May 5th, 2008
SAP: Security keeps it off Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone for now
SAP has forged an agreement with Research in Motion to run its customer relationship management software on the BlackBerry platform. Just don’t expect SAP to roll out to other platforms anytime soon.
In an interview with the Enterprise Irregular blogging group Monday, Bob Stutz, SAP’s executive vice president and general manager of industries and CRM, says the company has no plans on bringing its enterprise applications to other platforms immediately. Stutz made the comments in an interview at SAP’s Sapphire conference in Orlando.
The RIM deal, announced Friday, hinges on security, says Stutz. “We have no plans to go to Windows Mobile or Symbian at this juncture,” he adds.
As for the iPhone, SAP is playing with the iPhone SDK, but Stutz noted that security remains an issue. “Until the iPhone builds out enterprise level security. No one is going to take applications on it without enterprise level security,” he says.
However, I don’t buy Stutz’s argument. In fact, he seemed a bit too dismissive about the iPhone and its corporate angle. Apple will deliver a bunch of new security features with its latest iPhone software. To be fair though, SAP deals with large enterprises that may be the most likely to not support the iPhone.
Other platforms are “really risky with the data.” “If I were CIO of a company I wouldn’t be putting corporate data on an open system,” says Stutz. “You have to protect the data.”
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
