Why use SUP for Enterprise Mobility

If companys start with their mobile adventure, they most likely do the same thing: they take one particular issue, think about how to mobilize it and do a demo implementation. This implementation is taken as a calculation basis if mobility works for them, if they can handle the issues and if there is really a benefit out of it. All issues they have on their way from start to finish get sorted and at the end they have a real working solution which fits into their needs. now they start to think abut a second scenario to mobilize and try to fit this into the boundaries of the landscape they have used to implement the first scenario.

Well, this does pretty much look like the best of breed approach companies tried in the early days of the internet. At the end they realised, that it is better to have a standard landscape then 200 products that are all the best solutions for whatever they need to do, but it was really hard to make them work together.

In mobility it is pretty much the same issue. Many companies offer mobile solutions – based on their plattform. Off course they do a great job, but at the end you end up with a very fragmented landscape. You need to open ports for some of these apps, others need dedicated services and others need special hardware. But the biggest issue at all: every app has its own unique way on how to administer it – its own logging and its own charming error handling.

SAP had realized, it was really a big challenge to build something that is able to solve these issues for all mobile plattforms and is stable, fast and reliable. After the second or third try they finally bought Sybase and so they had a state of the art mobile framework and based on Gartner it was the best solution available to mobilize business scenarios.

So if you are in decision phase and want to mobilize your first process or if you are already live with several mobile solutions and think about further developments, just take some time and think about the final product you would like to have. There are so many things coming up, like HANA, machine to machine communications, HTML5, new devices and OS, Cloud computing, etc. wich all will effect your mobile solution. Go to the drawing board and just paint a picture on how you would like to see your workforce do their work in 5 or 10 years. This will give you a much better picture on your needs then just a single view on the actual issue. Mobilize Workorders is one thing and there are 100 solutions around, but being able to interact closely with your CRM system, do MRS planning from the mobile device, invite coworkers by Twitter, access the knowledgebase of the company and ask the specialist directly by video chat – if it comes to such a scenario you need to start with a plattform first.

Because we all can not know everything I would like to discuss with others any other available plattform beside Sybase SUP to mobilze the enterprise. Please feel free and get in touch with me.

for now in my understanding SUP is the best available plattform to start SAP enterprise mobile projects, simply because of its wide range of vailable connectors. Regardless if we use Blackberry, iOS, Android or Windows MobilePhones, if the App runs occasionally connected or occasionally disconnected or if we have SAP connectors, already working Netweaver Mobile apps or the need to connect other Systems from outside SAP, etc. SUP allows us to do all this and much more….