B2B App Store - ERP play in app economy.

Apple , Google , Microsoft , Blackberry and Amazon are leading the race to build app distribution platforms for smart phones and tablets. In recently concluded WWDC Apple announced distribution of $10 Billion to developers since the inception of their AppStore. In other words , app economy is real and the good news is its just getting started. Most of the big players have thus far focused only on direct consumers leaving much wanted in the enterprise space. In essence , most of these commercial app distribution platforms are business to consumers (B2C) platforms.

 Enterprises, on the other hand,  are trying to build their own MDM / MAM solutions that address enterprise security needs to some extent but lack sophistication and scale of commercial app stores run by smart phone manufacturers. Given that mobility is going to be major enterprise trend, I think there is an opportunity for SAP to develop a cloud based integrated Business to Business (B2B) app store

A B2B enterprise app store of future needs following functionalities

1. Ability to provision (productivity) apps from B2C app distribution platforms run by Apple , Google and Microsoft etc.
2. Ability to host in-house apps developed by company.
3. Ability to host apps provided by enterprise software partners such as SAP, Oracle etc.
4. Ability to authenticate, push and remove apps from corporate devices.
5. Support workflow and approval process enabling users to request for a specific app.
6. Software license management
7. Traffic encryption and VPN support.
8. Enterprise branding
9. Usage Analytics
10. Ability to pay to Apple , Google or Microsoft  etc for the apps consumed from their platforms.
11. Ability to pay to corporate developers based to per use basis , including slab rates and volume discounts,
12. Ability to pay to enterprise software partners as per negotiated licensing agreements.
13. Integration with corporate financial system for Accounts Payables.
14. Integration with corporate LDAP for user authentication.

Given that Apple , Google and MS have huge cloud footprint and have already existing B2C app distribution platforms, its very easy for them to build this B2B platform however the challenge is if they will support applications from the competitors. SAP has a major play in enterprise mobility with Sybase Unwired Platform,  Afaria and Cyclo. SAP can also very easily integrate this with backend financial systems given their huge presence in ERP space and they can build a high performance application of cloud scale using their HANA platform.

What SAP can learn from Apple ..

Every time there is a shift in UI technology , the questions is back to large enterprise systems such as SAP as to how to optimize the user interface for large number of screens (transactions).  This question was as there when SAP moved from R2 to R3 , from thick client to web interface and gets even more  prominent as the consumers move to tablets and smart phones with ever increasing form factors and mobile operating systems.

The new in-memory database  HANA is a solid foundation for mobility in terms of finger touch speed needed to satisfy mobile consumers as well as native HTML 5 support. But speed is only one side of a multi-dimensional puzzle. SAP business suite  has some 57000 transactions , each with multiple possible screens.  Add to this ever increasing number of industry solutions with their own set of customized screens for industry specific usage. I am not suggesting that all these transactions are in use or need to have a mobile interface but even if we take a small percentage, we are looking at thousands of screens to be optimized for tablets, phablets and smart phones . Obviously , its not possible for SAP alone to do this on its own.

The good news is , SAP has a large developers community who are more than willing to contribute if only SAP could provide a market place  such as Apple Appstore , for developers to sell their work and consumers to easily discover and consume the relevant UI interfaces. This is not only important for converting the existing screens but also to bake in the design thinking and competition into a totally new user interface for mobile world supported by speed of HANA.