SAP BI Mobility

We all know that Mobile Apps are hot. We use them every day. Not just for personal use but we will use these Apps more and more Business related to get our information from the Back Office.
As mobile technology is on the move, we would like to give you a clear and simple overview of what is available in the SAP BI Mobile market. Off course it depends on what you would like and need to do with your BI Mobile App which solutions would fit you most.

It is always a challenge to read between the lines and understand the marketing message of SAP. I tried to make an easy to understand blog about BI Mobile Apps and hope it will give a clear idea of the current and upcoming development in BI Mobility. From each BI App currently available, this blog describes how the apps differ from each other. Hopefully, this will help you to choose.

Why BI Mobility

As mentioned, we all use mobile Apps, leveraging our ability to interact and getting information fast. Business Apps should also comply with these same characteristics:

• Real-time data to make important decisions or handle tasks, location-independent.
• Secure access anytime, anywhere and on any device.
• Possible without very high investments in licenses and infrastructure.

Current BI Mobile Apps

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer
SAP BusinessObjects Mobile BI
“Custom made” App  with Sybase Unwired Platform + Mobile Analytics Kit

 

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

Combining the speed of in-memory data exploration and interactive views, this app allows you to search for, categorize, and visually explore the information you need now.

• Get seamless access to critical information in online and offline modes.
• Share results instantly and collaborate with others.
• “Google like” search,
• Quick Implementation
• Pre-defined Look & Feel
• Easy to Use (low training effort)
• “On demand” possibility

SAP BusinessObjects Mobile BI

Make existing SAP Crystal Reports and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence reports mobile. (Also Dashboards which will be available at the end of Q4 2012)

• Uses existing SAP BI security of Back-end,
• Share and collaborate on insights instantly with others by snapshot’s & mailing possibilities,
• Work seamlessly both on- and offline
• Quick & Simple Implementation.
• “On demand”  possibility

Make your own “Custom App” with the Mobile Analytics Kit.

Development via Unwired Platform, with all advantages of SUP (Afaria, Device Management) with the Mobile Analytics Kit

• Possibility to do data visualization and analytics
• Cross-platform library with native support for iOS & HTML5 for other devices.
• Leverage data from any source including SAP HANA and BusinessObjects universes.

What is the Mobile Analytics Kit?

The Mobile Analytics Kit (MAKit) provides graphical controls with data visualization and analytics capabilities for mobile devices. It offers an intuitive and compelling user interface that lets you easily view enterprise data. Powered by an optimized analytics engine, MAKit can accomplish sophisticated data analysis on the mobile device, which avoids frequent time-consuming queries to remote servers.

MAKit is a cross-platform library that provides native support for iOS devices.
To support non-iOS devices, MAKit provides an HTML5 version that works with the Sybase Unwired Platform Hybrid Web Container.

These new analytic components can leverage data from any source including SAP HANA and BusinessObjects universes.

BI Mobile Architecture

A simplified Architecture shows that for the custom mobile app, the Unwired Platform with mobile analytics kit would be used, whereas the off the shelf mobile apps run on SAP BI 4.0.

(*) Sybase Unwired Platform 2.1 ESD #2