SAP and Google are aligning by integrating Google Apps with SAP Business By Design. In addition, the two companies will work to foster a developer community through Google App Engine and the Android operating system.

The marriage means SAP’s BBD customers may use GMail and Google Docs in the SAP environment.  In addition, the two companies will team up with its resellers to offer both BBD and Google Apps.

Google and SAP have differing developer communities but again the emphasis will be on aligning Google’s suite of services with SAP’s cloud-based business software. There is little about how Android fits into the picture but expect there to be a similar alignment.

The news today came as part of a comprehensive overview of SAP’s cloud strategy, which also included the news of a platform as a service built on SAP HANA.

We have few details but SAP executive vice president Peter Lorenz did say the platform will include SAP’s Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) for transactions and procedure oriented solutions. It will also include a Java-PaaS for more collaborative apps. HANA will underly both environments.

An SAP and Google partnership makes sense. There is almost no overlap between the companies. BBD will infuse Google Apps, giving it a fuller way to integrate with small and medium sized businesses. SAP can benefit in similar fashion by offering the easy to use Google Apps services. The most interesting synergy may come with Google App Engine and BBD. It could crearte a synergy to build various extensions into both services that could be sold on Google Apps Marketplace and as Android-based apps.

But HANA is what we will all be watching. The PaaS play is sketchy at this point but if SAP is committed to openness then we will see some clear examples for a new spring of enterprise apps.