Samsung and Red Hat Eye the Enterprise Mobile App Market

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Samsung is adding yet another pillar to its enterprise mobility strategy.

The U.S. arm of the Korean electronics giant and Red Hat are teaming up to help businesses capitalize on a rapidly-evolving mobile technology landscape, the companies announced during the Red Hat Summit in Boston this week. Having already made inroads with its KNOX mobile device management (MDM) platform and premium Galaxy S smartphones, Samsung is tapping the open-source software maker for business applications.

Samsung Electronics America and Red Hat are working on industry-specific apps for Android and other operating systems running on the Red Hat Mobile Application Platform. Launched on June 23, the technology is meant to bridge existing IT infrastructure with mobile workloads.

“The Red Hat Mobile Application Platform delivers vital mobile capabilities and secure, manageable integration with enterprise systems from a single, trusted, and award winning provider of enterprise middleware, cloud, and mobile solutions,” said Cathal McGloin, vice president of Mobile Platforms at Red Hat, in a statement.

The companies will rely on the platform to deliver customizable mobile apps including business intelligence, customer service and inventory management, among several other industry-specific offerings. And those apps aren’t too far off, according to Robin Bienfait, executive vice president, chief enterprise innovation officer at Samsung.

“Samsung Business Services and Red Hat have already started developing several of these new business applications which we anticipate to launch in the coming months,” she told Datamation.

As is usually the case, there’s no one-size-fits-all plan for mobilizing enterprises, asserted Bienfait. “Each enterprise IT infrastructure is unique and requires a solution tailored to their needs,” she said.

The combined resources and expertise of both companies can help businesses along that journey, she added. “With the breadth of Samsung’s mobile device portfolio combined with Red Hat’s open source middleware, mobile, and cloud technologies, our new alliance can enable the rapid development and integration of enterprise applications for organizations moving towards a mobile-first infrastructure.

Red Hat’s complementary approach to business software also provides a strong foundation for the alliance, Bienfait noted. “With so many businesses embracing a mobile first strategy, and the pace of innovation happening so fast, we believe technology developed with open standards can help enterprises stay ahead of the competition and provide innovative solutions for their end users and customers to solve business challenges.”

The strategic partnership also calls for developer outreach and new Red Hat Mobile Application Platform support services. Samsung and Red Hat said that the alliance will be initially focused in the U.S., dangling the possibility of international efforts in the future.

It’s not the first time Samsung has joined forces with a major developer. Last year, the company announced it had partnered with German business software giant SAP to develop enterprise mobile apps.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.