-computing applications will be based on Business ByDesign platform.

Also in May it unveiled a part of its private cloud strategy when it announced ERP software running on Vblock systems supported by VMware, Cisco and EMC. Vblock aggregates servers, networking equipment, storage, management, security, and virtualization components in a stack for building private clouds.

With StreamWork SAP is targeting SMBs and has well differentiated SaaS product which can drive mileage through Google Apps.

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