ISVs: A New Formula for Success in Enterprise Apps?

Ever wish you had a better formula for building, selling, and monetizing great apps? Well good news, developers: SAP has you covered.

The SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) has everything ISVs need to bring apps to market. The platform uses open source technologies, so you can build apps your way. And it comes with advanced CI/CD technologies for IoT, mobile, data management, and real-time analytics that will help your solutions stand out.

Most importantly, HCP makes it easier than ever to reach SAP customers. Considering that SAP has an installed base of 320,000+ businesses, that’s a pretty big deal.

So let’s take a closer look at what this platform as a service (PaaS) means to you and your app that’s about to take the world by storm.

1. Develop your way

You’ve spent a career building expertise with your favorite languages and tools. Naturally you want to use these talents when building new apps.

SAP HCP lets you do just that. You’ll find support for top languages such as Java, JavaScript, and HTML5, as well as industry-standard environments like Eclipse. And we participate in the Cloud Foundry, so you can work with cutting-edge cloud environments like node.js, Python, Perl, and Ruby as well.

2. Create solutions customers can have complete confidence in

But what really sets HCP apart is its enterprise-class added value services in the areas of security, mobility, integration, analytics, user experience, user collaboration, Internet of Things, and business services.

HCP is managed in SAP’s data centers, so your apps will have the full force of SAP’s global security and compliance expertise. That’s a great selling point for customers who want assurance that your solution isn’t going to crash or compromise their systems.

One ISV leader put the HCP value proposition this way: “By SAP operating the platform on behalf of the customer, both [we] and the customer can quickly focus on the solution that will generate the best value.”

That quote comes from James Sinclair, co-founder of EnterpriseJungle. His app connects on-premises SAP human resources systems with SAP’s cloud-based SuccessFactors, as well as Dun & Bradstreet, LinkedIn, and other data sources. “Upon hearing that our solution is built on HCP, [customers] are automatically more receptive to our product offering.”

The EnterpriseJungle experience also illustrates HCP’s unique ability to integrate into SAP environments. With HCP, your apps will plug into the full range of SAP solutions and data, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Your apps will appear as another module in SAP on-premises or SaaS line of business solutions.

Sinclair says that with HCP, “We have a whole set of trusted SAP tools that allow us to cater to a heterogeneous environment, while also ensuring that the end-user experience is harmonized with the existing SuccessFactors landscape both in appearance and in security, compliance, and infrastructure.”

And it’s not just seamless integration with the SAP universe that makes this PaaS so compelling. HCP gives external apps and services some love, too. With the HCP API Business Hub, you can easily connect to third-party applications, including those running on Microsoft Azure and AWS. Check out the API Business Hub at api.sap.com.

3. Get powerful tools that facilitate innovation

HCP also comes packed with powerful tools that can take your app to the next level. These include the sophisticated analytic capabilities—such as predictive, geospatial, graph, and text analytics—built on the SAP HANA in-memory computing platform. These real-time analytics can help your customers spot trends before their competitors do, and seize the opportunities to advance their business.

HCP also offers a comprehensive infrastructure for implementing IoT services. These services make it easy to add remote device management, time-series analysis, predictive maintenance, and more to your solutions.

And thanks to partnerships with IBM and Apple, the vast world of iPhones and iPads is open to you as well. IBM apps developed for iOS seamlessly integrate with SAP systems, while the Apple/HCP software developer’s kit due out later in 2016 will make it easy for you to build native iOS apps that can mobilize any SAP business process natively to iOS devices. How cool is that?

4. Reach the full range of SAP customers

One of the most compelling aspects of developing on HCP is that it gives you unprecedented access to enterprises that run SAP. The SAP App Center lets our customers find and try your software—and offers revenue sharing so you can easily monetize your success. SAP even lets you post your app to the SAP App Center yourself—as soon as your app is ready. Check it out at sapappcenter.com.

Sinclair calls this approach “revolutionary”. He feels that getting his software on a global stage on day one propelled EnterpriseJungle from a start-up to a success story in a matter of months.

Are you ready to write your own success story? It all starts with learning more about the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what develops – for SAP, and YOU!