SAP Rolls Out Mobile Apps, Cloud Services at Sapphire Now

Enterprise software company SAP (NYSE: SAP) unloaded a slew of announcements at its Sapphire Now conference in Orlando this week, including a new wave of mobile apps for Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android and RIM’s (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry devices, and an agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) (NASDAQ: AMZN) to offer its cloud-based mobile device and application management platform, Afaria 7.0.

The 7.0 release of Afaria brings a new user interface for simplified app and expense management, an app portal with SAP Store integration and mobile analytics dashboards for business intelligence (BI) reporting with analysis capabilities.

The platform is designed to help businesses take advantage of bring your own device (BYOD) programs without compromising on security or getting bogged down with mobile management headaches, according to the company.

Customers with licenses for earlier versions of Afaria can use the same license for Afaria 7.0 on AWS, and SAP is also offering a 14-day free trial for customers without an Afaria license.

The company also released four mobile applications aimed at on-the-go employees, including a travel expense report app that allows business travelers to create expense reports from a mobile device, and the Customer Briefing mobile app, which provides customer relationship management (CRM) data, as well as external business and news sources.

The Learning Assistant mobile app allows learners to explore content, manage course bookings and download and play e-learning content online in a range of formats from Apple’s iPad tablet.

Finally, the SAP EHS Safety Issue mobile app, designed for companies focused on improving safety, enables workers to log issues from their mobile device with a photo or video/audio recording, and send it directly to an incident or safety manager.