SAP and Sybase Partner to Bring SAP Business Suite 7 to iPhone, Windows Mobile Devices

Mobility has become a top priority for businesses. To make the right decisions, information workers and management need access to information and systems from the field in real time.

As such, business software company SAP (News - Alert) and mobility enterprise application platform company Sybase are partnering to bring the SAP Business Suite 7 to Apple’s (News - Alert) iPhone, Microsoft Windows Mobile devices, BlackBerry smartphones, and other mobile devices. The combined solution will be marketed to enterprises all over the world under the slogan “Office on the Go."


During a press conference held Wednesday, Bill McDermott, president of global field operations for SAP, explained that the collaboration “will lay the foundation to further mobilize SAP’s great content and functionality -- and move that content and functionality into the hands of the mobile workforce.”

“As you know, the mobile workforce wants to work with whatever devices it feels comfortable with – whether it’s the iPhone, Windows Mobile devices and of course, the BlackBerry (News - Alert),” McDermott said. “I’m sure you’re aware that we’ve already natively integrated SAP’s CRM onto the BlackBerry device – and that’s a partnership that we hold very dear here at SAP.”

As McDermott explained, there has been an explosion of mobile devices worldwide, particularly in Asia and Latin America, and through this partnership SAP hopes to deliver its applications to more of those devices.

“The mobile enterprise worker is now the most important worker, because that’s the worker that’s touching the customer, the partner, and the supplier,” he said. “This worker relies on smart devices and uses the power of calendar and email -- in addition to, now, the enterprise application functionality of SAP.”

As McDermott explained, “there will be 300 million smart devices in the hands of mobile workers by 2013 – that’s nearly 100 percent growth from where we are today – and there will be 1 billion mobile users in the nest few years.” He added that “seventy percent of companies are planning to mobilize [business] applications into the hands of their knowledge workers.”

At the same time, “we are in a new reality in this economy, and companies are looking to extend the value of their existing core IT investments,” he said. As such, many companies are looking for highly integrated “out of the box” solutions that will save them on integration costs and ongoing maintenance of complex systems.

McDermott said the solution will enable companies to “increase productivity without a major investment: Those customers using Sybase (News - Alert) can now easily deliver SAP applications – those using SAP can now easily migrate to Sybase for delivery.”

This will be key for businesses looking to go mobile, but which do not have a lot of capital to layout for a mobile integration – especially those businesses which are already using SAP applications (the company has more than 40 million licenses worldwide) and have a fleet of mobile workers using various devices. By integrating SAP’s apps with Sybase’s content delivery platform, these companies can now harness the power of their existing investments and push SAP applications out to their mobile workers.

“The devices are already in the workers hands,” McDermott said. “So you can deploy applications on them very quickly with our new partnership. This is all about ease of deployment, ease of consumption, and ease of execution.”

McDermott said Asia, the U.S. and Latin America are the main markets that are being targeted with this new initiative, which is being headed up by SAP. Market segments being targeted include logistics, transportation, retail, airlines and government agencies, including first responders.

 

Vinay Iyer VP of global marketing SAP, said through research they found that “there are 120 million users worldwide that could be connected to SAP applications today, but they aren’t due to the inability to deliver the apps to mobile devices.”

“Living in America and living in the Western Hemisphere, we all think everybody is connected, everybody has a laptop,” he explained. “But in developing countries like India and China, not everyone can afford a laptop – companies can’t afford to provide laptops to all their mobile workers.”
 
But there has been an explosion of mobile devices: In countries like China and India, many people have two or three mobile devices. “And that’s an opportunity,” Iyer said, “because now we can deliver SAP’s apps to any device.”

So can’t mobile workers share information without this new solution? Of course they can, but as Iyer explained, the processes are much more “clunky:”

 

“Forms are emailed back and forth between field workers and their managers for verification and approval -- field workers don’t have real time access to historical records and/or management tools – and all along the process there are inefficiencies, because there’s no continuity of process from the worker to the systems that manage them,” he explained. “There’s a need to have people plugged into computers, you have to have a fixed line connection, and it’s painful.”

Not only that, there’s the complexity of handling a mobile integration project in-house: “With all the carriers, phone makers and software makers out there in the mobile market, it becomes a very complex ecosystem,” Iyer said. “It’s very difficult to get mobile devices to communicate well with the apps. That’s where Sybase comes in: Its Unwired platform is what enables delivery of SAP apps to any mobile device.”

 

As Iyer explained, the two companies are enhancing the SAP NetWeaver mobile applications stack, which is within the SAP business suite, and building a bridge between SAP Business Suite 7 and the Sybase platform. “So all the various processes that emanate from the SAP business suite is integrated into the Sybase Unwired platform, which allows for easy dissemination distribution and management, on all the mobile devices,” he said.

When asked whether or not the two companies have more work to do on the development and integration front, Chen said: “Most of all the major building blocks are in place: such as the ability to deliver to different devices in one uniform method; the ability to create applications to interface with the back end; and the ability to reach any cell phone numbers or IP addresses out there in real time environment.”

“We do however need to develop and qualify the adaptors to all the SAP business processes, the CRM and the entire Business Suite 7,” he said. “We would expect to be able to put all the business processes into the hands of mobile workers by the end of this year – and that will be quickly followed by [native integration with] CRM [at the beginning of 2010].”

 

He added that the new solution will be “very affordable.”

 

McDermott said the partnership is not exclusive: “Sybase is free to work with other business application providers.”