It's always been an important part of planning an Enterprise Mobile Development… How to get started?... How to take that first step?
As a Mobile Evangelist, my experience covers many areas of Mobility such as presentations, communications, analysis of emerging Market, Industry & Technical trends and especially technical developer skills, with knowledge of the developer platforms available... the subject of Development and Building Apps is really close to my heart. I am also here to be a visionary, mentor and promote in-house Enterprise Mobile App Development for many Mobile Platforms, though my specialty and skills are based around iOS 😉 and using what I believe is, the best Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) around... theSybase Unwired Platform (SUP) from SAP.
For those of you that don't know a MEAP is the most effective strategy for mobilizing enterprise systems and providing reliable data access from a variety of device types. With a platform, you can easily manage the entire mobile enterprise and integrate mobile and legacy environments in a seamless, flexible and cost-effective manner. Even as your IT systems change and business needs advance, use of a MEAP enables your mobile solutions to remain connected to all your business critical data and processes. Additionally, a platform satisfies mobility needs across the entire enterprise, regardless of device type preference, and prevents creation of disparate mobile solutions that are difficult to manage, as well as supporting future Mobile Platforms/device types.
I recently said in a Tweet, that the future for Enterprise IT Departments, developing Mobile Apps should start with building a Developer Team with Skills, Training, Mentoring, Communication and Experience...
So how do you go about getting a Developer the taste of the Future?
Many innovative companies have winning Developer Programs and SAP have been creating a place called the SAP Developer Center where you can Learn, Build and Innovate!
It can be found at http://www.sapdevcenter.com
Within there you can see a number of Developer Centers such as for SAP HANA and specifically for this article SUP which has a direct link http://sup.sapdevcenter.com. SAP have developed this center with clear links to core developer resources (tutorials, videos and of course also a forum) to get you started and create your first Mobile Application. The videos in particular should be a firm foundation for you to build on!
The icing on the cake is that via the Developer Center you can request access to the SUP Mobile Developer Access program and once your request is reviewed and accepted you will get a link to your personal client system image, hosted in the Cloud for 30 days. The image is your personal test and trial environment. It contains SUP 2.1.2, development tools and resources for you to test and try the Sybase Unwired Platform. The image is pre-configured to access a shared SAP ERP back-end system which is SAP Netweaver Gateway enabled, as well as a SQL Anywhere SQL Database with sample data. This image even has port access, so that you can deploy to a physical device if needed, such as your iOS device after writing a native Objective-C application that accesses your SUP Mobile Business Objects, which are key to the information that you want to Mobilize and that you create in SUP.
This is a great step forward, where within a small amount of time you can have apps out on physical devices to show your proof of concept and aid you to decide to invest in and ultimately start your Mobile Development in-house, empowering your Mobile Information Workers, with access to the information they need, when they want it and on your awesome Enterprise Mobile Apps.
Taking a leap, with a safety net and Test Drive Enterprise Mobility NOW!
Please follow me on Twitter @ithain
