Principal Consultant & Enterprise Mobility Lead
Bluefin Solutions
SAP's new mobile platform and SDK - a letter to Santa Claus
18 Oct 2010
Mobile
The first sighting of a Christmas pudding this week in my local supermarket reminded me that writing letters to Santa Claus - and giving them to my parents for delivery - has in the past helped to get me some of the stuff I really wanted.
SAP has announced plans to deliver a new mobile platform and a software development kit (SDK) to customers in 2011 so here is my personal wish list for it.
I’d really like to see…
- Support for most modern mobile device platforms including Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian and Windows Mobile, so that companies do not have to mandate a particular device type (which is what more and more companies do anyway).
- A rapid write-once-run-anywhere development model as especially for smaller user population it's simply not feasible to develop native apps for each platform.
- "Islands" of native code that would give the flexibility to use device specific features where needed.
- REST web services to access the platforms services so that developers can address the more exotic requirements with native code, e.g. on a new or specialist platform or if the requirements are to complex.
- Data synchronisation with SAP and other systems where an 'occasionally connected' model is necessary and a lighter 'always connected' model for non-mission-critical scenarios.
- Encryption for data in transit and on the device.
- Support for the most common peripherals including GPS, barcode scanners, RFID, mobile printers, etc.
- Simple installation, updates, support and decommissioning of mobile apps over-the-air.
- Hosting options to choose from if additional servers are required: on-premise or on-demand.
- Lots of packaged applications for standard scenarios.
Fingers crossed! I’m already very excited about what we might find under next year's SAPPHIRE tree.
Anything you’d like to add to the wish list?
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