Today I attended the 2013 Guide to Mobile BI Technology SAP EMEA webcast by Alexis Sarat of SAP CoE.
The usual disclaimer applies that things discussed in the future are subject to change. The agenda was as follows:
- Background
- Today
- Future
- Question & Answer
Background:
Mobility is increasing, including the number of applications
In 2011 2B apps were downloaded from Apple store while last week there were 5B downloads.
Most of the enterprises are supporting bring your own device. Collaboration is growing including with Twitter and Facebook. There is an increase in mobile workers – people in the field – maintenance, electricity, water, airports, and sales, along with an increase in spending in mobile projects.
Alexis said familiar saying from SAP – that there are more mobile phones than toothbrushes.
According to Gartner study of 2000 CIO’s, the priorities for IT spending, with Analytics/BI is the number one priority, including “big data” and get insight. Mobile is number 2.
According to a slide that Alexis showed, only 10% of workforce has access to BI and increase to 75% with 80% data growth. Mobile is a way to address this growth. In meetings today, less people coming with laptop – more people are coming with iPad or iPhone.
Mobile is built with ease of use in mind; SAP said they have learned that from Apple that the application should be user centric with no need for training. You don’t need to spend time training the user with a mobile application.
You want to mobilize what you already have, but you need to have a strategy. It needs to be secure. You could use Afaria to secure device with its remote wipe feature. It needs to be seamless experience
You need to personalize it (new). It is real-time – do not want to wait 1 minute and no lag.
With your mobile BI application, you can have a personalized real time communication and need to share/collaborate on the data
Figure 1: Source: SAP
Figure 1 is a “day in the life” slide, showing you can search and explore data with Mobile BI, collaborate, use Google Maps and get your data real-time.
Today:
Today SAP has 2 apps for mobile BI:
- BusinessObjects Mobile – existing BI content – Web Intelligence & Crystal and Dashboards & Design Studio – information presented in a specific way
- Explorer – filter, you look for information, find, “explore” information – use in-memory platform for millions
SAP Dashboards – can export to a mobile platform
Design Studio – dedicated to BW/Hana customers and natively exports to mobile platform
Figure 2: Source: SAP
Figure 2 provides an overview of the Mobile BI SDK. Alexis said you can customize the experience for the user and you can build custom applications.
Figure 3: Source: SAP
You can create your own brand to fit your corporate identity, integrate with 3rd party security solutions, build / preconfigure connections and have flexible deployment options – you can use Afaria
Figure 4: Source: SAP
Figure 4 shows you can use it to customize the logo of the application, customize the launch screen, do something for customer
Figure 5: Source: SAP
Figure 5 shows you can have the video tutorial in the application, as an example of configuring the mobile BI application
Figure 6: Source: SAP
Figure 6 continues showing how to change the defaults.
Figure 7: Source: SAP
Figure 7 shows more ways to customize the default behavior.
Future
Figure 8: Source: SAP
Figure 8 shows Mobile BI 5.0 will bring only 1 mobile BI app with a combined experience for everything to improve user experience
It will have a BI Inbox system – personalized documents, push content
It will collaborate with SAP Jam with voice annotation (not easy to type, especially if you are on the go – easy to press a button and dictate)
Figure 9: Source: SAP
Figure 9 shows Mobile BI 5 will have new home screen, simplify tool bar
Figure 10: Source: S AP
Figure 10 shows the new Mobile BI 5 interface with reports.
Figure 11: Source: SAP
Figure 11 shows the new BI inbox support available in the BI Inbox. Note the BI Platform support.
Figure 12: Source: SAP
Figure 12 shows the collaboration options with Mobile BI 5. You can still use StreamWorks – choose what is available for the user
Figure 13: Source: SAP
Figure 13 shows how Mobile BI provides right to left support
Figure 14: Source: SAP
Figure 14 shows how Mobile BI 5 to harmonize the viewers. It will help with learning of the products.
The user doesn’t need to know technology involved, which is critical if you talk about user adoption
Question & Answer:
Q: What about Android version support?
A: Android versions are available
Q: Other languages supported – or just English?
A: Tier 1 languages are supported
- SAP Managed Tags:
2 Comments
