SAP WORLDBegining of New ERP World

Thanks to a free iPhone app, you can now use your smartphone to access and process data from SAP Business Suite and SAP CRM. The app is aimed primarily at sales reps and field service employees who work for large companies.

Customer Data, Activities, Leads and Analysis (photo: Frank Völkel)

Nowadays, all respectable sales reps and field service employees are expected to have key corporate and customer data at their fingertips in real time. This enables them, for example, to check important facts before a sales meeting and instantly update figures in the system while on-site with the customer. Long gone are the days when documents were faxed to company headquarters from the hotel lobby and data was keyed into the system manually. The Mobile Sales & Workflow app from the Düsseldorf, Germany-based company Sybase forms the bridge between the iPhone as CRM client and the SAP Business Suite software.

The Mobile Sales & Workflow application was quite some time in the making. At the CRM-expo in the German city of Nuremberg last year (see the article CRM-expo 2009: Mobile Customers), rumors began circulating about the product and a select few actually saw the version for the iPhone.

The beta version of the business app was greeted with much more enthusiasm on the iPhone than it was on RIM’s BlackBerry Bold, with Apple winning out particularly in terms of speed and graphics (see the article iPhone or BlackBerry – Comparing the Future of CRM).

From the customer perspective, it’s now possible to access information from SAP Business Suite and the SAP Customer Relationship Management application (SAP CRM) and then update it. Almost playfully, the user zips through customer data, checks the status of reports, and works with predefined workflows. Now there’s no need to lug around an Internet-enabled notebook.

All you need is an iPhone with firmware 3.x and the related client, which can be downloaded free of charge as an app from the iTunes Store (Sybase Mobile Sales & Workflow – direct link) and takes up 7.5 MB in the smartphone’s memory. After installation, the software automatically selects the local language, with English, German, and French currently on offer. To find your way around and get started, demo data is available on the SAP server. To hook up your company server and SAP system, you’ll need the Sybase Unwired Platform.

Data from Business Suite 7 on the iPhone with Sybase Mobile Sales

Contacts and Tasks

Charts

 

Source : SAPINFO

With providers releasing more and more apps for iPhone or BlackBerry to supplement customers’ business software, the SAP NetWeaver Mobile platform serves as the interface between these mini-programs and SAP systems. Here, we introduce you to the latest version (7.1).

SAP NetWeaver Mobile: The link between partner software and SAP systems. (graphic: grasundsterne)

A few years ago, Apple showed the world how small programs known as “apps” can enable users to run software while on the move. Apps have since become commonplace in everyday business. For SAP partners, this a prime opportunity to program new, industry-specific software that integrates with existing SAP systems and makes it possible for employees to access them with their mobile devices. In the articles “The Best Business Apps for Your iPad” and “Best Business Apps for iPhone,” we told you about the mobile software currently leading the pack.

This time, we take a look at the link between partner software and SAP systems: SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1.

Just like SAP NetWeaver, SAP NetWeaver Mobile is a technology platform on which SAP software and third-party programs run. Whether it’s SAP ERP, SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM), or SAP Business One, SAP software is based on the programming language ABAP. SAP NetWeaver Mobile, meanwhile, facilitates the integration of additional industry-specific applications written in C++, Java, or other languages. It also enables users to merge business information from various databases.

The concept behind SAP NetWeaver Mobile

SAP NetWeaver Mobile replicates data from the back end, syncs it to mobile devices, and handles the corresponding processing.

The platform’s Data Orchestration Engine (DOE) directs data and transactions to users based on individual rules, which ensures that it only distributes needed information and transmits changes in the order they are made. When an employee is assigned a new customer, for example, all of the required information is automatically sent to his or her mobile device.

In addition, DOE automatically syncs changes to the devices of employees in the field every time they log in. Rather than transmitting complete data records, the engine only transfers new information – an updated phone number, for instance – which saves time.

Since the data is made available on a middleware server, customers can skip buying additional hardware. From PDFs and Microsoft Word documents to image files, the server sends along the latest data every time users synchronize their mobile software. Technicians on their way to a repair assignment, for example, can access their service manuals whenever needed.

NetWeaver Gateway is positioned between end-user devices and the back end (screenshot: SAP) 

Structure and functions

Since SAP NetWeaver Gateway is designed to support rapid development and ease of use, every application created with it should focus on a clearly defined business requirement while integrating the corresponding business data and processes. SAP’s technology generates the objects required based on aggregated data drawn from various SAP systems and other sources, and transfers information between user and SAP applications using a REST-based standard.

In addition to REST services, SAP NetWeaver Gateway utilizes Atom and OData 2.0 as its transfer protocols, which also support SAP-specific notes. The technology’s model repository makes it possible to save, search for, and call up analysis models following their creation, and a push channel supplies developers’ apps with information from SAP systems, which can then be transferred, for example, to an e-mail client.

Meanwhile, SAP has set its sights on establishing an ecosystem with enough expertise to meet its customers’ needs from day one. To this end, the company has joined forces with Capgemini, CompriseIT, intelligence, and Software AG to found the Design Partner Council.

An independent life cycle

To keep the respective life cycles of apps and the corresponding back end separate, SAP NetWeaver Gateway also includes an “abstraction layer.” As such, updates, upgrades, and new releases on one side won’t require adjustments on the other. Since the technology is an ABAP platform add-on, most SAP Business Suite customers – as well as those on SAP R/3 4.6C and later – will be able to use it.

Development made easy

As an additional advantage, those who develop their apps with SAP NetWeaver Gateway will be able to use more or less whatever integrated development environment they choose. SAP also plans to offer optional plugins that will make it easier to incorporate Visual Studio, Apple’s Xcode, and Eclipse. In addition to Xcode, the technology is to support Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry devices, as well as the Web frameworks .NET, Ruby on Rails, PHP, and ASP.NET. It also includes an object- and screen-based generator that will enable developers to reuse models they program just once on other end-user devices – without further coding. Preconfigured models, meanwhile, will map objects from SAP ERP and SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM), and runtime services will support IT engineers with regard to security, monitoring, and administration.

Source : SAPINFO

The route to the app (screenshot: SAP) 

REST Architecture

REST – or Representational State Transfer – used with Gateway is a software architecture concept for implementing Web services. The biggest REST application is the World Wide Web itself; and Amazon, Twitter, and Google apps are also built using it. The architecture is based exclusively on four commands: GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. Compared with the network protocol SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), this simple structure ensures ease of use when working with content.

RESTful Web services can receive data as HTML or XML versions. In the case of Gateway, the Atom is used as standard. This comprises the Atom Publishing Protocol– or AtomPub for short – and the Atom Syndication Format (ASF). ASF is an XML language used for Web feeds similar to RSS and enables platform-independent exchange of information. This isn’t sufficient for business apps, because the content changes constantly, so AtomPub is used to process incoming data. The data finds its way to the developer using SAP’s data protocol, which is based on OData and can read JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) as well as Atom.

Source : SAPINFO