BARCELONA—SAP's partnership with Apple is finally bearing fruit. At Mobile World Congress here, SAP announced the first enterprise iPhone and iPad apps built using the SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS, which will officially be released on March 30.
The SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS is designed for the developers and designers within a business to build enterprise-grade iPhone and iPad apps built on the newly re-branded SAP Cloud Platform and built-in Apple's Swift programming language.
Rick Knowles, SVP and GM of Apple Partnership at SAP, said the company is also announcing a new development community called the SAP Academy for iOS.
"It's been a really great collaboration and deep development effort between Apple and SAP," Knowles told PCMag. "This SDK really was built jointly. Our developers worked with Apple to understand the core fundamentals of the iOS SDK in order to build ours on top."
The SDK includes a library of pre-built user experience (UX) components and access to device-level capabilities including Touch ID, location services, and notifications. On top of the base iOS features, the SDK adds enterprise app features through SAP Cloud Platform such as single sign-on (SSO) and offline data sync, plus code snippet generation and access to third-party services and other SAP applications.
The SAP Academy for iOS, which developers can now register for, is available with initial trainings and workshops. A global rollout is planned for later this year. Apple and SAP jointly developed classes on Swift, the new SDK, and the SAP Fiori for iOS design language. Knowles highlighted the design language course in particular.
"We really want to unleash SAP's capabilities inside the enterprise or non-SAP systems," he said. "The design language course will show developers how to build a mobile app using the extension of the UX guidelines for the enterprise. We believe design is desperately missing inside enterprise organizations."
Knowles admitted that over the years SAP's UX hasn't always been the prettiest. He explained that through the re-designed SAP Fiori UX and the Apple partnership, the company is not only creating mobile-optimized experiences, but changing the way it builds software to begin with.
"SAP's screen hasn't been the most beautiful thing to look at over the past 20-30 years. Fiori is a huge leap forward for us in terms of usability, providing a consistent HTML5 strategy across the web and devices. But it was missing a point," said Knowles.
"When you look at digital transformation, we've always started with the core system and then moved outward looking at levels of integration. When we partnered with Apple, we flipped the model," added Knowles. "Now we're starting with the individual user that's closest to the daily work they need to do for their job function, and what we can do to improve their productivity or reimagine how they get their work done."
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SAP is demonstrating a few early adopter iOS apps at the show built with the SDK, which range from architecture and design, workflows and productivity, manufacturing, and an asset management application for surgery equipment in hospitals. The company is also releasing a native iOS app called Project Companion on March 30, which integrates with SAP Cloud Platform and acts as a free extension for SAP S/4HANA Professional Services customers to give consultants and project management professionals real-time data analysis capabilities on-the-go.
Dan Lahl, Vice President of Product Marketing for SAP Cloud Platform, added some greater context to why Apple and SAP's partnership makes sense. SAP's strength is in back-end processes, and Apple's is in great user experience. Where SAP fails in delivering native device experiences, Apple's lightweight iOS apps fill the gap.
"If you look at the SDK, what it enables is 40-plus other services as a back-end window for developers, natively delivering integrations to any back-end system to iPhones and iPads with identity authorization and role-based user authentication," said Lahl. "Plus you can connect it up to SuccessFactors and Ariba and Concur, etc, and create apps that tie back into those applications. This SDK is a mobile window back into all the goodness that's available from SAP."