SAP and Samsung make Android enterprise friendly
Business software giant to announce its first Android partnership to improve security and mobile device management
Published: 22 February, 2012
While Apple's iPhone and iPad have been enjoying a significant surge in the enterprise market, largely thanks to the trend towards BYOD (bring your own device) policies, Android's progress has been slower, largely because of question marks over its security and how far an open source environment can be controlled.
Google has been releasing APIs to improve encryption and makes Android devices more controllable by corporate mobile device management (MDM) systems. But reports of malware and rogue applications reaching enterprise networks via the somewhat anarchic Android Market make IT managers wary, a problem Samsung aims to address with a new alliance with corporate software giant SAP.
The companies are set to announce details of their partnership at Mobile World Congress next week, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg reporters. They will work together in areas such as email encryption, and accelerate the process - started by Google - of making Android handsets compatible with various MDM platforms.
These MDM systems, including SAP's own, are being implemented by corporations to make BYOD strategies safer, by supporting remote management and security, including functions such as wiping or locking lost handsets. But many features are not automatically supported by all Android products, which has led some OEMs, especially those with their eyes on RIM's user base, to provide their own additional security and management facilities.
Samsung has been in the vanguard with its Samsung Approved for Enterprise (SAFE) certification program and a range of proprietary device attributes to improve visibility to IT systems. However, getting a trusted enterprise name like SAP behind such efforts should improve confidence, especially among the estimated 65% of BlackBerry installations which are evaluating a change of email/MDM strategy in 2012-2013.
SAP and Samsung are expected to offer a joint solution covering MDM support and email protection, and is the former's first Android-based alliance, adding to its existing pacts with RIM, Microsoft and Apple. The deals are mainly targeted at companies which still specify mobile devices for their employees, or at least provide an approved list for staff to choose from - in true BYOD, any gadget can be chosen, hence the pressure to make Android more secure by default. "Companies need more preconfigured tablets and smartphones which comply with their advanced security requirements," Ulrich Trabert, a software analyst at Bankhaus Metzler, told Bloomberg. "Naturally, SAP is looking for a partner who is dominant on the Android platform."
SAP has been extending its mobile enterprise strategy over the past few years, most notably by acquiring Sybase in 2010 for $5.8bn. The year before that, SAP had announced an agreement with Sybase to simplify handset access to SAP business applications, using a customized version of the latter's 365 software, a market leader for mobile access.
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