SAP mobile strategy

In the last weeks we had the same question from clients: what about the actual SAP mobile strategy? There was one sentence that confused me: SAPs mobile strategy is so unclear in their eyes and they feel they cannot trust SAP in mobility.

I am confused because I never felt SAP had a clearer vision and strategy then at the moment. Since the last 2 years everything is clear, straight forward and makes perfect sense.

Okay, as I heard the news a few weeks back about the acquisition of Syclo I had in mind: why on earth… ??!?!?!?

But since I have spoken to some people from SAP, have seen Sapphire presentations and off course did invest some time to understand the benefits of this acquisition to SAPs customers.

Lets see why I think the whole thing makes perfect sense and everything fits well together:

2 years back it was clear to everybody in SAP mobility, something was missing. Netweaver Mobile 7.1 is a great product, but it lacks two essential parts: device support and data push. Some companies did solve this issue, one of them was Sybase. Off course Sybase SUP delivers much more then just device support and data push, but seen it from that pure point alone it already made perfect sense for SAP to buy Sybase and beside this SAP got so much more then just SUP. Today Sybase SUP is the single access point if we want to mobilize anything in the SAP world. If you see SAP Gateway for example: the pure SDK to connect directly from APPs to Gateway is stopped, but everything is handled now by SUP. In minutes we can mobilize simple processes and roll out apps to users.

So investing into SUP is the best choice if you want to mobilize anything in the SAP world. It is supported by SAP, all new developments are available on SUP and SAP works hard to make SUP better.

This is a crystal clear standpoint, it is valid for over 2 years, it is trustworthy and everything SAP does at the moment does fit into this strategy: SUP is SAPs single access point to the mobile world. Regardless if we see SAPs partnering with Adobe, Sencha and Appcelerator or if we see it from buying Syclo.

This brings me directly to the next chapter. Syclo is not a shift in strategy, no, it is the perfect way forward on the same route. More on this by my next post.

Now we want to concentrate on the announcement, SAP partners with Adobe Systems, Sencha and Appcelerator.

This simply closes some gaps inside SAP mobile development plattform and it gives developers a good foundation to build apps. SAP did deliver HybridWebContainer last year, because users requested some option to build HTML5 apps. But the open world delivered much more and SUP developers already use apps like Adobe Phonegap to create HTML5 apps or Appcelerator Titanium to create cross compiled native JavaScript apps for Android or iOS devices.

So partnering with these companies allows SAP to concentrate on their core strength while there is an option for developers to develop web oriented HTML apps based on SUP and best off all, developers already used it anyway. So again it is not a shift in strategy, it simply paves the ground for many to follow and to build better products in a shorter time to mobilize SAP.