Thoughts on SAP Mobility - Reporting from Sapphire

I have learned a huge amount at Sapphire 2010.  I have spoken to, and filmed interviews with, just about every mobility vendor at Sapphire.  Here are the first few:
Tuesday night thoughts

I believe the saying, “content is king!” Although I would add that “content and business processes are king!” Applications that add unique functionality and value to the SAP ecosystem will have longevity. Companies that are only providing interesting views of existing SAP data are subject to being quickly replaced by the next teenager with a cooler UI. 

Mobile applications developers must add deep value to be able to gain mindshare and then defend their positions in the longterm.  They need to demonstrate unique innovation, deep expertise, and extend value in manners that are defensible.

The term "mash-up" is used often at Sapphire to refer to aggregating data from multiple sources.  This is a very interesting concept.  Pulling data from many different sources to add unique value on mobile applications that are geospatially aware.  This is interesting.

I have seen some absolutely fantastic mobile applications at Sapphire that help companies make collaborative decisions and harvest enterprise's institutional knowledge. These are mobile knowledge and decision management applications.  This is a very interesting area to me.  It is new value.  Not mobilized versions of existing SAP systems.

I have heard and witnessed a lot of chest thumping at Sapphire.  The bottom line is how many SAP customers does a vendor have in production. 

Mobile micro-applications are being labeled as "instant value" applications at Sapphire.  I like this description.  It is good marketing.

Inspections, assessments, asset management and field services are still very interesting areas as there is yet a lot of new value that can be created and provided on mobile devices.

Sybase is not known for their mobile applications.  They are a great mobile middleware company.  It will be interesting to see if they can compete with the incredibile mobile applications that I have witnessed here at Sapphire from ecosystem partners.

There is a persistent rumor that HP may try to outbid SAP for Sybase.  Crazy times!

More later...
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Kevin Benedict SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor,CEO Netcentric Strategies LLC
Mobile Industry Analyst, Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant and Web 2.0 Marketing Services
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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