When it comes to embracing new technologies SAP is usually seen as a laggard. But in the case of mobility it looks like SAP might be on the leading edge of an enterprise trend long before most of its enterprise application counterparts.
SAP has announced that it has extended its existing relationship with Research in Motion to create a version of its CRM application that runs natively on RIM's Blackberry devices. As smart phones increasingly become the dominant device that workers are using to interact with corporate applications this is a pretty smart move on the part of SAP. In fact, the market research firm IDC estimates that the current mobile device user population is about 800 million and projects that the total population will rise to one billion users by 2011.
SAP is also promising to get the rest of its enterprise application suite to run natively on Blackberry devices as well, which just further highlights the rising importance of smart phone devices as they become the preferred way of interacting with data regardless of where it is located. As part of its commitment to this space, SAP has also created a new Mobile and Analytics business unit that will be headed by vice president Michael de la Cruz.
In his new role de la Cruz said he sees the ability to natively interact with SAP applications using mobile devices as a missing ingredient that will further drive CRM adoption because instead of having to wait to get to their PCs see what sales leads are being pushed out from marketing, sales people can instantly respond to those opportunities wherever they are on the road.
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said that while thanks to Apple mobility is getting a lot of attention in the consumer space it's actually going to have the most impact in the enterprise space that RIM dominates. "Today mobility in the b-to-c space gets all the sexy attention, but the same core enabling technologies are massively transforming for enterprise productivity, " he said.
Balsillie added that while RIM has no other efforts under way to bring other enterprise applications to run natively on Blackberry devices, the relationship with SAP is not exclusive. So in the short term this means that benefits of extending enterprise applications to mobile devices is going to limited to a finite set of applications in the short term. But Balsillie said he expects that the initial trickle of demand will shortly give way to a flood of demand.
None of this means that all the issues with CRM adoption in the enterprise is going to go away any time soon. But the enthusiasm for smart phone devices among knowledge workers in the corporation is likely to mean that the ability to seamlessly interact with SAP CRM applications on a Blackberry device is going to boost enthusiasm for CRM by extension.