SAP (known for providing software such as Business Objects) is working on an application called “Constellation”. Constellation uses some of the principles of Wave to bring the real-time environment to business users for collaboration. One of the features being discussed is the ability to publish collaboration efforts to other platforms such as SharePoint, wikis, etc.

Much like Wave’s extensions, SAP is planning on having a marketplace for developers to create and sell their integrations of the application.

They’re planning on launching the app sometime in Q1 of 2010.

It will be interesting to see how it fares in the business arena. The Corporate Cubicle mentions in a recent post,

“The high cost of product upgrades still doesn’t excuse our responsibility as a tech department to be at the forefront of early adoption.⁵ We have to serve our customers and we are failing due to cost, laziness, fear, or some combination thereof.  It is hurting our end product and slowing our ability to respond to problems.”

⁵ It certainly doesn’t explain our lack of openness to new upgrades that are free (ex. Google Chrome)

Being that SAP is the provider of Business Objects, which many companies have adopted, businesses might be more inclined to implement Constellation (over Google Wave) because it will cost money and they would be getting it from a “reliable source”.¹

¹ In general, if a company has to pay for something, they consider the source they buy the product from reliable. Most companies do not take advantage of free applications or software because they perceive the products as risky.

Think about the last time you worked on a document for work. You probably created it in Microsoft Word and then sent it out via email. If there were multiple contacts you sent the document to, more than likely, they read it, made edits, sent the updated document back to you – each individually.  Then you were stuck trying to compare your original version with their updated versions and making sure all the changes were incorporated into one final document. Inevitably, something would get missed along the way.

The solution: Google Wave (GW). With GW you essentially set up one “wave”, invite the contacts that you need input from, and everyone makes changes on the same platform in real-time. GW takes all extra work out of it. This particular feature is comparable to a wiki, but there are so many other things you can do that you couldn’t do with a wiki.

Ok, so we’ve solved your document problem; what else does GW do? There are so many features I couldn’t even begin to post them all. It would take pages and pages, ages and ages, for me to even come close. For that reason, I’ve posted two videos for your viewing pleasure. The first is a short 2 minute clip of what GW can do for you. The second is the demo that the Google Wave creators gave to the participants of the Google I/O conference earlier this year. Both videos are great, however the second is very long. If you don’t have time to watch it, check the first one out.

Here is a short video – What is Google Wave?

Here is the Google I/O Conference Demo from the creators of Google Wave

So now you’ve seen what GW can do and you’re ready to ride the Wave. Unfortunately, GW is in limited preview only. This means you can only be invited into it (similarly to when Gmail was launched). Invites started going out on September 30th and there have been more since (I’m personally still waiting for one). If you want to get on the waitlist for an invitation, you can signup or you can wait for a friend of a friend of a friend to invite you.

Hope to see you on the Waves someday soon.