OPINION PAPER - n-spro.com

An Elite Team.Optimal Solutions.

OPINION PAPERJuly 2012

Baby Steps to SAP Enterprise Mobility Implementing SAP mobile applications the Agile way to ensure the final outcome is right on the mark and get to see results faster.

by Nadia Brasseur, /N SPRO Director, Mobile Solutions

INTRODUCTION

Mobility continues to be a very hot topic in the enterprise world. Employees can’t wait to get their hands on some exciting mobile applications to streamline their activities and increase their productivity. Corporations are under immense pressure to define a mobile strategy and distribute mobile applications to their users.

While consumer mobile applications are widely available, enterprise applications are few and far between at the current time. This is often attributed to the complexity of mobility management. However, it doesn’t need to be this way. By using an iterative approach to implementing mobile applications, companies can start small and scale up fast.

/ 1 /N SPRO Opinion Paper: Baby Steps to SAP Enterprise Mobility

MOBILE COMPLEXITY DEMYTHED

Mobility is child’s play right? Building mobile applications is easy right? This is true for your average $0.99 app, but in the enterprise world, going mobile can be an “interesting” challenge and corporations are quickly realizing that it just isn’t quite as straightforward as one would hope. Does it have to be so daunting?

Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) vendors emphasize the complexity of mobility, the various platforms to support, security, the multitude of applications to provision, and so and on and so forth… They also emphasize the importance of defining a mobility strategy and how a MEAP platform is an essential item in that plan of action. A mobility strategy and a MEAP platform are indeed crucial to the success of mobility for the large enterprise. The time and effort in getting there can be quite significant. Corporations add up all the costs associated to the first implementation of a simple mobile application and suddenly the mobility project is pushed back another 6 to 12 months or more.

Why not take baby steps to reach the goal? Wouldn’t it be great to see some results faster, get the business excited, and get the organization mobile sooner?

THE AGILE APPROACHAgile methodology is an approach to project management and typically used in software development. Why not take the Agile approach for the whole enterprise mobile project instead of the traditional waterfall approach?

Using Agile methodology provides various opportunities throughout the lifecycle of the project to make assessments, adjustments, and improvements. This is achieved since the project is broken down into many iterations or increments of work. In a waterfall approach, the entire project is defined and scoped out at the very beginning and then it is run with. There is little room for adaptation throughout the project. Not only does Agile provide room for adaptation, it also provides stakeholders tangible results after each iteration. This approach of continuous assessment and adaption will reduce costs and time to market.

The product vision and product backlog are two main assets in the Agile methodology. In software development, the product vision is the overall goal of the product and the product backlog is a list of prioritized features or user stories to achieve the product vision. In this case, the product vision is getting enterprise mobile and the product backlog is all the required items to meet that goal.

This approach is illustrated in figure 1 on the following page.


SCALE, SCALE, SCALE

Achieve the product vision successfully in an iterative and incremental approach by starting small and scaling up. By selecting items from the product backlog in batches based on priority, the final goal can be achieved in iterations.

This will allow both the business and IT departments to build up the knowledge and develop a deeper understanding for what can be achieved with mobility in an interactive and progressive fashion and hands on experience (good and bad)! The path to the product vision will be less bumpy and the final outcome will be right on the mark.

Figure 1 Agile method

PRODUCT BACKLOG

Support the organization’s mobility business requirements

» Use case 1 » Use case 2 » etc.

Support a multitude of mobile applications and users

» App 1 » App 2 » etc.

Support various mobile platforms

» Apple » Blackberry » Android » etc.

Provide basic mobile security

Provide advanced mobile security

Support basic user authentication

Support advanced user authentication

Provide access to enterprise data

Provide updates to enterprise data

Provide notifications

PRODUCT VISION

Integrated mobile applications that add business value to the organization on a single technical platform that provides flexibility to support the long-term mobility strategy (aka implementing a MEAP and mobile applications)

Product Backlog

Iteration Backlog

Product Increment

Product Vision

Time…

Iteration Iteration


SAP MOBILITY PLATFORM TECHIE TALK

How is this achievable in the SAP mobility world? SAP’s MEAP offering, Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP), with its integration with SAP NetWeaver Gateway (GW), can support using an Agile method for implementing mobile solutions in the enterprise world.

