SAP Mobile Platform Wish List
It’s almost that time of the year. A period where you start writing down your wishes in a letter and hope that your wishes get fulfilled … so here we go.
Dear Santa,
I have been a good boy this year. Please …
(or in business language 😉
Dear SMP Product Owner,
SAP TechEd just kicked off today in Las Vegas, so sorry that I can’t join you to hear and learn all about SMP3 now. Glad with the preview blogs by Jens Koerner (SMP3 Launch) and John Wargo (Kapsel) and really looking forward to SAP TechEd in Amsterdam.
Wish list
MDD and its UI
- Please update the out of the box UI components for all platforms. They are worth investing in and expanding their lifespan. It provides the possibility of having an approach that supports “Build once and Deploy anywhere”, very handy in the enterprise world. The current “Windows 3.1” look and feel is really outdated.
- With OpenUI coming to the MDD approach (formerly known as Agentry) it will be possible to integrate native UI components with out of the box SMP UI components. That is a cool feature, but doesn’t help in the “Build once and Deploy anywhere”.
Synchronization
- Please help in tweaking the performance. Synchronization is not something an end-user requested for. So a quick and painless synchronization is key in user experience.
Strategy
- Please help us consultants in explaining SAP’s mobile strategy. With all the news around SMP3 I really think SAP is stabilizing its mobile roadmap. That’s good news as we all know what a bumpy road that was. I sure hope that things get clear and we can help our customers with an advice that lasts longer than 6 months.
- Please help positioning OData. It is it quite clear that this is the way to go. But where to position OData? Is it the successor of Sybase MBO and Agentry MDD? Or a new alternative to build offline apps that need to synchronize with a backend system.
Development support
- Please help developers in their development process. Just like with Sybase where MBO’s were graphically designed and generated “under water”. This sure speeds up the developments. Especially when you compare this with Agentry and requested custom developments. To create your own data exchange tables is a leap back in time without a ‘wizard’ helping you out.
- Please deliver the AppDesigner also to the MDD world. The AppDesigner is a long awaited tool to design online HTML5 mobile interfaces, it will sure come in handy to design great looking mobile interfaces based on the MDD approach.
Yours sincerely,
Twan van den Broek – who will be waiting to see what cool features will be delivered to his Christmas Stockings 😉
Nice wish list, Twan.
I think SAP is on the right track. The fast moving world of Enterprises, financial crises and changing business processes & requirements all mean that it becomes utterly impossible to "Build once and deploy anywhere".
You'll have to try and build that smart flexibility into your solutions, but people simply expect seamless applications. That means: no concessions.
I am very curious on how the OpenUI tools are going to work with the MDD approach. If we can use that to realize our Design Thinking thoughts in Syclo apps, I'll be a very happy camper and I'll thank Santa on my bare knees for that! ;-).
And I 100% agree with your statement on synchronization. This needs SAP's full attention: improve the performance of the standard mechanism, even when the ammount of data is relatively large. Customers expect a seamless mechanism when they buy complex LoB apps from SAP and don't want to tweak or even rebuild it themselves.
When will we have that cup of coffee? 😉
Regards,
Jan
(Minion)
My wishlist is shorter: make it economical feasible to develop custom apps on SMP. Charge for a developer account, but let the user don't pay for running a custom app.
Besides that, help us to have the same UI: can I have SAP UI5 look & feel for AngularJS or another JS? Like Ratchet (http://maker.github.io/ratchet/) or Fries (http://jaunesarmiento.me/fries/)?
Thanks Tobias for your addition, was so stuck in features that I forgot about the licensing. But I sure agree with you, current licensing blocks customers to start on their SAP Mobile road.
Just checking - are we getting off-line OData support? 😉
yes
Check Jens Koerner blog (http://scn.sap.com/community/mobile/blog/2013/10/22/sap-mobile-platform-30-launches-at-teched-in-las-vegas) that states:
Nice wishlist. Good one