SAP buying Sybase is critical for the proliferation of “Anywhere” enterprise applications. Sybase provides not only mobile middleware, but relationships with Amazon for cloud computing. Yankee Group research predicted the fusion of cloud computing, application mobility and social media to transform the enterprise mobility space. This deal now gives SAP 2 out 3 in a single purchase.
The growth of devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry Bold has created end-user demand for access to crucial enterprise applications and information on the go. The latest devices provide opportunities for fresh and innovative applications that must be written from the ground up to maximize user effectiveness. New functionality like unified communications, presence and location-based services and multimedia should be embedded intelligently into the new mobile enterprise applications to improve adoption and promote anywhere collaboration. Sybase brings to the table a mobile platform that can help SAP transform their applications to be consumed anywhere, anytime on any device.
Yankee Group has been an advocate of using mobile middleware technologies to enable anywhere applications for the last 10 years. SAP recently engaged in a strategic partnership with Sybase for enabling their enterprise applications, specifically mobile CRM. Our research places mobile CRM as the most strategic enterprise application for two years in a row. Our survey mobile applications survey data for 2009 also revels 65% of respondents view mobile applications of high importance for increasing business productivity.
To stay competitive, SAP must continue to deliver transformed applications that:
- Engage the user with real-time process-centric applications. SAP can use Sybase to help create dynamic applications that are built around user processes, deliver information in real time and are also potentially event-triggered by information that resides in the cloud.
- Embrace social computing to power collaborative relationships for customers, partners and employees. SAP applications must move toward a more collaborative, connected and dialogue-based foundation.
- Harness context to create more insightful interactions. Sybase middleware can help SAP applications offer contextual and location-based data to ensure that users have information relevant to their situation and that the right information finds the user.
Mobile platform solutions help address these challenges by:
- Providing cross-device/platform support. Although it is possible to mandate a specific mobile device, the consumerization of the enterprise is a powerful force. Businesses must offer choice to their employees. As a result, many companies today are struggling to keep up with employee demand for enterprise access to a myriad of available devices and operating systems. A mobile platform will not only eliminate the cross-platform complexities, but also future-proof next-generation devices.
- Taking a “composite” approach to building mobile applications. Most businesses have not only multiple enterprise applications such as SAP, Siebel, Oracle and PeopleSoft, but also multiple productivity tools. The resulting application breaks down silos to create a process-driven user interface that is designed around a day in the life of a user. These process improvements significantly reduce the number of end-user clicks by providing critical information in context to the task and process improvements through more user-aware applications. These applications enable organizations to think outward toward their customer processes, automate their best practices and not force their process to fit an application.
- Integrating with functionality inherent in smartphones. Power and form factors such as QWERTY keypads and touch screens garner plenty of attention, but other device capabilities can have strong benefits to enterprise applications. Location-based services can be harnessed to add value and context to enterprise applications. New multimedia (camera, media player, Bluetooth) will help with a variety of processes such as viewing a product training video, presenting a project or capturing an image of a product or a receipt of expenses. The improved browsers also ensure the user receives in-context information specific to a task from RSS feeds, taps into social media services for improved collaboration and accesses ad hoc information from the corporate network.
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