Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Sam Lakkundi, Part 1

I had the pleasure to interview Sybase's Sam Lakkundi last week.  Sam is an enterprise mobility architect and a “SWAT” team member at Sybase, an SAP company. He has 15 years experience at Sybase working directly with customers that employ a wide range of technologies including database, application server, and mobile engineering. For the past seven years, he has focused on architecting and implementing mobile solutions for customers around the globe.

A note on how I wrote this interview:  These are NOT Sam's exact words.  We sometimes spoke at length about a topic, and I condensed it to a few words or lines.  I hope that if I misunderstood any of his thoughts or statements, that I will be corrected.

Kevin:  One of the questions that was asked in the recent SAP Enterprise Mobility webinar was, “How will NetWeaver Mobile version 7.1 work with SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform)?

Sam:  Today there are NetWeaver connectors that mobile developers use.  Going forward, SUP will be the integration layer.  Developers will connect to SUP, which is optimized to work with SAP's DOE (data orchestration engine), NetWeaver and Gateway.  SUP will be the middleware layer between NetWeaver and mobile applications.  This is the same architecture that Syclo and other SAP mobility partners will be using.

Kevin:  How will ClickSoftware and other SAP mobility partners work with SUP?

Sam:  ClickSoftware is going to use SUP, because it is recommended by SAP and will support other backend systems and ERPs including Oracle, IBM, etc.  Mobile enterprise application vendors support many different backend systems and ERPs.  They do not want to develop middleware and integration solutions themselves for all of these backend systems.  The most common denominator is SUP.  It makes sense for them.

Sam:  Syclo, as an SAP co-innovation partner, is not only going to support SUP, but they have optimized their solutions to work with the SAP business processes in the enterprise asset management and CRM services areas. This is different than most mobility vendors, in that they look at how SAP solutions are developed and optimize their mobile applications for them.

Read Part 2
Read Part 3

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.