SAP Fiori frontend technology running with Citrix technologies

Citrix is one of SAP‘s global technology partners with a long term collaboration. After working with customers leveraging SAP Fiori technologies together with Citrix technologies, I would like to summarize my main insight and recommendation.

Many SAP customers use the classic SAP GUI frontend technologies. Most processing happens on the backend, while on client-side a light-weight frontend is all what is needed. With SAP introducing SAP Fiori, this picture changed: Many customers renew their user experience with SAP Fiori, which is SAP’s simple, consistent and modern design system extending to all SAP solutions. Most prominently, SAP S/4HANA is delivering its innovations with the SAP Fiori user experience.

SAP Fiori 3

SAP Fiori also means a new architecture and respective technologies like SAPUI5, which are used to implement this experience. Customers move their classic SAP GUI apps to this new SAP Fiori architecture, which also means that app frontends now run in a browser. While this is a general trend and has many advantages like easier integration for example, it often also means that there is more data processing happening on client side, e.g. in the JavaScript engine of the browsers.

Citrix and SAP collaborate for many years on delivering solutions which enable best suited access to SAP systems. Using Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops, the respective browsers are supported for SAPUI5, giving customers control of virtual desktops, applications, licensing and security when accessing SAP systems from any device. With this, many customers provide access also to systems like SAP S/4HANA with the SAP Fiori user experience. Now what does the move towards the Fiori frontend architecture mean for scenarios where customers use Citrix solutions?

Using Citrix solutions brings benefits also in conjunction with a SAP Fiori web-based frontend client. This happens on both sides, the user’s endpoint as well as the central Citrix platform:

• Choice: The Citrix Workspace App is the endpoint used on a wide range of platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and web browsers. The architecture separates the execution of business apps from the endpoints. This enables the support of existing clients and older operating systems and can remove the need to upgrade thin clients.
• Security: A centrally managed Citrix platform with a web browser for SAP Fiori contributes to an improved security: Limiting the scope of where an organization’s data is kept is a frequent concern. Even though the web browser is a critical piece in security attacks, endpoint security investments can be minimized, e.g. for unmanaged endpoint devices.

What we see with our customers is that the mentioned shift of data processing from the SAP backend to the SAP Fiori app running in a browser puts additional requirements to the Citrix session serving the browser. The amount of additional compute power depends on many factors and is different with every customer. This is why Citrix recommends a consultative approach to size the environment appropriately.

For more details please see white paper ‘Citrix Delivery of SAP Fiori’ published recently.