As we all know, Mobile is one of the mega trend in the IT world and SAP also is focusing on Mobile area as a part of company strategy.
Even though I worked on BI mobile area during last 6 months as a CSA team member, a lot of customer doesn't know detail information about what SAP offers, How customers can do, In addition, some of SAP internal collegues doesn't know about it exactly.
One of the issue is... SAP is offering many Mobile solutions and applications.
If you have an Ipad or Iphone, please search 'SAP' in the app store. You will find what I am saying.
Some of them is an application just for the specific systems and some of them is for the BI mobile applications.
In addition, when SAP introduces a mobile solutions to the customer, we always explains other mobile solutions like SUP, Afaria, Gateway, MAKit and so on.
Therfore, novice customers can be confused easily and don't know what the first step they should do.
This blog will help those novice customers and can get the basic concepts what SAP mobile solutions are and what customers do for BI mobile using Ipad.
Here is a picture that I got from my friend. He said he got an ipad from his company but asked us what the best usage was and the other friend sent below picture as a joke.
Apprently, it should not be used as a chop board. :smile:
Let's see what SAP offers as mobile solutions.
User can choose solutions what they need. In addition, user can create their custom app applications using other SAP development solutions which are
Gateway and SUP eclipse with MAKit. If customer just need to use ipad as a BI client tool for retriving data from their SAP Business Objects servers, BI mobile (Mobi) will be a good solution because it will show exactly same report as their SAP Business Object Web Intelligence(Webi) report with a couple of clicks. (I am not kidding.. It will convert Webi report into Mobile report for Ipad when you save it into Mobile category. That's all user needs to do!)
Here is a picture that explains what SAP mobile development solutions.
As you can see, SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform) is located between each systems and clients and Afaria will take care client equipments.
Of course, SUP is not mandatory for all solutions yet but should be integrated in the future for more features like push notifications and strongest security etc.
For example, BI mobile will be integrated with SUP in version 4.1 that will be released soon.
Afaria can be a useful a tool for maintaining client machines so customer can reduce TCO.
For example, it can maintain latest version of all softwares in each mobile equipment of customer.
In addition, if end-user losts their equipment, IT admin can delete data remotely.
There are three vertical axes in the above picture which represnt three big things of SAP mobile environment.
Let's what it is.
1. Gateway
Gateway is the framework that enables development of innovative people centric solutions bringing the power of SAP business software into new experience such as social media like facebook and collaboration environments as well as mobile so user can develop their custom applications without knowing SAP knowledge with any programming language.
If customer doesn't have SAP Business Object Enterprise Server and only have SAP system then Gateway might be the best solution as a mobile solution.
Customer can create custom app easily using Gateway.
2. BI mobile
BI mobile consists two applications - SAP Business Objects Mobile (Mobi) and Explorer.
It can deliver results from anywhere with business intelligence solutions delivered to your mobile device.
If customer has SAP Business Object Enterprise Server and uses a lot of Webi reports, BI mobile is the best solution because customer doesn't need to develop report again for mobile report. In addition, Explorer can help users to search and explore customer data at the speed of thought with HANA.
3. SUP Custom Dev + MAKit
If customer wants more detail and complex app with neat chart, SUP custom development (eclipse) with MAKit (Mobile Analytic Kit) will be the solution for them. MAKit also can be used in ios development environment for app.
Someone may say it looks like an internal product competition but it is not.
SAP is trying to provide various solutions for the customer that fits customer's situation without any additional investment because some customers might not have SAP Business Object solutions yet but want to use mobile solutions with their current systems.
We will focus on BI mobile (especially, for using Ipad) in the next post so that you can understand what do you need to imlement it and how to do it.
If you are interested in other solutions like Gateway and SUP, please refer below URL.
Gateway : http://www.youtube.com/user/sapgateway
SUP development : http://www.youtube.com/user/SUPDeveloperProgram
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBk7MLlqMvA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aka9pzesEfA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoeSsJXIeT4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTZ7-fT-AG4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZT7BxSPjKs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOYTCP1GOJw&feature=related
I hope this blog post help you to understand basic concepts of SAP mobile solutions.
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