What I Learned about Mobility at SAPPHIRE Now 2011, Part 1

In April, I recorded a video and wrote an article sharing what I wanted to learn at SAPPHIRENOW 2011.  In an upcoming article I will address those items, but in the mean time, here are my notes from the conference.
  1. John Chen, CEO of Sybase said, "We expect to build only 10% of mobility apps, the ecosystem the rest."
  2. John Chen CEO of Sybase said, "We have 2,000 mobile deals in the pipeline."
  3. Marty Beard said that the Sybase 365 business grew over 100% last year.  This is the SMS solution that Sybase has.  It supports 1.5 billion text messages per day now.
  4. SAP announced 19 new mobile apps.
  5. Sybase announced SUP 2.0 with SDK
  6. SAP announced mobility partnership with Accenture.
  7. SAP will release three mobile applications in the June 2011 time frame, the rest in the September time frame.
  8. SAP will release SUP 2.1 in the September 2011 time frame and this will support the HTML5 container.
  9. Two of the first SAP mobile applications will be CRM Services and Retail Execution for CPG companies.  SAP's Nick Brown talks about them here.
  10. Jim Snabe announced an SAP Mobility Application store.
  11. SAP announced a new iPad application that provides a 360 degree view of a customer including; customer details, invoices, payments, deals, status etc.
  12. I personally hear SAP's Co-CEO Jim Snabe mention sensors 7 times in 24 hours.  He used an oft repeated phrase at SAPPHIRENOW 2011, "sense and respond."  In several cases he was definitely referred to M2M (machine to machine) communications and embedded wireless sensors.
  13. SAP's 2011/2012 strategy seems to be to focus on1)In-memory for speed, 2) extend the reach of business via mobile, 3) people collaboration with social media.
  14. I heard from the stage that SAP Co-CEOs manage SAP on iPads.
  15. The "Integrated Enterprise" is a big focus this year at SAPPHIRENOW 2011. You must be integrated to be real-time.  Mobility plays a big role in this.
  16. Terabytes worth of customer data is collected but never analyzed. Important patterns never get discovered and insights are not shared.
  17. Co-CEO Bill McDermott chooses to open his keynote talking about mobile retailing and mobile marketing applications shopping and comparing prices on smartphones.
  18. The panel of futurist at SAPPHIRENOW 2011 share my opinion expressed here regularly that embedded sensors, M2M and wireless chips will be one of the next big revolutions.
  19. Theme among futurist on the panel is that the computerization of healthcare will be revolutionary and change everything about healthcare.
  20. SAP keynote focused so far on real time analytics and mobility. The power of in-memory computing extended to mobile devices.
  21. Opening day keynote focused on real time analytics and mobility. The power of in-memory computing extended to mobile devices.
  22. I attended the opening day breakfast meeting arranged by SAP's PCN (premier customer network) and the discussion was dominated by enterprise mobility topics.
  23. In 2010 Sybase had a booth.  This year they had a campus.  See my photos of the mobility theater.
  24. MCAP is the acronym for mobile consumer apps.
  25. I worked with SAP's largest customers at the PCN mobility round table during 4 round table sessions.  Security is still their biggest mobility issue.  I was surprised that these large companies did not know more about Sybase's Afaria.  In most cases, I know Afaria could satisfy all of their security requirements, but they were not aware of it.  Here is your assignment Sybase and SAP!!!
  26. Mobile strategy and mobile security seemed to be the two key points needed by the companies I spent time with at SAPPHIRENOW 2011.
  27. I was surprised by how many big companies still have not started on enterprise mobility.  They all seemed to be feeling the pressure to deliver mobile applications, but many had yet to start.
Part 2 of this article will be my responses to the items I wanted to learn about, listed here, that I posed in advance of SAPPHIRENOW 2011.

*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

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