SAP Plans Wide Range Of Apps For BlackBerrySAP Plans Wide Range Of Apps For BlackBerry

SAP and Research In Motion announced Friday that they are working together to develop mobile versions of SAP's business software applications that run "native" on the BlackBerry platform.

SAP will demonstrate the first of these new offerings, a CRM application that's been "merged" with BlackBerry e-mail, address book, and calendar applications, at its annual Sapphire user conference in Orlando, Fla., next week. SAP said the CRM app will be widely available within the next few months.

If today's announcement comes with a sense of déjà vu, that's because the companies first made vague references about long-term plans to develop of variety of SAP applications for BlackBerrys in 2004. Access to SAP CRM from BlackBerrys has been available since 2004, too.

Yet today's announcement points to several instances of deeper integration among the companies' technologies, demonstrating a higher level of commitment to provide mobile access to SAP from BlackBerrys.

Like RIM's e-mail service, business customers of the CRM app and others will use BlackBerry Enterprise Server to automate data synchronization between business systems and new SAP mobile applications, and the BlackBerry server will "push" content to users. For example, SAP CRM users will receive alerts to changes in their sales pipelines or forecasts as soon as they happen.

SAP said the partnership is requiring the companies to develop and adhere to new APIs and work more closely together than they have in the past to integrate their technologies.

"The two teams together worked tremendously hard" to develop the forthcoming CRM app, said Bob Stutz, executive VP of industries and CRM at SAP, during a New York press conference, also attended by RIM CEO Jim Balsillie and Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP Americas. "This isn't demoware; this is a real product in preproduction, and it's an amazing thing," Stutz said. The software road map includes ERP, supply chain, and industry applications, he added, but didn't provide a timeline for any of those beyond CRM. The ultimate plan, he said, is to port all of SAP's user-facing applications to BlackBerry.

The apps will be designed so that BlackBerry users can use them when no network coverage is available. Once back online, all updates made on the BlackBerry and back-end servers will be automatically transferred without user action, similar to how RIM's e-mail service works on BlackBerrys, the companies said.

One question is how comfortable businesses will feel making proprietary business data more easily accessible with wireless networks and mobile devices.

In regard to network uptime and security, Balsillie acknowledged that RIM has had several service outages within the past year, but network and data security have never been compromised, he said. "Is [downtime] acceptable? No, we must have 100% uptime," he said. "We're not perfect; we aspire to perfection." He added that RIM has "no budget limitations" when it comes to improving the redundancy of its systems. "Words can't explain how seriously important this is to us," he said.

Customers already using BlackBerry Enterprise Server and SAP applications can "leverage their existing investments and keep deployment and maintenance costs at a minimum," SAP said in a statement.