We had a call with SAP and Google executives this morning and it went okay. It’s great to see SAP show some interest in working with a company that has a real commitment to developers.

Google  gushed about SAP and its commitment to HTML5. But a number of questions surfaced.

What about Silverlight? Dennis Howlett brought this up today in the call with the analysts and bloggers. Google Apps is integrating with SAP Business ByDesign. Google App Engine developers will build HTML5 apps that may be sold in the SAP store, pending certification.

But BBD is built on Silverlight. Not to worry, SAP says.  There is a is continuing commitment to Silverlight. A new HML5 version will be available in the next 12 to 18 months. An HTML 5 app store will go online by next Fall with selective apps. By the Fall, Google Apps will have full native support in BBD.

I am not sure what else SAP would say. Silverlight is getting cast off into the dark corners where technologies live but are not nourished. That’s the reality and the Google-SAP alignment reflects that.

In light of this, the partnership makes sense if Google and SAP can connect the dots. A few more questions:

How will the APIs integrate? SAP executives say they will have to do process integration with the Google APIs. For example, deciding at which part of the flow the user may access Google Docs. If you are in CRM app and want to make an appointment then again SAP needs to figure out where to do that in the process flow. BBD Feature Pack 4.0, available in the third quarter, will include the native integration. My question: How fluid will this be for developers? Can SAP remove the friction points?

Will SAP support OpenID and OAuth? Google Apps Marketplace requires OpenID and OAuth. Will SAP integrate these two Web-oriented authentication mechanisms? SAP says they are looking into it. This issue will have to be worked out if this partnership is going to work. It’s complicated by the fact that SAP has an entirely different set of requirements for its app store. Apps are added based upon whether they meet different certification requirements. I wonder about this friction point and how it will sit with developers.

How do the business models work out? It’s unclear how these two companies will get the businesses to work together.  In the first half of the year, the two companies will work with a handful of partners. They will then scale out the model. How this gets managed is something I don’t think the two companies quite understand as of yet. Google sells Google Apps primarily through its reseller program. Google brought its revenue share with developers down to zero. It’s unclear what the costs would be to the developer on the SAP store.

SAP is making the transition away from Silverlight through the adoption of HTML5.  It’s the data integrations and business model alignments that still have some ways to go as SAP and Google develop their partnership.