Apple, SAP to Cooperate on Workplace Apps -- Update
May 05 2016 - 3:44PM
Dow Jones News
By Daisuke Wakabayashi
Apple Inc. and SAP SE said they would cooperate to help
developers create iPad and iPhone apps tapping the German software
firm's database services and analytics, the latest move in Apple's
push into the corporate world.
The companies said SAP will create a new software-development
kit for iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, that can broadly
access information from SAP's HANA cloud platform, one of the
company's flagship products. The two companies also will
collaborate on training academies for SAP developers.
The partnership with SAP is part of Apple Chief Executive Tim
Cook's strategy to sell more iPads and iPhones to corporations and
large organizations. The initiative is especially important
following a quarter in which iPhone sales declined for the first
time; iPad sales have fallen for nine consecutive quarters.
As part of Apple's push into the business world, it struck
partnerships with International Business Machines Corp. and Cisco
Systems Inc. to make its products work better in traditional
corporate environments. Last year, Mr. Cook said revenue from its
so-called enterprise business reached $25 billion in the 12 months
ended June 2015.
"We clearly see it as a very key growth opportunity," said Mr.
Cook in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, while declining
to provide an update to those figures. Mr. Cook said the
partnership with SAP will be a "starting gun" for the development
of workplace apps, similar to the opening of the App Store in
2008.
SAP Chief Executive Bill McDermott said the two companies hope
to take the vast amounts of data in SAP's systems and provide to a
broad base of corporate workers in fast, simple and easy-to-use
apps.
There is no revenue sharing in the deal.
The software-development kits will begin rolling out before
year-end, the companies said. The kits will allow developers to tap
features of Apple hardware such as its TouchID fingerprint
sensor.
HANA is a database that allows customers to retrieve information
more quickly and analyze it without having to perform
time-consuming intermediate operations.
Essentially, the deal aims to make it easier for developers to
create Apple apps that can access the important information that
sits in many SAP systems, while Apple helps developers building
software on SAP systems create more user-friendly apps like the
ones many workers are accustomed to using in their non-work
lives.
SAP is one of the biggest suppliers of business software. The
company says 76% of the world's business transactions go through an
SAP system.
John Jackson, an analyst at IDC, said one of the biggest
obstacles to companies adopting more mobile devices in the
workplace is the difficulty in connecting apps to the information
that sits in systems like SAP's.
"It's easy to see the mutual benefit," said Mr. Jackson. "This
is a conspicuous missing piece."
Write to Daisuke Wakabayashi at Daisuke.Wakabayashi@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 05, 2016 15:29 ET (19:29 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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