Simon Angel, of SAP’s Global Mobile Business Campaign, was speaking at a roundtable meeting hosted by UK operator O2 exploring mobile applications on small devices after email. Angel said that demand for mobilizing SAP users represents a major opportunity for the German application giant to grow seats. But the failure of ISVs, mobile operators, device manufacturers, and systems integrators to present a cohesive front to customers is affecting the ability of the mobile industry to capitalize.
We’ve spent some time formally analyzing our customer base, said Angel. Less than 10% of employees within our customers are currently real users of our system. But these are not necessarily those doing the work. The utility of providing remote access to the masses of mobile blue- and gray-collar workers has been overlooked by most organizations, he said.
We believe there’s a very significant gap between our licenses and our installed base. Even in the worst case scenario we should be able to double our number of seats. The license price is less [than for a desktop SAP client] but it’s still a very significant part of revenue, he said. The biggest obstacle is that we can’t do it alone. How does a customer approach us? We’re a provider of software and business processes, not a provider of networks or a systems integrator. We have a responsibility as a group to solve this problem.
O2’s head of mobile data products and services, Hugh Griffiths, backed Angel’s stance. If you approach any one participant in the value chain, they should be able to bring together those pieces. It’s dependent on operators to create the right environment for that to take place.
O2 has been active for the last few years in building packaged mobile applications based around mobile devices such as its XDA series, as well as the near-ubiquitous BlackBerry. It now offers about 15 different products and claims around 1,000 new customers signing up each month.
Most of these have been built around the products of boutique ISVs rather than top-tier vendors. That is now changing. We now see the need to partner with application developers at all levels, said Griffiths.
O2 and SAP confirmed they are working towards just such a goal, and many more such partnerships look set to be announced this year, according to Quocirca service director, Dale Vile, who was also present at the meeting.
