IBM Scores Key Mobile Advantage with New SAP Cloud Partnership

C. Dunlap

Summary Bullets:

• IBM has a key advantage in the SAP cloud partnership to further its Bluemix and MobileFirst agendas.
• MADP vendors will heavily market platforms/tools against the homegrown native development alternative.

Last week, IBM and SAP expanded an existing cloud partnership involving IBM’s cognitive, cloud, and Power Systems offerings and the SAP HANA Business Suite or S/4HANA. The partnership centers around complementary technologies including analytics, cloud, and business apps. Also key to the partnership will be IBM’s ability to further its agenda in broadening its market presence for PaaS and MADP, now targeting SAP’s core business apps customers, particularly at a time when SAP has downplayed its innovation and market strategy pertaining to its own platform and mobile services, sold in the form of SAP Mobile Platform (SMP) and HANA Cloud Platform Mobile Services (HCPms). SAP has made significant effort promoting its Fiori and Splash tools (please see “MWC16: Application Platform Vendors Dominate Internet of Things and Mobile Messaging,” March 2, 2016), but has released minimal updates around its mobile application platform and HCP services.