Mobility.
That word gets thrown around a lot in describing a variety of applications or work environments. More than likely, if you asked five different people what “mobility” means, you’ll get five different answers. Seemingly every day, I receive the same basic email from a variety of people:
(blank) is looking for some mobility training, what options do you/we offer?
My immediate response to this is look for the email I sent the day before, or the day before that which says “I’m assuming you don’t mean musculoskeletal health or how to use the local mass transit system”. With the multitude of software applications that SAP offers and the number of different user roles that seek mobility training, there’s a lot of room for confusion and many questions to answer. That’s where this post comes in. Let’s get some answers for you, the people who email me and the random internet search of SAP Mobility Training.
The options we offer are based on application and in most cases, role of the user. Some of the classes we offer cover multiple applications and are useful for understanding the SAP mobility application offerings and how they working in concert with one another. For anyone who is trying to get a handle on all these applications and how they all fit together, or are just learning the basic fundamentals of “mobility”, the MOB01 course would be for you. This course gives a high level look at the variety of mobility related applications that are available and is designed for executives or program managers who need assistance in setting up best practices in mobility management, as well as anyone who is just looking for an entry point into the mobility training curriculum path. For a more detailed look at individual applications while keeping the overall picture in focus, an enterprise architect would want to look into the SUP130 course. This course gives a more detailed look at a front to back implementation of a mobile landscape from application development to data delivery and overall mobile device management. For a more hands on approach, specifically for the person who not only is an enterprise architect but also wants to ‘get their feet wet’ when it comes to application development on the SAP Mobile Platform, the SUP140 course would be an option.
Each of the courses already listed covers a multitude of products at a high level. For more detailed application specific training, there are options for each product. The latest release of SAP mobile application development and use software is SAP Mobile Platform. This is really a combination of two formerly separate applications – SUP and SAP Agentry. Each of these products has its own separate training options. For the SUP side, the course(s) that would be right for you depend on your role within your company. If you are looking for the administration side of the house, then you would want to attend the SUP620 course. Here, you get a detailed look at the day to day requirement placed on the SUP administrator. You also get a taste of what the developer needs to know, so that you know where to look when a user calls up and says “my application is throwing error X”. If you are a developer (link to dev track), then you would want to take SUP521 where you learn the ins and outs of building applications using the Unwired Platform component of SAP Mobile Platform. A certification is available for mobile application developers on SUP as well.
The other component of SMP is SAP Agentry, a product developed by Syclo, with multiple SAP mobile applications. Whether you are an application developer or an administrator, there are three classes that make up our SAP Agentry curriculum path. The road begins with MOB300 – SAP Agentry Essentials. In this course, you start with a server machine and install, configure and troubleshoot the SAP Agentry server. You’ll build a fully functional application from the ground up, learning the techniques that can be applied to the development of any application. From there, two further options are available. If you are looking for training on the SAP Agentry Work Manager for SAP Applications product, you would move on and take the MOB310 course and create applications that use SAP as a backend. A knowledge of ABAP foundations and objects will be very helpful prior to taking this course, so taking the BC400 and BC401 courses might help to fill in some knowledge gaps. All of these courses will be of great help to you if you desire to become certified on SAP Work Manager. If the backend is IBM Maximo, then the MOB320 course is the one for you.
Whether you are using the SUP side of SMP or the SAP Agentry side, then your backend SAP data could be consumed by using the OData format. To learn about how to expose this data for consumption and use by a mobile application, you should take the GW100 SAP NetWeaver Gateway – Building OData Services course.
So, by now after reading all that, you might be thinking “OK, all those are great, but I’m not an application developer, I need to work with the mobile devices themselves. What about Afaria?” Not to worry, it’s your turn now. For learning how to use SAP’s mobile device management solution, you would want to take the AFA461 course – SAP Afaria System Administration. In this course you learn to install and configure SAP Afaria with hands on exercises as well as device provisioning, configuration and application delivery. Once you feel comfortable with the process involved in provisioning, maintaining and decommissioning mobile devices using SAP Afaria, certification is available.
Those familiar with mobility know that it’s not so much a moving target as it is a target painted on the door of a Ferrari F40 driven by a 17 year old. New courses are being written all the time. Within the next few weeks a couple of new offerings should become available on two different mobile banking solutions: Mobiliser and the Online Banking solution. Watch this space for information after these classes are released.
Now you should have a better idea about the training options that are out there for you. No longer should the idea of "mobility training" be such a nebulous concept. Is there anything we are missing? Need to get registered for one of these courses in the near future? Contact us and let us know. We're here to help.
