SAP has jumped into the mobile security space with the launch of Mobile Secure software, designed to secure customers accessing their business applications from mobile devices.

Mobile Secure will also be offered as a software as a service (SaaS) edition, which will be integrated with the firm’s mobile device management cloud software Afaria to help businesses manage multiple mobile devices. The most recent cloud edition of Afaria is bundled with analytic dashboards from SAP’s business intelligence Business Objects portfolio to give customers insight into device compliance usage.

SAP said Mobile Secure will work on today’s most popular devices including iOS, Windows and Android operating systems.

SAP president of technology solutions and the mobile division Sanjay Poonen said the increasing number of mobile operating systems and the influx of bring-your-own device (BYOD) programmes for employees has meant enterprise-level security is a priority for many companies.

“With SAP Mobile Secure, we want to make it easy for CIOs to bring comprehensive mobile security to all layers of their mobile infrastructure at the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) possible,” he said. “The SAP Mobile Secure solution portfolio is integrated with the SAP Mobile Platform, allowing developers to build in security at the right time. SAP Mobile Secure is designed to scale to millions of devices.”

The Mobile Secure software will allow customers to quickly add security and usage policies to iOS and Android apps without having to write any code. Such capabilities are due to a partnership SAP has secured with mobile security firm Mocana, which will see the firm resell Mocana’s Mobile App Protection software as part of the SAP Mobile Secure offering.

SAP has had recent success with its mobile offering, inking a deal with CA Technologies for the software management firm to licence Afaria for mobile device management.

SAP is this week holding its annual Sapphire US event in Orlando, which V3 will be attending.

Last week SAP made a bold move in both its big data and strategy, announcing that its HANA database platform would be offered as an enterprise cloud service. The HANA Enterprise Cloud will allow users to analyse data from SAP Business Suite applications in the cloud. SAP said that the HANA as a cloud service will reduce the cost for customers wanting to perform big data analytics, as well as offering them increased flexibility.