Rick Costanzo joined SAP a year ago as executive vice president and general manager of global mobility solutions. He sat down with Freya Purnell to explain how SAP is striving for simplification in what can be a highly complex area.
Freya Purnell: ‘Simple’ is, of course, SAP’s new mantra. What does this mean in the mobility space?
Rick Costanzo: If you look at the mobile industry over the past couple of years, with change across different paradigms in terms of OS versions, device options, mobile platforms, application technologies, and mobile application development platforms, there is a lot going on. If you look at SAP, we have been very successful in terms of acquiring technology over the past several years, which is wonderful. But what’s also true is that sometimes you need to take a step back and figure out how this all fits together within the auspices of a mobile strategy supporting SAP’s end-to-end proposition to our customers.
So when I came on board, my top priority was to really redefine our mobile strategy going forward within that context. I think we have made tremendous progress and it’s resonating with our customers.
FP: How would you describe SAP’s current global mobility strategy in a nutshell?
RC: We are trying to use our mobile technology as a means of simplifying the user experience for not only SAP services, but also for any applications in the enterprise.
I don’t think anybody can predict what the most popular device is going to be in the next 12 months. So we have chosen to make absolutely sure that our software and services run beautifully on any product. That means we have had to take a very open approach in terms of application platforms, so we have invested in the right technology that allows us to do that. For example, if you look at our Fiori applications, they work beautifully in HTML5, which means they run on any mobile platform.
We also made sure that we invested in the right platform capabilities, so that you are not just stuck with the mobile web experience on a mobile device. We know that’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient in terms of adding a great mobile experience. We’re the only folks who have figured out how to deliver offline capabilities, for example, in an HTML5 environment, and that means the application is always responsive and acts like it’s native, without having to make massive investments.
So we are simplifying on device choice and simplifying on mobile application development platform options, so you can have the HTML5 experience, which means low cost but having a great user experience. The core theme is simplifying without compromise.
FP: What has been the customer response to this strategy – is it striking a chord?
RC: Hugely so. What’s resonating for our customers is that they are looking for a consistent approach in terms of how we mobilise all of our assets and they are very pleased with what we are doing with regards to SAP HANA Cloud Platform Mobile Services, for example. So we are in ramp-up stage for that product right now, but the early reaction is overwhelmingly positive. Some of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods organisations have said this is exactly what they have been waiting for, because they have invested in other cloud assets that we have, and they look at what we are doing with mobile services on a cloud platform as being unifying technology that allows them to mobilise any of those assets.
FP: What are the benefits of the platform approach for enterprises?
RC: I was visiting with an enterprise customer in North America, and we were talking about the benefits of a platform. One of their representatives said, “I don’t know understand why I need a mobile platform – I have got over 200 applications that have been written for me by over 60 boutique organisations.
Everything is fine.” I said, “Great. So how are you looking after version control of those applications, how are you handling lifecycle management, how are you handling security integration, logging, tracing and so on?” Because what they just described to me is 200 individual strands of spaghetti going into various back-end systems. It’s a textbook example of why a mobile platform is required.
If you look at the analyst reports, we are the number one market share organisation in terms of mobile application development platforms. Why is that? Because we take an open approach. We have embraced standard technologies like Apache Cordova for HTML5 application support. But we did it in a very unique way with all the characteristics that an enterprise app is expected to have. This means you can create your own app if you want using standards-based tools, or you can have a boutique create the application for you. You can rely upon the platform’s attributes to handle all the integration, security, logging and tracing that you would expect an enterprise application to have.
FP: Do you think the appetite for mobile platforms is indicative that enterprises are reaching a level of maturity with mobility?
RC: I think that’s part of it. The other part is consumerisation within the enterprise. If I am accustomed to having a rich application experience in my consumer profile, I don’t want to roll back the clock 10 years in the enterprise – I want to have that same vibrant, rich, beautiful UX experience as well. So I think enterprise customers had to up their game in terms of giving users a more modern approach for mobile applications. That’s exactly what we have tried to do with our Fiori. Candidly speaking, we weren’t known for that a couple of years ago, and so we have really had to work hard to make sure that “SAP” and “beautiful user experience” now can be shared proudly in the same sentence.
All this appetite in terms of application consumption has made the case for a mobile platform, because that innovation is going to happen from a variety of different sources – internally from the enterprise, consumer applications being brought in by individuals, boutique organisations – and at the end of the day, they all have to be reconciled with manageability, lifecycle management, security and soon. It just makes the case for a very robust mobile platform that does not allow for any compromise without ruining the user experience.
FP: Let’s talk about the area of wearables – how do you see this developing and what should enterprises be keeping an eye on in that area?
RC: Wearables is an interesting category. I think it’s in the early stages, but we are already starting to see some really interesting use cases. We have been innovating with a number of different industrial firms for the past couple of years to bring augmented reality applications using smart glasses to fruition. We launched them mid-last year, and we have actually been shipping real product for quite a few months now.
So what’s the use case for it? When you think of worker safety, for people working in heavily industrialised environments, do you really want them to be carrying a tablet in their hands, constantly looking down to check out their work orders and figure out how do you replace this part? Or can you have something a little more sensible in terms of smart glasses, where the instructions actually appear by augmented reality right in front of their eyes? If they need to ask for help, it’s cumbersome to put a phone to their ear while they are trying to work on something at the same time. What if they could actually do some video conference by the smart glasses to actually ask an expert for help? This is reality today.
FP: SAP has also been developing some more consumer-based applications such as BILT. What was the motivation behind that?
RC: Losing your instructions after you go to IKEA! That’s not too far from reality to be perfectly honest. The thing that I think really distinguishes us over the past 40 years is that we have a great knack for understanding challenges and problems that people face in the marketplace, whether that’s an enterprise or consumer context. We are pretty thoughtful in terms of how to try to overcome that, so I think the BILT app just hits the mark beautifully in that regard.
FP: What would be your three top tips for businesses looking to create an impactful mobility strategy?
RC: Don’t go broad initially if you are taking your first step. Be focused, and rather than take 10-15 mobile initiatives, pick two or three and do them really well.
Your users already have an expectation and it’s a generational thing. If you look at somebody coming into the workforce today, not only do they have an expectation to bring in their phone, they think they can bring in their own applications, and if they are a developer, they can bring their own tools. One of the concepts that we absolutely embrace is BYOX – bring your own anything. Your enterprise should be agile enough to be able to accommodate accordingly.
Your users also will have an expectation that everything is going to be mobilised, so you need to prepare yourself. The best way to do that is to embrace open standards. We think Apache Cordova and HTML5 matter because they are universally accepted, but what also matters is thoughtfully using those open standards to create a unique experience, which can be very powerful as well.
FP: Anything else we should keep an eye on in the mobility space?
RC: I think you will see it accelerate. Watch this space in terms of wearables; we will see some more innovations in 2015, and more production and deployments in that particular space.
We will be leveraging some of our industry expertise in terms of the enterprise big data solutions and using mobile as a great user experience to drive tremendous value out of the big data scale. One of the things I have been really pleased about over the past year is drawing a tight correlation between unlocking the value of information by presenting it to the right person at the right place at the right time – which is the value of context, and that is super-important for mobile. I think we have understood that better than most folks in the industry, and we certainly hope to share that vision at Mobile World Congress.
This article was first published in Inside SAP Summer 14/15 – subscribe to receive our next edition.
