SAP Mobile Platform Licensing – Maximize your ROI

Not knowing the price of mobility can be a BIG problem. Some of the biggest challenges to implementing enterprise mobility solutions are -

• Developing a mobile strategy
• Identifying and prioritizing business cases
• Choosing a platform and mobile technologies
• Budgeting

The choice might be obvious for a lot of SAP’s customer base. With a unified solution offering under the SAP Mobile Platform, enterprises now have access to Sybase Unwired Platform, Syclo, Afaria and Netweaver Gateway. After your enterprise has spent significant resources in nailing down a mobile strategy and choosing a platform, there still are questions around cost. “How much is it going to cost in total?” In order to answer this question it is important to understand the components that make up a typical Mobile App available on the SAP store –

FIRST LAYER—THE BACK-END

SAP customers don’t need to pay additional licensing fees (beyond what they pay for their licenses already) to access the data they’re putting on their mobile devices—regardless of whether that data is in SAP or a non-SAP system.

SECOND LAYER—THE MOBILE PLATFORM

The mobile mid-tier enterprise license includes SAP NetWeaver Gateway,SUP, Afaria and the recent addition of Syclo. SAP offers various pricing options for their mobile platform, depending on the need. It is essential for enterprises to understand these options in order to maximize their investment.

Option 1: The Full License – This is a full use license and is priced per user. With the Full license the user can run any app on the SAP platform from productivity to process apps, custom or partner apps. This is the best choice for users who will use process apps as it will be more cost effective long term by allowing the user to run an unlimited number of apps on the platform. For SAP Mobile platform licensing questions as well as pricing discounts please contact sales@innovapptive.com .

Option 2: Limited Run-time License – It doesn’t make economic sense to invest in Full licenses when a user needs to use a few apps. Rather than purchase a full use license, a runtime license is purchased for each app that the user runs on SAP mobile platform.  The runtime license is priced as a % of the mobile app list price, which is a fraction of the app price. The limited run-time license is available for any SAP mobile app and SAP certified partner apps.

Option 3: Managed Mobility – This is SAP’s version of Enterprise Mobility as a Service (EMaaS). Under this license model service providers will resell the platform as a service to end customers.

THIRD LAYER—THE APPLICATIONS

There are quite a few options available when it comes to sourcing Apps for the enterprise. To see the immediate ROI, you can opt for a few pre-packaged Apps that can be purchased from the SAP Store and they have licensable user-app pricing—ranging from $ 25 to $ 1500.

A key advantage of going with the pre-packaged app is the ability to consume limited run-time licenses. This is a huge cost-savings opportunity. Lets consider the Universal Approval App which lists for $69.99 per user. Cost of licensing this app would be between $7 to $15, depending on the number of licenses. If an enterprise decides to build a similar app in-house the license cost shots up to $1,500 per user license as custom built apps are not eleigible for the limited run-time pricing. Partners will develop most of the mobile apps for SAP—approximately 80 percent of the apps, SAP recently stated.

Finally, SAP and its partners offer Rapid Deployment Services (RDS) for deploying the mobile platform and platform apps. By adhering to a fixed cost, fixed scope and fixed timeline customers are able to see immediate results through a streamlined implementation.

If you would like more information on any of the topics covered here, please email us at sales@innovapptive.com or call us at (713) 300  3762

Why Re-invent the Wheel? Aren’t the wheels right here in the SAP Store?

Consumer mobile technology is a phenomenon that has revolutionized the way we live and work. The human brain has become accustomed to a mobile app for every task we perform and we are on the constant look out for apps to ease our lives. A perfect example of consumer mobile technology in action was depicted earlier today, when I wrapped up a potential customer meeting in Boston and was running late to catch a flight to Houston. Through the United Airlines’ mobile app, I was empowered to not only change my flight in seconds but also complete a check in and have my boarding pass readily available on my mobile app. The Taxi ride to the Boston Logan airport was an extremely productive one as I performed several other tasks from checking my corporate credit card statement to checking my stock portfolio and I started to reflect upon the endless possibilities of unwiring an enterprise through mobility. As I reached the airport and waited for my flight, I continued to ponder over these endless unwired possibilities specific to our SAP customers and their need to rapidly mobilize their workforce.

