Technical Brief. Kony MobileFabric: Over a decade of SAP NetWeaver Certification

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1 Technical Brief Kony MobileFabric: Over a decade of SAP NetWeaver Certification

2 Table of contents Background...3 Why an ABAP add-on?...3 The SAP Certification Process... 4 Add-on Certification... 4 The facts...5 SAP Releases supported...5 Certificates Common misconceptions and FAQ...10 Is not certified by SAP...10 May not be supported by future releases of SAP...10 Will contaminate my SAP environment...10 Can cause complete SAP failure...10 Can conflict with SAP and Customer objects...10 Puts extra load on my SAP system...11 Does not run on HANA...11 Is not secure and adds risk to the SAP system

3 Background Kony MobileFabric provides comprehensive SAP Business Suite integration capabilities through its certified add-on and plug and play business connectors. These have been used worldwide by Customers for over a decade to successfully mobilize SAP functionality. In our experience, 50-60% of the effort and risk of any SAP mobile project is in the integration piece and this comprehensive solution, honed by over 14 years of production experience, goes a long way to address this. Historically, Kony acquired this deep SAP integration capability through its acquisition of Sky Technologies in The certified SAP add-on, developed by Sky, has since been fully integrated into the comprehensive Kony MobileFabric MBaaS solution. For the sake of consistency and historical reference, the technical term SkyMobile is still used internally to identify the SAP integration component and with certifications with SAP, since the initial certification back in 2003 through to the current certification which is valid to the end of The SAP add-on was originally developed by Sky Technologies in 1998 to help simplify B2B and device integration with SAP. Its need arose to address the lack of interface management tls in SAP and to provide a consistent and efficient framework with which to extract data and post transactions i.e. considerably simplify integration and protect the SAP system through sophisticated load balancing and dependency management. Over time, it has been deployed to hundreds of SAP systems globally and is responsible for managing millions of transactions each day. The Kony SAP Business Suite add-on was first certified with SAP back in 2003 and was one of the first in the world to do so. Since then it has been successfully re-certified every 2-3 years or when a major new SAP release occurs. Currently it s certified up until the end of Why an ABAP add-on? The primary reason why the ABAP add-on was developed inside SAP, is to take full advantage of the excellent SAP NetWeaver architecture and compliment the SAP internal sub-systems. The ABAP add-on is imported into the Customers SAP system using a standard SAP transport. It has its own SAP registered /SKY/ namespace to avoid any conflicts with standard SAP and Custom objects. As opposed to the Kony inside SAP approach, integrating with SAP using external middleware solutions is problematic and has severe limitations, such as: It requires complex architecture with additional points of failure and added security risk Does not scale well: It has no insight into SAP s event driven parallel processing architecture and internal systems duplicates processing and data has no interface management capability inside SAP to perform load and dependency management Requires additional administration processes and specialized skills. 3

4 The SAP Certification Process The formal certification process is to test that SAP standards and methods are used throughout in-order to ensure compatibility and security with SAP systems and future releases. As a prerequisite to certification, you must subscribe annually to the SAP ABAP Service Package granting access to the Add-on Assembly Kit (AAK) and entitling you to one free ABAP certification within that year. See SAP-ICC ABAP add-on integration scenario and SAP Integration Certification program for more information and background. The ABAP add-on certification takes approximately 2-3 months and comprises of the following steps: A certification test is registered with the SAP Integration and Certification Center (ICC) for a specific release of the add-on and SAP A agreement citing the terms and conditions is signed by both parties the technical specifications and test usage scenarios are documented and the release of the add-on is packaged into a transport using the SAP Add-on Assembly Kit The SAP transport and test documentation is sent to SAP ICC who test the software and usage scenarios SAP ICC test the software and issue a report and certificate (if passed) When you pass certification, SAP issues you with a certificate which is usually valid for 3 years. This also entitles you to use the SAP Powered by NetWeaver logo. There are strict guidelines on how you represent your product with SAP and what wording you can use. Add-on Certification As summarized earlier, SAP certification means that the ABAP add-on meets all the requirements to run on a SAP NetWeaver stack i.e. standard SAP methods are used throughout, does not violate security and ensures compatibility with future releases. The software is tested for a specific release of SAP NetWeaver e.g. 700 It is usually valid for three years Standard ABAP syntax and methods are used throughout to ensure backward & forward compatibility (code to the lowest common denominator to avoid release specific conflicts). The unique /SKY/ SAP namespace guarantees that there is no impact to standard SAP and Customer objects i.e. all the SkyMobile programs, tables etc. are isolated in their own space in SAP, a kind of unique directory. In addition: Kony has over 10 of its own SAP systems to perform upgrade and regression testing of software releases. The add-on is coded to the lowest common denominator meaning that SAP release dependent features are avoided and the most basic constructs are used to avoid future compatibility issues. 4

