German enterprise software maker, SAP AG has unpacked enhancements to its mobile portfolio and its in-memory database platform HANA.
SAP aims to attract more partners and customers to building software products with HANA by introducing new features as well as service and deployment options for the platform.
The latest release to SAP’s enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution includes the cloud version of the company’s Mobile App Protection solution by Moncana, a new secure mobile browser and improved capabilities for mobile content management.
“We are making HANA easier to use for people who might not have in-depth programming knowledge,” said Ken Tsai, vice-president of product marketing for SAP. “We are also focusing on strengthening HANA’s ability to gather data from multiple sources.”
The seventh service pack release for HANA includes more developer-friendly features as well as the ability write to external data sources like Oracle databases, Hadoop and customizable text analysis dictionaries.
“This new feature enables developers to include industry specific jargon or even colloquial words to the dictionary, “said Tsai. “This makes HANA ideal for environments such as healthcare organizations where codes and technical terms and frequently used as well social media organizations where terms like LOL are frequently used.”
HANA has been sold in appliance form on hardware from a number of vendors, but Tsai said, customers and partners will soon be able to deploy the platform in other ways.
For example, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) based in HANA is now being tested. General availability is expected by early 2014. Customers will also be able to port HANA licences to SAP’s cloud and buy instances ranging from 128GB to 1TB of RAM.
SAP is also increasing HANA One’s maximum size from 256GB to 1.2 TB.
Adam Stein, senior vice-president of mobile product marketing at SAP, said new improvements to the company’s Mobile Secure Portfolio will enable businesses to rapidly secure apps in the cloud with a single console and secure browsers for intranet data.
“What typically happens in the workplace is that users take apps they have in their devices and share it with co-workers,” he said. “For IT departments the main concern is the security of the corporate data and content on those devices.”
Among the new improvement are:
Cloud capabilities – Businesses can now secure iOS and Android apps with the cloud edition of SAP Mobile App Protection. The solution will enable customers to add fine-grained security control into apps developed in-house by SAP and third party developers for enhanced app and content security in the cloud.
Secure Mobile Browser – This new secure mobile browser provides app level security to intranet data, Web apps and portals. It has app wrapping properties that enable organizations to wrap advanced security policies, including FIPS 140-2 data at rest encryption, true per-app VPN capability, copy/paste protection and app-level data wipe into many Web apps.
Mobile Documents – SAP also enables secure access to mobile content with its Mobile Document solution using SAP HANA Enterprise cloud service.
The latest Mobile Document release now supports iPhone and Android devices, has a new user interface and comes with custom branding for iPad.
