challanges when enterprise are going mobile

Today many enterprises want to enable mobile devices, but they face the challenge doing this secure, fast and cost efficient.

Enterprises already have some mobile solutions in place. Most of those solutions are point to point (P2P) solutions, where for example a ruggedized device connects directly to one backend. The number of mobile devices is small and support is only needed for one mobile platform and one backend access. 

With the increasing popularity of smart phones, tablet PCs and the mobile app stores, the demand for mobile solutions has risen in the enterprise world. The danger and challenge is now that adding more P2P mobile solutions would sky rock the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and with the demand for multiple mobile platforms also the Total Cost of Development (TCD). And security becomes also an issue since the mobile devices are physically outside the enterprise and need access to enterprise data.

All these challenges are solved by a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP*), like SAP provides it with SUP and Afaria. IT can use the leading Device Management system Afaria to secure, support and administrate all commonly used mobile device platforms. The MEAP allows IT to react and scale to the extra load generated by the mobile devices. The MEAP also provides the development tools to support development and administration on all needed mobile platforms. Mobile solutions can be developed and deployed in very short timeframe as code for the mobile applications will be generated by the platform.

We go and deep dive into the capabilities of SUP in out next podcast/Blog session.

*MEAP is term that is defined by Gartner