As the fruits of a relationship forged last May, Apple and SAP will offer developer tools and training to build iOS apps for the enterprise
Apple and SAP are preparing to release new tools and training to help developers build enterprise apps for iOS devices. SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS, which is integrated with Apple’s Swift programming language, will be available on March 30, according to SAP, which announced the plans this week at Mobile World Congress.
The companies have been working on the developer tools that can take advantage of native capabilities of iOS devices and the SAP Academy for iOS since they inked a wide-ranging agreement in May. The new SDK, design language and academy were expected to roll out before the end of 2016. Some early customers have been using the SDK in a more limited fashion, but general availability was delayed by at least three months. The SAP Academy for iOS is open for registration now, but the resources are limited and will be expanded further later this year, according to SAP.
“This is far and away the most developer-centric partnership that Apple has done,” says Van Baker, research vice president at Gartner. The Apple-SAP partnership is “very different” and “somewhat stronger” than Apple’s longer arrangement with IBM, he says. “This feels like it’s a little more developer oriented and providing the tools that the development community needs to go build applications that integrate with SAP backends.
