SAP SE and Apple Inc. have both been synonymous with software applications for years. But only now, with a much touted partnership, are they moving to truly revolutionize apps in the enterprise as SAP opens its cloud platform to iOS developers, sweetening the pot with specialized tools for the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence interests. Where Apple falters, SAP soars and vice versa, according to Daniel Lahl (pictured), vice president of product marketing at SAP.

“SAP has been awesome at business processes and really funky at how it’s displayed on screens,” Lahl told John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. (*Disclosure below.)

While Apple is known for simplistic and uniform software interfaces, it’s not as strong as SAP in business processes, Lahl explained. Synergizing the companies’ respective strengths is what their new iOS development platform is all about. “We’re marrying those two things together,” he said in an interview at theCUBE’s Palo Alto studio during coverage of this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Boasting that the Software Development Kit will be bolstered by the iOS Academy — a broad training program to initiate 1 million SAP developers and 10 million Apple developers interested in fusing in the companies’ platforms together, Lahl explained that pupils will receive training on specific technical issues and will be taught “how to think about delivering enterprise apps using this native iOS environment.”

In addition to iOS, SAP has more to entice developers with eyes on the enterprise, namely Internet of Things services. Lahl argued that IoT is crucial to the future of enterprise applications because of the data integration and agility it provides. When customers develop on the SAP Cloud Platform, they will have access to the company’s expanding IoT services, he said.

“The IoT services, which will be the foundation for our portfolio of apps that we deliver, is all going to be on the cloud platform,” he detailed. These services are in beta currently and include more than 40 protocols, device management, device provisioning and dashboards.

In addition to IoT, big data streaming and artificial intelligence capabilities round out the back end of SAP’s development platform. Lahl noted that the SAP Cloud Platform and the new SDK will allow users to develop AI applications with relative ease.

Lahl believes the partnership with Apple will entice developers with the opportunity to monetize enterprise apps through Apple’s app store. This will ultimately usher in a new class of better, faster more user-friendly enterprise apps, he said.

“If you put IoT and big data and AI behind all of that and then make it look beautiful on the device — that’s beautiful,” he stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Mobile World Congress 2017 Barcelona. (*Disclosure: SAP was the sponsor of this segment. SAP has no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE