Here are a handful of partnerships, launches and momentum updates that show SAP’s seriousness about building a vibrant mobile ecosystem. 1) Large developers Cap Gemini and Mobiquity agreed to build apps using the SAP Mobile Platform. (The SAP Mobile Platform was recently awarded the top spot in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms. ) 2) SAP launched a Mobile [...]

It’s hard to impress me with statistics and factoids. I’m inundated by them all day, every day. But these new findings, courtesy of  iPass’s latest Mobile Workforce Report, blew me away: 1. The average mobile worker globally carries 3.5 mobile devices. Click on the infographic above to go to the Times of London, which  created this and other snazzy charts based [...]

The old SAP would never have been able to deploy apps in a matter of weeks, either for customers (via its Rapid Deployment Solutions group) – or for itself. As Captain Kirk might’ve adlibbed , this is not your father’s SAP. Earlier this spring, SAP released its first HANA-based mobile consumer app, Recalls Plus. Recalls Plus has delivered more than [...]

The world needs another piece of tech jargon like I need a hole in my head. Still, I like SoCloMo, created by the smart fellas at Aberdeen Research, because it captures in rhyme three out of four of today’s key enterprise computing trends – Social, Cloud and Mobile.* While SAP’s roots are in 80s-era client-server computing, we [...]

Cleveland-based Safeguard Properties inspects and maintains more than a million foreclosed homes per month across the United States. It does so on behalf of their owners, primarily large banks and government agencies like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The huge number of foreclosures, as well as the slim margins in the inspection business, forces Safeguard to be [...]

Who suffers more when an employee loses his or her unprotected iPad, the large enterprise or a small business? In absolute dollars, probably the big company. An executive or salesperson could have tens of thousands of confidential customer records worth hundreds of millions of dollars of business stored on a tablet or smartphone. But in terms of [...]

Take this 100% un-serious quiz, excerpted from the Mobility Manifesto e-book, to see if your company is driving down Mobilization Road – or flying into the Danger Zone. 1. Do you have a smartphone or a tablet for work? Yes, a smartphone. (+5) Yes, a tablet. (+5) Yes, both. (+10) No, neither. (+1) 2. If smartphone, how smart [...]

I’m gonna knock you out. Mama said knock you out… Gartner just released its Magic Quadrant report (read the full report for free here ) on the best Mobile Application Development Platforms. SAP - and pending acquisition, Syclo – knocked out the competition , taking 2 out of the top three spots in the Leader’s Quadrant (Antenna Software was the third). It was a [...]

Are laid-off investment bankers taking programming classes? They should be, now that salaries for enterprise mobile developers and architects are matching and exceeding Wall Street pay scales. My Thursday blog highlighted a conversation I had with an IT recruiter , who said that mobile architects with SAP backgrounds today are getting paid about $240,000. Or as outside consultants, they [...]

Now I know what working at Apple must feel like. After SAP (my employer) announced April 10th that it had bought mobile app vendor Syclo and inked partnerships with development framework vendors Adobe (PhoneGap), Appcelerator and Sencha, praise quickly turned to skepticism. Oh, the reaction initially was positive. “SAP will use Syclo’s application portfolio and global customer base to [...]

Apple’s stock price could bounce around anywhere between $300 and $1,000 over the next several weeks.  I really have no idea. What I am certain, though, is that  Apple’s Q3 earnings results announced Wednesday show Cupertino again blazing the trail into the mobile era. Here’s the stats that especially blew me away: 1) Apple shipped 46.9 million iPhones and iPads, versus 4 [...]

That startling statistic and prediction comes courtesy of Javelin Strategy & Research of Pleasanton, California. A boutique research firm known for its bank technology coverage, Javelin published a paid report today on tablets and their impact on mobile consumer banking. I was able to read the report and interview the primary author, Javelin research director Mary Monahan. Javelin’s [...]

Smartphones are vaunted for their ease of use. But that’s precisely why they can be so vulnerable to hacking software, as Micro Systemation’s XRY showed last us last Wednesday. The iPhone’s default security passcode is a mere 4 digits. Four digits is incredibly weak – there are just 10,000 different combinations to try, which is nothing for a piece [...]

(Updated April 20, 2012) I’ve aggregated, crunched and charted the public forecasts of the tech industry’s brightest analysts to see where they think the market for iPads, Amazon Kindle Fires and other Android tablets is headed. This includes forecasts from both Wall Street and industry analysts, and is current as of April 20 March 27 , 2012. It’s a follow-on [...]

During the dot-com era, businesses were forced to march to a new, faster pace called Internet Time . In the post-PC era, Big Data + apps + mobile devices enable businesspeople to make decisions in real-time where ever they are. I propose we call this era, Mobile Time. As a result of Mobile Time, businesses that once lumbered [...]

iPads have been an incredible tool for salespeople. Companies like IBM, Genentech, General Mills and SAP have deployed thousands of iPads – and reaped the financial benefits. Most of the beneficiaries have been in the B2B arena. Not surprising, as B2B dwarfs B2C by a huge margin. But retailers are starting to catch up. Sears, for instance, is arming 5,000 in-store [...]

SAP and…consumer software? This is not like biscuits and gravy, or popsicles and hot summer days. 99% of you probably never expected to see the two phrases in the same sentence. Yet, here’s SAP with its first (of many to come) consumer apps. Now, we didn’t go crazy here. We didn’t build the next version of Halo [...]

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion turns out to perfectly describe the how Tech Audiences Think. When the new iPad debuted, observers drooled over the ultra-sharp Retina Display and the ultra-fast 4G LTE. But, inevitably, some Nattering Nabobs emerged to argue that all of these Positives  were actually Negatives, especially [...]

When the iPad 2 was announced, I wrote that Apple’s tablet would continue its enterprise invasion despite the dearth of overtly business-focused features. The same goes for the new iPad, or what I like to call in homage to Pulp Fiction, ‘Le iPad Nouveau.’ I expect this new iPad to be even more popular inside businesses. Here’s why. 1) This [...]

The days of PCs moseying their way from CEO to office worker to mailboy over a long decade are, thankfully, long gone. Today’s mobile devices take a lot more abuse from employees (though there are always surprising exceptions ). They are also improving at a much faster rate. In 2011 alone, we saw the state of the art [...]