At a joint press conference in New York last week, SAP AG and Sybase announced a partnership to deliver the new SAP Business Suite software to iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and other devices by integrating it with Sybase's mobile enterprise application platform. SAP unveiled SAP Business Suite 7 software on Feb. 4.
"We are in a new reality in this economy and customers are looking to extend their core IT investments. They have invested in SAP as the stable core platform by which they run their companies all over the world," stated Bill McDermott, president, Global Field Operations, and member of the SAP executive board SAP AG, during the conference.
"There is also a megatrend that we see. The mobile enterprise worker is now 'the' most important worker because that is the worker that is touching the customer, the partner and the supplier. This worker relies on smart devices and uses the power of the calendar and email in addition to, now, the enterprise application functionality of SAP."
"SAP has over 40 million licenses around the world and that is rapidly growing," observes John Chen, chairman, CEO and president, Sybase. "All of those licensees will need a mobile device to interact not only with the back end but with each other. And Sybase will bring that infrastructure to allow that to happen."
The mobile workforce "wants to work from whatever device they feel comfortable with, whether that is the iPhone, the Windows Mobile media devices and of course the BlackBerry," says McDermott, noting, "we have already natively integrated SAP's CRM onto the BlackBerry device" as a result of a partnership with RIM. RIM is also a partner of Sybase, adds Chen, who observes, "this is really more of an ecosystem building."
According to McDermott, "There is a strong demand to moblize content to make these enterprises far more efficient so real-time decisions can be made based on your role in the company with real content and real data to drive execution, so we are going to provide those CIOs and those enterprises and those mobile workers with what we are terming today 'Office on the Go,' where you can literally consume SAP content and applications on any device and anywhere in the world."
T-Systems, a large systems integrator in Europe, will work with Sybase to enable SAP end users to take advantage of easy access to the new SAP Business Suite and mobile business processes and applications.
Functionality resulting from the partnership will begin hitting the marketplace in the back of half of 2009. Native integration of SAP CRM will be available on multiple devices in 2010, followed by full availability of SAP Business Suite functionality and content on a range of mobile devices.
For more information, about Sybase, go here. For more about SAP, go here.