SAP FIORI VS SAP Mobile Platform

Innumerable organisations leveraging enterprise applications services to improve the flexibility and scalability of IT services and solutions delivered to their end users and customers. There has considerable changes in the way companies do business and organize their operations.

By this article you will get to know the highlights of SAP’s mobile enterprise solutions and the right technology option to choose for your enterprise. SAP is growing exponentially in Mobility Space and we have multiple ways in which SAP provides rich enterprise mobile applications.

Increasing demand for handheld access to enterprise applications and business data is driving the need for more adaptive, dependable and cost-efficient IT solutions. By integrating mobile applications with back office data management platforms, companies can access and analyse data about customers, employees and operations much faster. This anytime, anywhere access to information helps business managers across the enterprise to make real-time, strategic decisions that deliver business value.

In the trend of supercomputing technology, enterprise mobility allows organizations to earn business value by engaging closely with colleagues, suppliers, partners, and customers. With always-on online connectivity, employees wish to get more tasks completed in less time, from wherever they are.

SAP Fiori:

SAP Fiori is a collection of apps with a simple and easy to use experience for broadly and frequently used SAP functions that work seamlessly across devices – tablet, smartphone or desktop. Fiori is developed by SAP working closely with over 200+ clients to understand the most commonly used business functions and ways in which the user experience for those functions could be improved and simplified.

SAP Mobile Platform (SMP):

SMP is SAP’s mobile application development platform which allows us to quickly build and deploy mobile applications across a range of mobile devices. This is a middleware platform, which enables users to connect the existing enterprise systems or applications with the mobile devices. This development platform is available on-premise or in the cloud and offers variety of resources and connections to facilitate the development process.

Overview:

SAP Fiori is a set of web applications that work on mobile devices and network connected laptops and desktop computers) and SMP provides a platform for creating, deploying and managing mobile applications

Detailed view:

These solutions and crisp comparison between these solutions. Let’s compare these solutions and see which one fits best to your business scenario:

SAP FIORI	SAP Mobile Platform
USAGE
Fiori is a collection of apps with a simple and easy to use experience for broadly and frequently used SAP software functions that work seamlessly across devices – desktop, tablet, or Smartphone. This is not a platform, rather these are ready to use applications and hence with little installation and configuration, become available for customers to use.	The SMP is an on-premise or cloud-based mobile application development platform that accelerates the development and delivery of secure, highly scalable business-to-enterprise (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobile applications on any device. SMP is a mobile enterprise application platform that securely mobilizes information on a variety of mobile devices.  Thus using SMP, developer has to build a complete custom application that meets business requirements.
ARCHITECTURAL OVERVIEW
Fiori Architecture is simple and relies on three components. SAP backend systems SAP NetWeaver Gateway SAP UI5 for NetWeaver No mobile platform is required	The Architecture is little complex as compared to Fiori: SAP backend systems NetWeaver Gateway for providing oData interfaces to business logic (this will not be used for MBO approach). SAP Mobile Platform (SMP) to store and pass data between NetWeaver Gateway and mobile devices. SMP SDK is a development tool set which will be used to build mobile applications, which will meet mobility needs. Afaria Server offers integrated device management and security for the broadest range of platforms from a single, web based console.
DEVELOPMENT APPROACH
Easier to deploy and use Fiori apps than the SMP. SAP Fiori are (online web based) lightweight apps fetching data directly from the backend system. For SAP Fiori to work SAP has developed additional standard SAP Netweaver Gateway Models based with Data interfacing. Fiori uses SAPUI framework based HTML5 on top of that. SAPUI5 framework is developed by SAP for a common UI development tool for all SAP products FIORI apps are hybrid which are based on the web technologies (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript) so it will work in all major mobile platforms and in desktops. If an organization has already adopted another UI Framework for deploying self-services, it should be relatively easy to build their own UI’s on top of SAP Fiori Gateway Models. SAP has adopted a clean MVC framework with Fiori that allows easy adoption of other UI frameworks.	SMP supports two mobile business object-based application types:   Native Applications : The native application model enables the developer to generate platform specific code. Here, the application is based on compiled code that is specific to a particular mobile operating system. Provides the most flexibility in terms of leveraging the device services, but each application must be provisioned individually after being compiled, even for minor changes or updates. Supports both, offline and online development. Hybrid Web Container-based Hybrid Applications: The Hybrid Web Container offers a fast and simple way to build applications that support business processes, such as approvals and requests. This package of platform-independent HTML, JavaScript and CSS resources can be deployed automatically to the Hybrid Web Container, a native application on the device, without writing any code. Hybrid applications only support online model.
WEB RESPONSIVE DESIGN
Since it uses HTML5 as front-end technology, these have inherent responsive design, making it simpler to have consistent user experience across devices. These apps are designed to adjust to the device form-factor, and thus can be accessed from mobile and desktop devices through a consistent user experience.	Difficult to create a unified web resposive design application. Cross platform/hybrid applications ca be built, using web container(PhoneGap) for various mobile OS but these would not work for desktops or laptops.

Disclaimer
Facts and statements in this article are taken from SCN.SAP and Gartner research and are publicly available information. Some of the statements are “forward-looking statements” and are subject to material risks and uncertainties. Figure courtesy by SCN SAP database.