Mobile Technologies ...

[Former Member]

Hi all,

  I'm very new SAP Mobile technologies...going through documents and forums. I'm confused on Mobile Technologies. I can see that we can deploy or publish content to mobile in 4 ways i.e. SUP, Afaria, Netweaver Mobile and ITS.

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-8973

   What are the advantages of each? What are the differences or between SUP and Afaria?

   I can see that we can develop Mobile Applications using SUP (either 30 days free service or Amazon Cloud service). Do we have any hardware offering from SAP for Afaria as well? Do you see any advantage for either of tools considering Offline or Online content or Analytic or Transaction content?

   I'm interested to learn more about Mobile Technologies... Which one do you recommend Afaria or SUP?

   I would really appreciate all your help!

Thanks,

Ben.

[Former Member]

In my experience with SUP, I would not recommend using it for tasks other than create a simple CRUD, with simple interface.

Any customization should be done in javascript, accessing a heavy-load HTML + some javascripts frameworks (with bugs).

If you plan to support the older BlackBerry v5, be prepared for some headaches...

For your reference, I'm using SUP 2.1.2

I hope it helps.

Regards,

Bruno

[hofmann]

Any customization should be done in javascript, accessing a heavy-load HTML + some javascripts frameworks (with bugs).
If you plan to support the older BlackBerry v5, be prepared for some headaches...

Looking at your comment you are using BB v5 and SUP HWC? BB v5 browser is limited and it is hard to create a good UX using non-native apps on BB.

You have to blame the choice to use BB v5 (or the one that thought  using SUP with BB v5 browser is a good idea) instead of SUP. You can also use SUP for native development, if you want you can then even develop Angry Birds with SUP.

[RamBilasYadav]

Hi Ben,

SUP & Afaria are complementary products in nature.

SUP is used for the entire process of designing, developing & deploying mobile applications.

While Afaria is purely a Device management application. It is used to manage/maintain/control mobile devices. Though SUP has some basic features related to device management which is at very basics level, Afaria is a full fledged solution to address the issues of device security, enforcement of policies, management of apps used on a device, decomissioning of a device etc... Once Afaria is there in a landscape, it can be used for actual deployment of the apps onto the device instead of doing it thru SUP's capabilities.

Hope this gives you some clarity SUP vs Afaria.

Thanks & Regards,

Ram.