SAP CIO Talks about the 12,000 iPads as BYOD

By SiliconIndia | Wednesday, January 4, 2012

SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann shares some of the candid views on the company's receptive approach for mobile devices and iPads. When the Apple introduced IOS, debuting the enhanced mobile security features, the notion that iPads were mere entertainment devices for watching videos and surf had gradually started to plummet among the corporates. The organization stumbled upon the idea of IPad's usage for SAP apps such as ERP dashboards and other administrative and decision making tasks. SAP had observed that the employees were bringing their devices at work and hence it thought of promoting the idea of using iPads on its cloud premises rather than taking a regressive stance as the rest.

Today, SAP has over 12,500 work force using iPads at work. It was the first to allow the practice, where it believed from the beginning that it would enhance the business productivity while not compromising on the security side. The CIO is a strong advocator of tablets in his enterprise, as he says it can provide a quick analysis of business data, while the PCs could be more incisive for computing of large chunks of information. Bussmann is completely aware of the differential speeds of WI FI networks and hence the company has on-site developers who can come to rescue during any such latencies in the applications.

The company assigns permissions to access some of the applications in a rather subtle way, by observing the behavioral patterns of the individual before granting them the customized permissions. It also makes use of IOS facility that erases the contents of a specified folder or container once the job is completed. Thereby, securing the vital business data while being more open minded about the usage.

He says that the inclusion of various development methodologies such as agile programming coupled with lack of user experience expectations is becoming a major cause of concerns among the developers; and hence iPad is playing a pivotal role in addressing these issues. Bussmann also mentions about the encrypted email format, S/MIME that provides Master Data Management solutions. He is optimistic that tablets are slated to replace the laptops in organizations in the days to come.