SAP Mobility – Don’t Go It Alone
By Sam Sliman, President, Optimal Solutions Integration
Enterprise mobility is red hot. Not hype-cycle hot. Real-world, enterprise-adoption hot. But SAP customers should take care not to go it alone when it comes to going mobile as there is much variety and complexity involved. SAP enterprise mobility done right demands the specialized skills and extensive knowledge of seasoned SAP consultants with demonstrable mobile experience.
Value, variety and complexity
The benefits of enterprise mobility are well known and very real – greater efficiency, improved productivity, heightened responsiveness, sharpened competitiveness, etc.
Add to this mobility’s rapid time to value, relatively low cost, mature technology, ever-smarter devices and affordable service rates, and it is clear that enterprise mobility adoption has reached a tipping point and will continue to soar in the years ahead.
As mobility’s reach extends deeper into mission-critical business processes, it grows in variety and complexity as well as value.
SAP’s three-pronged strategy for making its software available ‘on-device’ includes in-house efforts, joint-development initiatives with other companies, and partner solutions. While this strategy should be lauded for accelerating enterprise mobility, it also introduces much variety into the equation.
There are presently hundreds of SAP partners marketing thousands of mobile solutions. Partner solutions are vital for regional customization, meeting industry-specific mobility needs, and addressing the mobility needs of small and midsize companies.
In the months and years ahead, SAP’s acquisition of Sybase and the flourishing ecosystem of SAP partners focused on mobility – lead by the likes of Vivido Labs and Roambi – will combine with SAP’s advances in in-memory computing and column-store database technology to fuel a wave of new, innovative SAP mobile applications.
Enterprise mobility today also involves much complexity – from the numerous mobile platforms, applications, devices, and operating systems; to increasingly sophisticated location and geo-spatial device capabilities; to security and device management challenges; to integration with back-end systems, business applications and ultimately, core business processes.
SAP customers should not rush headlong into mobility without first gaining an accurate assessment of how mobility fits into their company’s overall business strategy and how mobility will impact past, present and future technology decisions and business processes.
Successfully navigating mobility’s many choices and deep complexity requires a breadth of knowledge and an array of specialized business process and technology skills that most organizations do not have in house.
While a business might (and perhaps should) embark on mobility with a relatively small project that involves only a few users, it is vital that an informed, holistic perspective guide these first steps.
Hype cycles are shortening as the pace of technological innovation – from conception to maturity – dramatically quickens. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the rapid evolution and ascension of enterprise mobility we are experiencing today.
SAP customers are well advised to seek out the SAP consulting expertise needed to ensure that decisions made on the mobility front today will enhance and not hinder future mobility initiatives.
Extending its applications to mobile devices is a top priority for SAP. Quickly realizing value from their SAP mobility initiatives is a top priority for SAP customers looking to empower employees, improve their company’s agility and responsiveness, increase value derived from their SAP investment, and gain a sustainable competitive edge.
Download > Optimal SAP Enterprise Mobility Report
Through a series of thought leadership articles originally published in Optimal SAP Advisor, this report brings clarity, insight and pragmatism to the pressing, rapidly evolving question: Why SAP mobility now?
