Enterprise software giant SAP today announced that its on-demand BusinessObjects suite of products will be integrated into Jive Software's community software product for large enterprises.

"SAP combines the most innovative business intelligence products on the market with the security and scalability that our enterprise customers require," said Christopher Morace, Jive Software senior vice president of products, in a statement. "By adding a social layer to enterprise reporting, our companies are setting a new threshold for business intelligence."

The announcement advances SAP's enterprise 2.0 strategy, according to Holly Simmons, SAP BusinessObjects senior director of marketing. She told InternetNews.com that today's announcement is a step forward in the company's goal of bringing business intelligence applications to a wider audience, a goal highlighted recently at SAP's SAPHHIRE 09 conference with the unveiling of natural language search in the company's Explorer product.

Simmons added that the combination of analytics and community software helps companies determine the ROI for social business applications. "For example, we can help managers determine the relationship between the community and purchase decisions," she said.

SAP has had a long relationship with Jive Software, making it a natural partner, Simmons said, but it won't be the only company with which SAP forges an OEM relationship.

She explained that OEM partnerships like that announced today are part of SAP's strategy going forward. "We can offer lightweight services, including business intelligence and data services, to OEM partners," she said.

She noted that just last week, SAP's SaaS leader, John Wookey (ex-Oracle), said in a keynote speech at SIIA Europe that on-demand software is at the core of SAP's efforts to help customers get a better and faster ROI from SAP software.

But some experts have criticized SAP's SaaS strategy. Phil Wainewright, CEO and founder of Procullux Ventures and also founder of ASPNews.com, wrote recently in his blog that if SAP studied Salesforce, "SAP might learn a thing or two about how to really build software for integrity and stability."

SAP's CTO, Vishal Sikka, responded, writing that he would let "our tens of thousands of mission-critical deployments, representing trusted relationships that last decades, speak for itself."