Sapho Unveils ‘Micro App Platform’ for Push-Based Enterprise Workflows

A startup founded by former executives at CBS Interactive today unveiled a platform designed to make it easier for enterprise users to share information and project updates across purpose-built “micro apps.” The Micro App Platform looks for changes and events across a wide range of systems and delivers push notifications similar to those provided by consumer apps like Facebook, according to San Bruno, Calif.-based Sapho.

Sapho’s approach can be described as “push computing,” founder and CEO Fouad ElNaggar wrote in a blog post accompanying the firm’s announcement today. Rather than requiring professionals collaborating on a task to actively seek out updates across multiple business systems, Sapho’s model “fundamentally changes the way people interface with their software at work,” he said.

Sapho’s offering consists of three components: the Sapho Server for service integration and orchestration; a micro-application development tool called Sapho Builder; and the Sapho App software client that lets users access micro apps from any device. Launched in 2014, Sapho has also just completed a $ 9.5 million round of Series A funding led by Alsop Louie Partners.

‘Flipping’ Traditional Workflows

During the time he worked as the chief strategy officer for CBS Interactive, ElNaggar said that he gained “a unique view into how miserable enterprise software made nearly every person in the company. People went out of their way to not use these systems of record. It’s as if they were designed to keep people from using them.”

Those systems included not just legacy systems and those built in-house but cloud-based software as well, ElNaggar noted. The problem with all of those systems is that they are “pull-based.” That means users must typically log into a siloed system somewhere in the company’s IT infrastructure and then navigate through “bloated” software to find the specific information or application they need.

“When you use something like Google Now, or Siri, or even Facebook, you immediately understand the power of push computing,” ElNaggar said. “Systems in the background push data to you without you even asking for it. Push flips decade-old workflows — instead of thinking about what you need, remembering where it is, logging in and navigating, an event is recognized in a system of record, data is pushed to you and you act on it.”

Custom Feeds and One-Click Tasks

The Micro App Platform helps organizations create micro apps that pull updates from multiple systems and deliver them to the appropriate users through custom feeds, according to Sapho. For example, it allows users in finance or HR to send expense reports or paid time off requests directly to employees without having to log into a separate expense or ERP system.

The IT department can create micro apps via Sapho’s drag-and-drop builder, and it can also choose from a range of pre-designed micro app templates. The platform also provides pre-built connectors to quickly enable access to systems ranging from databases and internal Web services to data warehouses and cloud-based apps. These integration tools enable IT users to easily create one-click tasks that can help simplify complex workflows, according to Sapho.

Turner Broadcasting’s digital media venture Super Deluxe already uses the Sapho platform to unify data across its many systems so teams can better manage production timelines, said CEO Wolfgang Hammer in a statement. By pushing actionable updates to users via single-purpose micro apps the company is able to have a 360 view of every project, he said. Other organizations that have also adopted the Sapho Micro App Platform include CBS Interactive, Kubernetes and RPX Corp.