SAP and Google are embarking on an extensive partnership that will focus mainly on the integration of the former’s subscription-based Business ByDesign ERP suite with Google Apps. A pilot is set to launch in the third quarter of 2012, intitally available only to customers in the U.S, UK and France.

Bernd-Uwe Pagel, senior vice president of outsourcing and on demand ecosystem for SAP, revealed some details about the agreement between the two companies during a keynote. He said that the integration is already being tested with a number of customers, and that it will go into a much deeper level than just an API link.

“Google’s APIs (application programming interfaces) for the Apps family are up to the task, but SAP intends to weave the software into ByDesign’s process flows, which will take some time, he said. For example, one integration point might allow a ByDesign user making an appointment within the suite’s CRM module to then push the entry into Google Calendar.”

The Google App Engine will also be integrated with ByDesign to support Android developers, based on what the SAP exec noted. In addition, Pagel mentioned that the two firms have hopes to tap each others’ resellers, and about 10 to 15 of Google’s will be working with SAP in  the first half of 2012, if everything goes according to plan.

SAP is big on integration and its becoming a selling point for an expanding partner base. Its ERP apps are already integrated with Office, and its BI applications has been made available to organizations running Vblock deployments in November.

As the German business software maker expands its cloud front with partnerships and new products, we’re learning about how it’s leveraging virtualization internally. During an interview Dr. Wolfgang Krips, SVP of global infrastructure, elaborated on the private cloud deployment SAP leverages to power its internal  training program.