In an interesting announcement on May 9, 2008, SAP announced that it will make some of the business software accessible through BlackBerry smart phones; to start with it will be be CRM (Customer Relationship Management). With e-mail and address book already integrated neatly in the BlackBerry handset, pushing CRM data into BlackBerry handset makes immense sense.
Email became a powerful tool for the business users by mid 90’s. With mobility becoming important for business users and mobile phone penetrating nearly 100% of all business executives, Black Berry in the past five years has become part of business executives ‘must have’ gadget. The device delivers Email function exceptionally well; competition from mobile handset manufacturers has made sure that ‘CrackBerry” (most business users refer to BlackBerry that way) phone evolve considerably in the past 3 years. With “push mail’ support from Microsoft Mobile and other competitors, Black Berry is slowly losing its unique competitive edge. With integration of SAP, Black Berry will re-gain its competitive edge.
Thanks to BlackBerry’’s encryption scheme, business users feel ‘secure”; the occasional “blackout” that BlackBerry suffered twice in the past 4 years must be addressed to make business users feel “dependable”. I am sure BlackBerry is addressing this issue.
Though announced in 2004, SAP BlackBerry partnership did not yield any tangible results earlier. One hopes the recent announcement will not remain ‘demo ware”.
International users will get to see the “real position” in SAPPAIRE (SAP Products Show) in Orlando, Florida in late May. Indian users will get to see it in SAP Tech in the first week of June in Mumbai (hopefully).
Tags: BlackBerry, CRM, SAP, Smart Phone