To understand how this can be done from a technical standpoint, some techie jargon on the SUP architecture is needed.

As of SUP 2.1, two channels are available to access the backend:

» Mobile Business Objects

» SAP NetWeaver Gateway

Mobile Business Objects (MBOs) were the foundation of SUP at its inception. They still are powerful little entities and using them is a valid approach especially for scenarios that require a lot of offline capabilities.

With the integration of GW into SUP, the backend can also be accessed via consumable OData services. This channel is well suited for lightweight mobile applications. Lightweight applications are based on simple use cases, are almost always connected, and persist little or no data on the device (see figure 2 below).

Figure 2 High-Level SUP/GW

iPad

iPad

Mobile Devices SAP Gateway

SAP Business Suite

OData

MBO

SUP


GROW INTO THE PLATFORM INVESTMENT

Now what does GW integration into SUP have anything to do with getting Agile and implementing mobile applications in an interactive fashion?

Simple. Start with a lightweight application based GW only without SUP to start. Yes, without SUP. Not forever but just for now…

While the long-term mobility strategy is getting fine-tuned and while the IT organization is lining up to get the whole IT infrastructure setup ready, the lightweight mobile application built on GW is already up and running.

HOW?

GW is its own product and is installed on a SAP NetWeaver system independently of SUP. Therefore it can be setup independently of SUP. Moreover, a pre-packaged trial version is available for download to speed up the adoption. Once the applica-tions are running on SAP NetWeaver Gateway standalone, they can be integrated into the SUP platform once it is up and running.

The first use cases can be built by accessing GW directly, without SUP, and thereafter SUP can be brought into the mix. The final destination is the main objective but it is also about the journey and with each iteration, results can be seen (see figure 2).

Optionally, if the IT organization is tapped out and cannot get the MEAP in place in the desired timeline, organizations can also test out the waters and accelerate the deployment of mobile applications by hiring a vendor to host the infrastructure. This would allow them to start developing applications right away and once the infrastructure is available in-house, they can easily be re-deployed on-premise.

ALWAYS TEST THE WATERS BEFORE jUMPING IN!

Figure 3 High-Level GW Initial Iterations

iPad

iPad

Mobile Devices SAP Gateway

SAP Business Suite

OData

SUP

X


Figure 4 Sample Progression

STEPS TOWARDS ENTERPRISE MOBILITY

With each iteration, more scenarios get deployed, more complex scenarios become available, and closer is the architecture to its final stage.

More importantly, as the iterations are happening, learning and improvements can be made.

The progression of a mobile enterprise strategy can look as follows:

GW Deployed GW OData App Online Basic Authentication Read Data

GW OData App Online Basic Authentication Read / Create Data

SUP Deployed GW OData App Online Basic Authentication Read / Create Data

SUP Deployed GW OData App Online Basic Authentication / SSO Read / Create Data

SUP Deployed GW OData App Online / Offline Basic Authentication / SSO Read / Create Data Notifications

…


CONCLUSIONAs it was mentioned, building enterprise applications can be more daunting than one might think, but as it was shown, the process in getting there does not have to be. An iterative approach to implementing an enterprise mobile strategy is possible by starting with SAP NetWeaver Gateway and progressing to Sybase Unwired Platform.

Agile can be used for an enterprise mobile strategy in the same way it is widely used to build software. This iterative approach provides an organization with tangible results sooner than later and at each cycle. With real applications in the hands of the users right away, starting with simple ones and progressing to more complex ones, the business and management will acquire hands-on experience with mobility and understand its benefits and thus assist in driving the portfolio for mobility.

With the landscape being built up in increments, knowledge and experience is continuously gained by the IT department, which allows for adaption, provides room for continuous improvement, and produces a robust landscape.

Slow and steady wins the race! Not only has the race been won, but also are plentiful the rewards throughout it!


[email protected]

©20

12-0

7465 Saint-Jean, Suite 601Montréal, Québec H2Y 2R6 Canada

T: 514-907-2505 F: 518-207-9005

1014 Thompson BoulevardSedalia, Missouri65301 USA

T: 660-829-5800 F: 660-829-4900

OPINION PAPER - n-spro.com

Documents

Transcript of OPINION PAPER - n-spro.com