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Former Member

**** NEWSFLASH: SMP3 was officially launched at SAP TechEd:http://scn.sap.com/community/mobile/blog/2013/10/22/sap-mobile-platform-30-launches-at-teched-in-las...****

**** NEWSFLASH: pricing for building custom apps on the SMP cloud has been approved - so start building apps using the free trial below *******

I'm very happy to announce that today we released the SAP Mobile Platform on HANA cloud (aka "SMP cloud" aka "Mobile-as-a-Service" aka "MaaS"): https://help.hana.ondemand.com/mobile/frameset.htm. The official SAP website is at Mobile Platform in the Cloud | SAP

Table of Contents

Back in June 2012, stan.stadelman and I in product management brainstormed a “light weight” approach to configuring mobile apps in the cloud. In October 2012, we were invited on stage by sanjay.poonen at the SAPinsider Enterprise Mobility conference to show the mobile platform in the cloud in his keynote (skip to min 44:01 to see the demo - login required) and to portray SAP's "Apple of the Enterprise" vision. At SAPPHIRE in Madrid, we ran a User Experience lab to optimize the administrator user interface of the new mobile platform in the cloud and finally today on March 28, 2013 we released the mobile platform in the cloud to our customers - getting one step closer to making the mobile vision reality.

What is SMP cloud?

The mobile platform in the the cloud makes it simple to create, configure, and distribute mobile applications and to manage them end-to-end without having to install and maintain a platform server on premise. Mobile as a Service hosted in the SAP HANA Cloud (former NetWeaver Cloud aka Neo).

The HTTP REST interfaces for core services exposed by the mobile platform in the cloud are identical to the REST APIs in SAP Mobile Platform on-premise (aka SUP 2.2 and later releases) so apps using the REST API can run on cloud and on-premise deployments. The following graphic provides an overview of the SMP cloud features and benefits:

  • Simple Administration of mobile apps
  • Usage reporting and app analytics
  • Integration with existing business applications via Secure Cloud Connector to connect securely to on-premise backends
  • Multi-platform support (iOS, Windows 8, Android, BlackBerry)
  • Standards-based protocols (HTTPs, OData)
  • Native or HTML5 applications via Cordova
  • Logging, tracing and error handling
  • Near-zero footprint
  • Security landscape integration (SAP portal, Siteminder, certificates)

Let¹s take a look at some of these items in more detail - starting with the new Admin UI that takes on role of the Sybase Control Center:

Also, we vastly improved the application usage reporting - telling you users, connected devices and server requests over time, by type of device, by app etc:

Also, we offer advanced debugging and tracing features to enable swift root cause analysis in case a mobile app runs into errors:

What standard SAP apps run on SMP cloud?

In short, the SMP cloud is focused on HTTP REST based online productivity apps.

Every HTTP REST based app that runs against SUP 2.2 (and higher) will also run against SMP cloud (and vice versa). In addition SAP will release standard
productivity apps that can be deployed using the cloud therefore giving you the benefit of the SAP Mobile Platform, without the need to install one yourself on premise. Here is the full list:

SAP EHS Safety Issue (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-ehs-safety-issue/id524332314?l=en&mt=8

SAP Interview Assistant (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-hcm-interview-assistant/id471268104?l=en&mt=8

SAP Payment Approval (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-payment-approvals/id472957793?l=en&mt=8

SAP Quality Issue (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-erp-quality-issue/id471267939?l=en&mt=8

SAP Account Intelligence (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-account-intelligence/id608971702?l=en&mt=8

SAP Customer Briefing (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-customer-briefing/id506645738?l=en&mt=8

SAP Customer Financial FactSheet (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-customer-financial-fact/id470165200?l=en&mt=8

SAP Customer Financial FactSheet (for Windows 8.0)

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/sap-customer-financial-fact/59923284-ee3e-4b10-aa0e-015a...

SAP Sales Companion (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-sales-companion/id640044168?l=en&mt=8

SAP Sales Diary (for iOS)

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/sap-sales-diary/id584527646?l=en&mt=8

SAP Sales Pipeline Simulator (for Windows 8.0)

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/sap-sales-pipeline-simulator/5c58c8f0-3707-4892-be36-fb6...

See this how-to guide by martingrasshoff for details on deploying SAP standard apps on top of SMP cloud: https://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-42315

SMP Cloud Trial and custom app development

The new SMP SDKs are leveraging the HTTP REST services. This SDK can be used for the SMP cloud as well as for SUP 2.2. You can develop against the REST services today without the SDK (for example our Win8 apps listed above are developed directly against the REST APIs).

Leveraging existing HANA cloud services such as Persistence as a service, you can build a fully cloud based app, or you can leverage the Secure Cloud Connector to connect to on-premise systems in a secure fashion.

You can download the SDK and get a free trial of SMP cloud here: http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/mobility-platform

Check out this cool video by steinermatt: he built an HTML5 app using SAP AppDesigner (see screenshot below) and deployed it via SMP cloud to a mobile device.

For more info check out his blog.

Another great development example is the blog by nstabell from Neptune:

Using Neptune as a third-party development tool for the SMP Cloud Edition

Also, check out jin.shin's guide: How To... Enable End-to-End Push Notifications using SAP Mobile Platform at: https://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-42914

Cloud vs. on-premise

It should be pretty clear by now, but just in case you are wondering, how the SMP cloud aligns with the mobile platform on premise. SMP cloud is an alternative deployment method of the mobile platform: the HTTP REST interfaces for core services exposed by the mobile platform in the cloud are identical to the REST APIs in SAP Mobile Platform on-premise (aka SUP 2.2 and later releases) so apps using the REST API can run on cloud and on-premise deployments.

Let's look at the 2 options side by side - in a scenario where we are running against and SAP backend with NW Gateway on top:

Keep in mind thought that - as of now - SMP cloud delivers only a subset of the functionality (namely the REST APIs) that we have on premise:

One common question about cloud is the question of performance. SAP went thru extensive performance and scaleability testing and published the results Read the white paper ›

More Mobile info

For live updates on all things SAP Mobile, follow me on Twitter @jenskoerner

SAP Mobile Platform "Apple of the Enterprise" blog

Looking for SAP Mobile demos, customer references, roadmaps, performance and sizing information, tra...

Key Offerings of SAP Mobile Platform Cloud by sankeerthana.pasupathi

SAP Mobile Developer Center on SDN

SAP Mobile academy

carolyn.fitton's blog Put Mobility to Work by Unleashing the Cloud

Ramp-Up knowledge transfer for the SMP cloud can be found at http://service.sap.com/rkt-mobile (S-user required)

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