Rapid mobilization of enterprises is possible through pre-packaged SAP mobile applications or cloud mobility solutions and yet customers have not widely embraced either one and it makes one wonder “Why have SAP customers not embraced pre-packaged SAP mobile applications or cloud mobility solutions to rapidly mobilize their workforce?” I continued to ponder over this question and upon recollecting all my conversations with our potential customers, I began to connect the dots to understand our customers inability to rapidly mobilize their workforce. As I reflected upon all my conversations, I was finally able to connect the dots to answer several open questions that bothered me for over a year now. I am confident that this blog will help several others like me that have pondered over the same questions.

So, What has been the push back for decision makers to embrace pre-packaged SAP mobile apps or SAP Mobile Apps on the cloud? Why are most enterprises building mobile apps in-house?, despite the tremendous challenges and complexities they face to address their employee’s BYOD needs and not to forget the time to deploy and manage these mobile apps.

Did these enterprises not outline a comprehensive enterprise mobility strategy? Did these enterprises not anticipate the Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) push? Did they not recognize the challenges of building a cross-platform SAP mobile app? Were they not cognizant of the complexities to manage dynamically evolving Mobile OS upgrades?

As I probed into these questions, I realized that most enterprises were aware of the above challenges but were handicapped with the options that they had commercially available. When our potential customers were asked on “why they had not considered pre-packaged mobile apps or a cloud mobility solutions” to address their challenges most of the responses fell into one of the below categories;

• Most pre-packaged SAP mobile apps do not have a clear business case or a use case
• Most pre-packaged SAP mobile apps are quick look up apps that can easily and quickly designed and developed in-house.
• Cost-benefit analysis to purchase and deploy a few simple quick look up apps does not make a compelling business case to purchase from a mobile app provider.
• Most pre-packaged SAP mobile apps have been built to market mobile app provider’s capabilities and not to truly resolve critical business challenges
• Most commercial pre-packaged mobile apps don’t incorporate ‘design thinking’ within the mobile application development lifecycle.
• Enterprises hate dealing with several vendors for different types of mobile applications by process/industry.

When I categorized these general themes, I started to question myself on what we at Innovapptive were really doing, and if we were truly resolving customer pain points to radiply mobilize their workforce. My defensive self jumped to say “Yes, of course”, “we have addressed these customer concerns through several SAP certified mobile apps and we provide them on the cloud through our Enterprise Mobility as a Service (EMaaS) to rapidly mobilize our customers and also resolve their BYOD challenges.

“But, was I being true to myself? May be not! So what can we further do at Innovapptive, to rapidly mobilize our customers?”

At Innovapptive, we have been extremely excited about becoming the #1 SAP Mobile App provider solely based on the sheer volume of apps that we will certify by end of April. To compliment this volume, we have been consistently receiving positive feedback from our customers and SAP on how our SAP certified mobile apps make a complicated business process – simple, intuitive and consumer app like. This surely is a great achievement for us as a company and I am extremely proud of our high performing team. This achievement will bring us the deserved limelight and Innovapptive will win several enterprise mobility consulting projects and get busy implementing these projects over the next few months.

However, I am not convinced if our customers completely win through this successful journey and if our journey addresses all the pain points outlined in this blog? Does it? May be not, and a Robert Frost Poem comes to my mind “The Woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

At Innovapptive, customers are always at the forefront and there is no bigger satisfaction than resolving customer challenges. As we march towards becoming a leading SAP Mobile App provider in 2013, our commitment is to go beyond the ordinary and go beyond selfish motives to truly make a difference to the SAP Enterprise Mobility Comunity. Moving forward, Innovapptive will focus on resolving these customer challenges to rapidly mobilize their workforce.

As I fall short of time to brain dump our complete vision to support rapid mobilization, I would like to wrap up this blog by making a commitment to the SAP enterprise mobility community to quickly change these customer perceptions by creating a suite of “consumer app like” pre-packaged SAP mobile apps by a process/industry that can be deployed agnostic of a mobile device. I will ensure our team at Innovapptive focuses on addressing these customer concerns, so we can truly empower them with our library of SAP certified mobile apps.

I am happy to announce the below product suites, in addition to our Source to Pay app mobile apps suite. I will get back to Houston, TX and ensure our team works hard towards this goal and provide the community a roadmap and timeline for Innovapptive to deliver the below library of pre-packaged mobile apps.

• mPower Sales & Marketing ™
• mPower Finance ™
• mPower Field Services ™
• mPower HR ™
• mPower Supply Chain ™

Thank you for taking time to read through this Blog. I am confident, we can collaboratively make a difference to unwire enterprises rapidly and create a value proposition for the entire ecosystem.