Enterprise Mobility Deployment Options

As enterprise requirements for mobility continuously evolves due to the ever changing

business landscape and requirements of their stakeholders, one of the biggest challenge to

mobile application development is re-purposing of existing data in the new context.

Enterprises have large amounts of data across a number of applications, including CRM, ERP

and other home grown legacy systems and when it comes to integrating mobile application

with enterprise backend, then the question arises in terms of how and what approach to take.

Most enterprises take into consideration the number of data integration points together with

the number of mobile applications and operating systems when they look at such

deployments. They then arrive at the most optimal approach whether to go for a Point-to-

Point integration,, Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) or a hybrid appraoch.

The objective of this article is to describe and compare these approaches to then provide

recommendations taking into consideration how most successful enterprises have

implemented this.

Point-to-Point: A mobile application integration technology where individual mobile clients

are directly integrated with backed data sources. This is a typical old solution and works well

for a small deployment or if the number of connection points are less.

Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP): An application middleware designed

especially to deploy and manage entire lifecyle of mobile solution. While most of the MEAP

also have mobile application development capabilities, in this paper we will only discuss the

integration capabilities brought by MEAPs.

The Approach

Point-to-Point approach

The typical Point-to-Point approach has a native mobile application operating system wise,

supported by middleware/server, each holding individual resources like data and business

rules for various Enterprise applications use cases.

Since these applications are native, the user stands to benefit from a rich user experience and

better performance due to fewer systems in between client and data server. However as the

number of mobile applications increase, the performance gradually begins to get impacted.

To introduce any changes in the application will require developer intervention and the need

to keep building based on specific business requirements with limited potential of re-

usability. Sometimes, this requires third party adaptors to integrate with the external system

depending upon the kind of integration sought.

MEAP approach

Using MEAP, enterprises can deploy, secure, operate and manage mobile applications using

a single scalable platform. The MEAP allows enterprises to quickly build and deploy mobile

applications across a range of device platforms given that most have comprehensive

integration capabilities to back end corporate systems. However, enterprises need to carefully

consider the complete investment that such MEAP entails not only from a license standpoint,

but also the following and make a careful decision as it could have a long-term impact on

their Enterprise Mobile strategy:

- Implementation costs and available skill sets of partners who develop applications

using the platform

- Comparison between various MEAP’s and which one is the best considering the

specific needs of the enterprise.

- On-going support of such applications and the costs thereon

Point to Point vs MEAP - Comparison

The following table provides a quick comparison between both approaches:

Parameters Point-to-Point MEAP

Customization scope Native and can be 100%

customized being grounds

up development for

respective mobile operating

system

Can be customized but many

a time MEAP has their own

IDE and the feature and

functionality may be limited

depending upon the product

TCO Initial cost depends on

customization needs of

business users. Also cost is

directly proportional to the

number of mobile operating

systems and some times

with the device form factor

Initial investment for a

MEAP is high and post that

administration and support

cost is less. Generally

license is based and

proportional to number of

devices and users. The cost

gets optimized as more and

more applications are

deployed on this platform

Performance Initially good as less nodes

between and client and data

base but inversely

proportional to number of

mobile applications hosted

Optimized and highly

scalable

ERP connectors Integration is usually a

separate project in this

approach

Popular ERP connectors are

generally pre-integrated

Security Security is built individually

as part of development

Data is centrally located and

easy to secure. With device

management, security

features like remote lock,

wipe etc . are relatively

easily added

Coding Native coding Sometime manual

programing and coding is

required. This largely

depends on the product.

Change and Release

Management

Each application is like an

independent project. To

manage the complete cycle

including application,

device, security etc. a

separate tool is required.

The number of vendors to be

managed significantly

increases in this approach

requiring a lot of process

orientation around vendor

management

Easy to manage as MEAP

acts like a single tool for

deployment, application,

device and security related

needs.

New backend or

traditional portals

Custom coding Not available out of the box

Which Approach to take?

Before Enterprises take a decision on this, it is important to ensure that such decisions are

closely tied to their overall mid to long term Enterprise Mobile strategy. In general, if an

enterprise requires multiple mobile applications across multiple device operating systems

over a short period of time, the MEAP approach could be a more favorable approach. There

are various MEAP vendors and picking the right MEAP is as critical as the approach itself

and needs careful consideration. The other alternative is to start small and do custom

development of applications if use cases are limited. Hybrid is another approach where

Enterprises can start development on specific vertical use case but keeping horizontal

requirement intact, and over a period of time establishing platform capabilities based on best

practice guidelines, tools and codes that can be reused across applications. The pros and cons

of each approach needs careful evaluation before the ultimate decision, as it does have long

term implications on not only meeting your enterprise mobility goals but also on your overall

costs.

About Avaali:

Avaali Solutions (www.avaali.com) is a company that focuses in the Enterprise Information

Management (EIM) and Enterprise Mobility space.

In EIM, Avaali focuses on supporting enterprise customers manage the lifecycle and

generate value from un-structured content (contracts, documents, emails, vendor invoices,

HR data etc). Avaali has partnered with various Best of Breed vendors in this space

including Silver partnership and SAP Competence Partnership with OpenText, SAP reseller

partner and Canto Silver Certified partner (world’s leading provider of Digital Asset

Management). Avaali’s consulting and implementation skillets on OpenText is perhaps one

of the largest– they’re equipped with consultants who come with strong global

implementation experience in SAP OpenText solutions.

Avaali also has offerings for shared services (SSC) where they provide advisory services

and implementation services to help set up and scale SSC for enterprises. A company profile

can be found on http://www.avaali.com/Avaali_corporate_presentation.pdf

Their offerings for shared services can be found on this link - http://www.avaali.com/shared-

services.

In their Enterprise Mobility practice they provide advisory services, enterprise mobile

application development and managed services. More about Avaali’s mobility practice can be

found by clicking this link : http://www.avaali.com/enterprise-solution-focus/enterprise-

mobility

Contact:

Info@avaali.com

+918049602727