SAP partners with Ericsson on mobile security apps

SAP CEO takes the big stage at CTIA
SAP CEO takes the big stage at CTIA

Updated: 21:42 EST

SAP has partnered with Ericsson to produce an open mobility platform that is secure and device-friendly, said SAP CEO Bill McDermott at CTIA 2014 in Las Vegas.

McDermott said it is crucial for enterprises to create business-friendly apps that simplify and enhance productivity. Scale and cooperation with operating systems are key for mobile applications. Businesses must make any device anywhere productive and secure.

"SAP remains device agnostic," he said. "Because betting against consumer choice is a fool's bet."

As part of the SAP partnership, SAP's Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) software will be hosted on the Ericsson Cloud in order to enable mobile operators to address enterprise mobile security.

Ericsson will offer SAP Mobile Secure's cloud-based solutions to more than 400 mobile network operators.

During his address, McDermott referenced Samsung as part of this partnership. However, an SAP spokesperson said McDermott was instead combining today's Ericsson announcement with an SAP and Samsung partnership made public earlier in the week.

"During his keynote at CTIA, Bill McDermott discussed how SAP is co-innovating with our global partner community to grow our mutual businesses and meet the needs of our customers. Instead of separately mentioning two recent partner announcements, he combined them to highlight SAP's broad partner ecosystem," said Susan Miller, Head of Products and Innovation PR at SAP.

The Samsung partnership McDermott was supposedly referencing refers to Samsung beginning to test and run SAP mobile apps on the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active tablet, Miller said.