Question Re: Low cost mobile solution in Technology Q&A

Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 12:01:46 GMT

Hello All,

I have a small customer who wants to go mobile, but with a tightly constrained budget. What are our options? There will be only aprox. ten end users.

Thanks for your help.

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:13:32 GMT

Hello Nicole

Online or Offline Application?

Device independent or specific platform?

best regards

alex

Re: Low cost mobile solution

jmasters — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:14:21 GMT

Hi Nicole,

What apps are the looking to bring on device?

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:33:53 GMT

Hi,

Currently I would recommend using the Netweaver Gateway to expose SAP data, using SAPUI5 for the user interface and the phonegap/cordova if an app is required. Use a reverse proxy, SAP Web Dispatcher or similar to make the solution secure from outside your intranet. Benefits to using this method is that the apps can also work on a PC browser with little or not adjustments. If these users that will use the functionality are already named users in SAP then there should be no licence costs, gateway can be installed on your current SAP ABAP stack system or a seperate system. The overall costs should be minimal compared to a more full blown mobile server installation with SMP or similar but those apps should be able to run on the SMP server in the future if needed.

Bjorn

Re: Low cost mobile solution

midhun_vp — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:08:31 GMT

When coming to sap mobile now we have a lot options. If the customer is not capable of paying buying the license for SMP ( SAP mobile platform ) they can go for Odata based mobile applications. So for that we need a NW gateway system. the NW gateway will talk to SAP servers.

We need to create Odata services for each transaction in SAP. The Odata services can be consumed in the devices. These apps will be online. Offline APIs are not available when we go for Odata based applications.

Again, SAP is providing SMP on cloud. That the customer don't want to spend much in the SUP servers. They need to pay on a monthly basis and comparatively it will be cheaper.

Lastly, SAP has released a set of 25 apps which are based on SAP UI 5 framework. These apps uses Odata services and it is cheap. If any of the business scenario you are looking for is available in these you can go for it.

- Midhun VP

Re: Low cost mobile solution

jmasters — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 15:30:32 GMT

Bjorn and Midhun are both correct. Look at the SAP Netweaver Gateway option for exposing the services if you want to do custom development.

If you want to buy instead of build, look at SAP Fiori. Not sure I would classify as "cheap" (that's a relative term, isn't it? ) but you can find more info on it here: SAP Fiori Resource Library (Service Marketplace ID required)

Good luck!

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 19:09:20 GMT

Hi Nicole,

This is a loaded question however from a strategy perspective this is what I would do:

1) What SAP functionality they are interested in accessing from mobile devices and why (assuming they want to go mobile for this reason)

2) Survey the market to see if you find a COTS solution which maybe cheaper than developing in-house (Fiori transactions (online only), Syclo apps, 3rd party apps etc)

3) If you must develop your self then consider HTML5 (e.g. Sencha) with Netweaver Gateway as many folks have recommended on this thread

Hope this helps.

Narendra

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 22:25:51 GMT

If it works, this (see below) may be a real low cost solution for you. I have used this technology in past on desktop side but not sure how well it works on iOS devices.

http://www.guixt.com/products/liquid_ui.php

Re: Low cost mobile solution

midhun_vp — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 23:35:36 GMT

Using this technology with mobile devices would be challenging (Even desk too ). We have used the same for an offline desktop app. I would suggest to use other third party tools that consume Odata and it is recommended by SAP ( Cordova, Appcelerator etc.). In the future odata will support offline scenario too. Odata is a very powerful which is capable to send large amount of data between mobile and backend.

- Midhun VP

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 07:10:45 GMT

Hi Nicole,

depending on the services you want to provide and if your customer already runs an SAP Netweaver Portal then SAP's "Portal on Device" (PoD) is definitely an option.

If you want to get a quick overview then this document might be interesting:

PoD applications are executed on the Portal layer and are realized as Portal applications like e.g. iView implementations.

PoD is the way to go if:

Netweaver Portal is operational and accessible from "outside"
Your application has only little to none footprint with ECC - if your application for instance is meant to be a mobile frontend for transaction VA03 then "SAP Mobile Platform" (formerly known as "Sybase Unwired Platform" (SUP)) would be one way to go with SAP Gateway and UI5 being the other.
Please bear in mind: SUP and Gateway both require additional infrastructure and licensing.
You have Javascipt and especially jQueryMobile expertise as well as HTML5 know how available on the development team.
PoD requires a thorough concept for its integration into an existing Netweaver Portal and requires a well versed Netweaver Portal administrator.

PoD is a no-go if:

You are planning to massively utilize and tightly integrate with ECC.
No Netweaver Portal. (obviously)
Your customer already has SUP and/or Gateway licensed.

Regards,

Chris

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 07:28:44 GMT

Just to add another option, available hopefully soon would be SAP Personas 2.0, HTML version that is currently in Ramp-up. There is some licence costs involved and it is a new product with somewhat limited functionality at the start but something to be aware of at least. That might be the tool that makes it super easy to mobilize and simplify user interfaces for users.

Another option with some licence involved would be Neptune, not very expensive, easily installed and your abap developers can quite quickly get to grips with developing SAPUI5/Jquery Mobile / Desktop apps which then can be wrapped into a phonegap based app or run directly in browser.

As you can probably see, the options are many but I would still go with NW Gateway and SAPUI5 or consider if some of the Fiori apps fit your need, pretty sure you can get a fair deal with SAP on the licence costs for 10 users.

Br. Bjorn

Added link for SAP Personas.

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 08:50:17 GMT

Try Fiori as an off the shelf solution.

https://experience.sap.com/fiori

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 08:57:33 GMT

Hi Alex,

Good questions, thanks. I believe the customer will only require online apps, focusing on Android and iOS (there's a little BYOD going on, but if it's cheaper to focus on one device and buy all employees the same then that would be possible.)

Regards,

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 09:00:53 GMT

Hi Jeremy,

The customer has a cache of Z reports they've built up over the years for basic data entry, damage reports, notifications, etc. There's a lot of bespoke functionality in there, and it'd be nice to wrap these in some way - reimplementing everything could be problematic, as things have gotten complicated over the years with changing requirements.

Thanks,

Re: Low cost mobile solution

soldner — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:08:29 GMT

Fiori for Time sheet. What costing options is there? Just those in CATS?

Working on adding fund center (FISTL) to CATS since SAP hardcodes selected costing fields to update 2001/2002. And FISTL is not included in CATSDB.

Thanks for any info!

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:45:23 GMT

Hi David, thanks for your response.

I see the cost of $150, presumably per device? What do I get for that price? Can Fiori be extended with additional functionality?

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:44:38 GMT

You can find details on Fiori Here from help.sap.com but the answer to your question is yes. You can extend the Fiori apps on 3 level, business level (backend stack), Gateway level and Frontend (eclipse, sapui5).

More info on extending fiori can be found here.

Re: Low cost mobile solution

masa_139 — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 19:59:45 GMT

FYI. SAP Fiori main page in SCN. What is SAP Fiori

Re: Low cost mobile solution

soldner — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 10:20:14 GMT

There is another I ran across, Neptune. Looks simpler but don't know about the price.

http://scn.sap.com/community/mobile/blog/2013/06/25/creating-html5-applications-from-the-scratch-for-abapers

This works on all browsers. SAPUI5 only supports a few.

Re: Low cost mobile solution

Former Member — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 10:31:56 GMT

Yep, just those you configure in CATS