2015 – The Year of the Enterprise Mobile Application at Mobile World Congress
There are literally billions of mobile applications globally. Many apps find their way into the enterprise via a staffer bringing their own apps in the front door. Of these apps only about 1% actually receives significant usage over their first 3 months of life as they lack enterprise integration. However, with proper context and enterprise application integration, mobility apps can have a much more significant impact on organizations. SAP and IBM Global Business Services (GBS) are working together to bring relevant mobile apps to life as part of our longstanding partnership in the enterprise market.
Many mobile apps began life by “transplanting” existing on premise functionality into popular enterprise-ready mobile operating systems. To address the current needs to be more transformational and to better leverage native capabilities of devices and platforms, IBM GBS and SAP are adding iOS centric enhancements, and the cloud-based SAP Mobile Platform functionality, to existing and net new SAP Fiori applications. Fiori can be the starting point for mass enabling users of existing enterprise applications in target industries. IBM and SAP are adding capabilities including:
1. Biometric (thumbprint) Access
2. Active (push) Notification – relies upon SMP
3. Offline Access – relies upon SMP
4. iCalendar Integration
5. Cloud storage (iCloud)
This week at Mobile World Congress 2015, the two firms will demonstrate several of these five (5) SAP Fiori applications including iOS thumbprint access for secure login to SAP systems and offline access using the SAP Mobile Platform. IBM Mobile First for iOS applications connecting to SAP’s enterprise systems (i.e. Telco Field Service App) will be available to demo in IBM’s booth in Hall3, 3.H30. Additional Mobility applications including e-commerce, predictive maintenance and networked economy demos and showcases are available in the SAP Pavilion in Hall 6, 6.A30.
Joint customer benefits of the two firms are many. For starters, Enterprise customers gain better business effectiveness with transformational industry apps, greater employee productivity and satisfaction and user experience with iOS specific features, push notifications and offline access to their applications. Since Fiori is a natural starting point on many customers’ mobile strategy, SAP customers benefit with consistent mobile app usage from the start including more widespread adoption, usage of Fiori applications and mobile ROI for users accessing SAP systems through a consistent Fiori OpenUI5 experience. To further modify these Fiori-based apps or create net new mobile apps SAP also offers the HANA Cloud Platform Mobile Services solution.
Both IBM GBS and SAP customers ultimately win with the ability to develop mobile apps once and deploy everywhere with secure offline access and scalable leverage of existing back-end systems. This collaboration allows enterprise customers of both firms to reach more of their users, partners and customers with a combination of mobile apps, development services, integration services, hosting services, and providing iOS devices (including provisioning and ongoing support).