SAP hones its mobile solutions portfolio, targets untapped enterprise mobile apps market

With an army of 2 million developers, partners and an mobile application ecosystem with over 50 apps, market ready, the company increases its focus on enterprise mobility. By Harshal Kallyanpur

SAP recently unveiled its Mobile Solutions Center in Mumbai. The solution center showcases an array of mobile devices pre-configured with SAP applications wherein SAP customers, current and potential alike, can experience these applications and exchange ideas with SAP experts.

The company chose the platform to demonstrate its enterprise mobility portfolio, but also outlined its focus on the enterprise mobility, which according to SAP is one of the largest growing markets in India.

Alok Goyal, COO, SAP India, commented, “A few years ago, we would talk about half a million cell phones in India, which then went up to 750 mn. Today, we are reaching close to a billion cell phones in the country.”

There will be roughly a quarter billion mobile Internet users in India by 2016 up from about 50 million today. Almost all organizations, according to Goyal, are trying to figure out how they can create an unwired enterprise using the new mobile capabilities.

The cost of mobile devices is coming down. There are more mobile phones with smartphone capabilities even in the low-mid cost range and 3G prices have come down.

Through the unveiling of the mobility center, SAP reinforced its focus on its objective to provide the best mobile platform and application experience for enterprise users.

SAP has launched 50 applications based on the most common enterprise implementation scenarios. It has a global network of two million developers who have access to its SDK. Over 100 mobile apps have been created by partners.

Goyal said, “2010-end, we had only two packaged mobility applications. A year later, we had close to a hundred mobile applications, mostly from partner efforts.”

The company is looking to ensure that it has the apps, the platform and the ecosystem to collaborate with customers and create and offer these enterprise applications on mobile devices.

India has a large number of kirana stores that are managed manually through paper-based methods or a standalone PC at best. SAP has created a point of sale system, a working prototype of a low cost mobile device, that can be deployed in such stores.

SAP has a 5,500 strong workforce in India, 5,000 of whom are developers.

SAP’s software packages are largely license driven. This makes it difficult for SMEs to adopt many of its applications owing to considerable upfront costs. Making the mobile applications available via a Cloud platform would make them more accessible for the customer base that SAP is targeting.

Goyal said that the application for small retail store owners would be a Cloud-based solution. He stressed upon the company’s Cloud focus with the example of its recent acquition of SuccessFactors, a Cloud-based HRM solution vendor, which according to him, had over 15 million users worldwide.

The mobile solution center will showcase several SAP mobile solutions including the SAP mobile platform, SAP Afaria, Sybase 365 Mobile Commerce Solutions and SAP Rapid Deployment solutions amongst others. These apps are designed to run on devices running Blackberry, iOS and Android.

Oliver Bussman, CIO, SAP, said that the company believed in drinking its own champagne. SAP claims to be the second largest user of iPads globally, with 17,000 units deployed within the company as well as 30,000 iPhones and 1,100 Android devices. The company has been consuming its mobile applications internally before offering them to customers.

Bussman also claimed that SAP had the largest number of apps in Apple’s App store as compared to enterprise applications from any other single software vendor.

The Mobile Solutions Center in Mumbai is SAP’s third in the world and second in India (after Bangalore). There are ten more Solutions Centers planned or ready across the globe in locations such as UK, US and Germany, including an upcoming one in New Delhi.