Guidance on Mobile - Right Tool for the Right Job

[Former Member]

I've been researching quite a bit on SAP mobile tools/technologies lately and all I'm getting is more and more confused. Thought I'd post a couple of questions to see if it becomes any clearer.

From what I can tell there are a variety of products available by SAP right now for "unleashing SAP data" into mobile devices. I'm strictly interested in the SAP tools at this point and not 3rd party providers. Below is a list and some comments/questions about each.

1. Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) - My understanding is that this is a heavyweight mobile platform for offline data synchronization, managing the devices/applications at an administration level, and a middleware for developing mobile applications. Is that right?

2. Project Gateway - This is the guts behind the new Duet and Alloy, but from what I can tell, this is NOT released yet as a standalone instance for light weight (lighter than SUP) mobile application development. This is the tool that I am most interested in as to me it seems like we can create a Service layer there and expose SAP objects in a non-SOAP way (using REST). Is this product released? How do I get my hands on it?

3. Mobile Gateway for CRM and ERP - This looks like it is an ABAP add-on with preconfigured mobile applications for a variety of applications. Question: Is this related to "Project Gateway" or a completely seperate project?

4. Netweaver Mobile Infrastructure - Similar to SUP only older and based on Netweaver instead of Sybase technologies. Heavyweight development platform with synchronization/offline access.

5. SAPConsole - SAPGui based technology using a telnet server and ABAP screens for connecting via an RF Scanner.

We are starting up a more concentrated effort on mobile at our company, and I want to use the right tools to get this done. My preference from my initial research is Project Gateway as we are looking to keep the complexity down and have a lightweight framework for delivering SAP data. Big question though is how, when, where can I get it to start building?

[Former Member]

Hello Eric,

I think Mobile Gateway is a different thing to Project Gateway. Project gateway seems to have its own component, OPU-GW.

Mobile gateway is - yes - an addon which Mobile Infrastructure uses amongst other applications.

"SAP Mobile Gateway 1.1 is a layer of software to allow for the lean consumption of SAP ERP systems, mainly for the use in user interfaces and mobile access."

See /people/frank.schuler2/blog/2010/12/16/sap-teched-2010-explained

Your assessment of Mobile Infrastruture is correct.

Here is a little about Mobile Infrastructure:

"Developing Mobile Applications for Occasional Connection"

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmobile71/helpdata/en/f5/416c4255b3c553e10000000a1550b0/frameset.htm

Liam

[Former Member]

Hi

I have been following SAP Mobility as well. These are my gathering.

SAP Sybase SUP - This is being recommended for heavy weight applications. There are additional components on the SUP layer as, Sybase Control Center and Afaria for monitoring and device management.

Project Gateway - This is being recommended for light weight application. It does not require any additional infrastructure, only software components to be added. I have not heard of any release date for this product. Conceptually it seems very good and based on the demo that was presented in Tech Ed 2011, the development was very simple as well.

ITS Mobile - This is integrated ITS in ECC. SAP console has been replaced with product. This is used mainly for the RF transactions in Warehouse Mgt. No additional infrastructure, some minimum configuration and ABAP development.

BI Mobile - This requires an additional infrastructure and software components to be added where by BI can interface with the mobile devices.

SAP Sybase have also built solutions for Workflow using the SUP platform.

[Former Member]

Hi Eric,

Yes, there are multiple platform possibilities (with feature overlaps) to build Mobile Solutions. However, each of these were originally targeted for different kind of capabilities and use-cases such as online/offline, synchronization, push, simple service consumption, container based, complex distribution, etc.

Right now, we are trying to simplify these options into a single platform for the entire spectrum of Enterprise Mobility. This platform unification involves combining some of these capabilities / technologies to create a single platform (SAP Unwired Platform?) to develop, deploy and manage all types of Mobile solutions.

We are in the advanced stages of finalizing these options. We expect to roll out further details to partners and customers around SAPPHIRE. In case you have specific questions, feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Ramalingam Krishnan

Product Manager, SAP/Sybase Mobile Platform