The market is getting crowded.

Not a week goes by without a headline piece of news being touted by vendors of software and hardware alike. And this week has been no exception; Microsoft have walked away from the Yahoo deal, Pixsta are set to challenge Google and now RIM have announced a deal with SAP. The two companies have stated that SAP will make its CRM software available ton the Blackberry within the next couple of months. This should allow salespeople to use Customer Relations Management alongside Blackberry email, calendar and address book apps with minimal fuss.

Off the wire.

SAP has stated that their software will cache data when there’s no connection available, much the same as the Blackberry email services work. Updates will be stored on the device until a connection is found at which point the handset will push the updates back to the central SAP servers. Another planned feature is the ability to deploy applications to the Blackberry handset from the central SAP infrastructure.

This deal will not be exclusive. SAP is not keen for the service to become a niche product so expect to see more handset manufacturers offering a similar service in future.

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