Changing SAP Mobile Strategy
In past 2 years, SAP has changed their Mobile Strategy a lot and this happens once in a blue moon with SAP, this has brought customers on edge. Few customers who invested in SUP has taken couple of step back. Purchase of Sybase added new ingredient to Mobile development, development of mobile app become much easy, but every technology that comes in has boon and curse, after using SUP as middleware it was found that it cannot be used for complex application (i.e. Field service apps) , earlier SUP used DAD(Device Application designer for flexible design which was deprecated in newer version) . MBO’s in SUP has immensely reduced business logic but still managing code for every native app added an extra overhead, but hybrid app covered UI complexity of native development to some extent. More people got accustomed to SUP, more pitfalls were addressed with real life scenario, biggest was conflict resolution and MBO complexity.
Syclo already had strong customer base in utilities and proven successful implementations, Purchase of Syclo created huge ciaos between customers and SAP partners. The other important point in Syclo’s architecture is that there Mobile Platform was built first by looking at the business and then the product was built to
cater to those needs. It works exactly opposite to SUP; in SUP data is staged in middleware where as in SYCLO it is stored in device inventory. SYCLO application are customize using one language i.e. java and caters needs for every mobile platform. Agentry is an advent of 4GL every technology is today heading towards it.
SAP had big trouble bringing SUP and Syclo on one platform even though both platform are based on eclipse,
SAP is known for its name and strong technical approach , finally SMP got launched after most awaited interval.
SAP Netweaver Gateway and oData invention added new curiosity to changing mobile strategy, now SAP future SMP will be all oData both for SYCLO and SUP and MBO will be deprecated from SUP.
Most of the big customers are afraid to invest in changing mobile strategy of SAP.
Foolproof Mobile strategy has always been big challenge for SAP and mobile companies.
Customers has shift their mobile investment to quarter 2014-15.
Investment in mobile development is still risk for growing IT organization and customers.
It will be interesting to watch future SAP roadmap for mobile platform.
Last year SAP had lot to talk about mobile strategy but at the middle of this year there are not much conferences and session on mobile strategy, strange but true.
We hope SAP will very soon provide steady and concrete solutions for their Mobile strategy
Hi Manish, thanks for the blog, I have one question regarding MBOs:
¨MBO will be deprecated from SUP¨ --> Has SAP confirmed this?
If MBO dissapear then the offline apps with huge amount of data (p.e. customers, materials, prices, sales orders...) should be developed using Agentry? I´m asking because SAP doesn´t recommend to develop this kind of apps directly calling oData services.
Hi Marcal,
This is not yet confirmed, it was discussed in SMP Roadmap.
And now it's official. MBO's are deprecated and no longer supported with SMP 3.0.
Hi Andreas,
Where is the official announcement?
And what should I do if I have an MBO based app running in SUP 2.1.3 and I want to migrate to SMP 3.0?
SUP MBO´s received the kiss of death
It still seems some kind of secret on the official SAP websites and it seems not to be discussed with the customers using this technology, but an SAP Deutschland consultant staffed in our mobility project informed us about the lack of MBO´s in SMP 3.0, so we are now using a technical layer to be prepared for this technology change.
Technology changes are ok if they improve the product and are well communicated. The lack of communication on this important topic is in my opinion just a bad move and sounds like the "Webdynpro Java" disaster commented in a blog posted by my former colleague SAP Mentor Thorsten Franz:
http://scn.sap.com/people/thorstenster/blog/2010/10/25/kiss-of-death-for-web-dynpro-java-the-follow-up-questions
Hello Marcel,
You just need to import project in SMP 3.0 , it will automatically migrate to new version.
Regards
Manish
Helpful Material
Traditionally at the forefront of new technology, Oil and Gas firms now find themselves in the strange position of being early adopters of an already established technology. A recent study showed 66% of Oil companies don’t have a defined mobile strategy.
They are now looking to select the right solution for them that can be implemented at scale and integrated into an already complicated technology ecosystem
Regards
Manish
55% of CIO believe Mobile technology will greatly enhance operations.
BUT.....
Only 16% have employed mobile strategy so far.
Regards
Manish