Xamarin and SAP Americas announced at MWC 2014 today a partnership aiming to provide .NET mobile developers the necessary tools to access and integrate enterprise SAP data into their applications.
The main component of the deal is the Xamarin + SAP Mobile Platform SDK, which contains “a library, sample iOS and Android native apps written in C#, and ‘Getting Started’ documentation,” according to Nat Friedman, co-founder and CEO of Xamarin. In an interview for InfoQ, Friedman said that the SDK does not enable access to any of SAP's Mobile Platform Services, but provides access to SAP data via OData over HTTP(S), populating C# objects which are included in native mobile applications.
When asked what makes their solution different/better than SAP’s plug-ins for Cordova/PhoneGap, Friedman said:
Unlike Cordova/PhoneGap, we have highly productive environments for developers to design, build, debug and deploy native mobile apps through Xamarin Studio and our Visual Studio integration. The Xamarin Component Store further increases productivity by making it easy to add enterprise-grade components to apps, such as AES encryption and authentication, with just a few lines of code. This new SDK adds seamless SAP connectivity to great C# features like strongly-typed domain model classes, and more responsive app UI through async/await. All of this combined leads to high developer productivity, and ultimately better apps.
As part of the agreement, Xamarin has extended their Test Cloud to include “unique built-in SAP Mobile Platform data verification capabilities to ensure mobile applications are properly capturing and synchronizing data with SAP systems.” They have also made available the Xamarin + SAP Certified Consultant Program to “Xamarin’s 150 global consulting partners and SAP’s thousands of global consulting partners,” to provide necessary resources to consulting firms.
Xamarin will also expand their University with a course for training developers in dealing with SAP enterprise data.