5 The facts The ABAP add-on has been certified with SAP for over a decade: It was one of the first ABAP add-on s to be certified in the world Runs on hundreds of production SAP systems worldwide, processing millions of interfaces each day It has never: Failed a certification test Been incompatible with new SAP releases Caused instability problems and had to be uninstalled or disabled from use SAP Releases supported Kony still supports Customers SAP releases all the way from 4.6 in 2000, until the latest 7.4 Business Suite release in The following table documents the major SAP releases and the corresponding internal add-on release. Release Date Add-on release 4.6 (R/3) (R/3) x x x (ECC) (Hana) *tested 7.4 (Business Suite 7)

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10 Common misconceptions and FAQ These are common questions asked by Customers or misconceptions usually deliberately spread by competitors to scare Customers. The SAP add-on: Is not certified by SAP As outlined in this guide, our add-on has been certified by SAP for over a decade from 2004 until 2018 (current). It has been successfully tested for compatibility with the new SAP Gateway and Hana platforms and is currently undergoing certification for those. We subscribe to the SAP AAK program annually and regularly undergo a certification program every year. Hundreds of SAP Customers use the add-on to support their production applications across a variety of SAP release from 4.x through the latest 7.x releases. May not be supported by future releases of SAP The add-on is written in standard ABAP using the lowest common denominator of ABAP syntax to avoid any potential conflicts with SAP releases. Over 70% of SAP s own code and almost all Customer custom ABAP objects utilize the same syntax. So, if this true then it is a major concern to all SAP customers! We have our own SAP systems and rigorously test our software for backward and forward compatibility with SAP releases and service packs. Because of this approach, we have never had a SAP software release that we cannot support, including the latest Hana versions. Will contaminate my SAP environment Nothing could be further from the truth. The add-on is designed to protect the SAP environment from transaction storms (flding) and security exposures. It fully utilizes the excellent NetWeaver Client/Server architecture to make efficient use of its event driven, parallel processing and cross system capabilities. It has its own SAP registered namespace /SKY/ so that there is no impact with standard SAP and Customer objects. The add-on has been certified by SAP for over a decade and has been in production use by Customer for over 14 years isn t that prf enough! Can cause complete SAP failure The software is certified by SAP to be compatible with the SAP landscape, follow standard SAP methods, technical requirements, API s etc. There is no more risk to the SAP system with the software as there is with any custom development or use of SAP functionality by an external system. In fact the opposite is true; the primary objective of the inside SAP approach is to actually protect the SAP system against transactions storms and inefficient use of resources. The add-on component follows rigorous quality assurance to ensure that its releases are fully compatible with SAP NetWeaver releases and we have our own SAP systems to perform full regression and compatibility testing. The add-on has been certified by SAP for over a decade and is in productive use by hundreds of Customer projects worldwide. Can conflict with SAP and Customer objects All add-on objects are deployed in the SAP registered /SKY/ namespace. This is standard practice as part of SAP s certification requirements. Thus there is no impact on any existing SAP or Custom objects. The advantage of being inside SAP is that the add-on follows the standard SAP DRP, 10

11 change management and authorization practices. If anything, this is a distinct advantage against an external system requiring its own processes and procedures to be implemented. Puts extra load on my SAP system As mentioned above, the primary objective of the add-on software is to actually protect the SAP environment against transaction flding, inefficient extracts etc. It adds no significant impact over any integration that would need to be performed by an external system anyway; whilst having the added capability to properly manage all interfacing within SAP. SAP NetWeaver provides excellent client/server architecture and the add-on software fully compliments this, providing the ability to effectively load balance and control high volumes of mobile transactions and data extracts. Its event driven push notification architecture and sophisticated interface management is far more efficient than using an external middleware solution that has to store and process the transactions twice and typically utilizes an in-efficient pull architecture. In fact it can protect the SAP system more effectively and perform transactions more efficiently than an external middleware server, such as SUP or Syclo, which has no visibility of the internal SAP processing and resource management. The actual additional overhead of the SAP add-on is minimal, and so the extra load incurred by the mobile business transactions in SAP would need the same level of capacity planning as any other system. Because the add-on software runs inside SAP, it can effectively manage and load balance all the interface transactions and data synchronization requests that come flding in from the mobile applications. There are sophisticated asynchronous, priority, queuing and dependency management controls that effectively protect the SAP system from excessive load; and properly load balance business transactions without affecting mobile and SAP users. This is not possible with external systems, such as SUP, which have no visibility of the internal SAP resource usage and dependencies i.e. they just throw transactions over the fence and hope for the best! By implementing proper throttling controls inside SAP, the solution can effectively scale without degrading the overall performance of the SAP system. With typical mobile applications, most transactions can be queued and processed asynchronously in SAP on a near enough basis without the mobile user having to wait. Does not run on HANA Because the certified add-on runs inside SAP on the NetWeaver ABAP stack and utilizes the central SAP database, it automatically qualifies for HANA with no additional configuration required. We have successfully tested the add-on running on Hana and are currently undergoing a certification. Is not secure and adds risk to the SAP system The add-on provides total security of your application data at a number of different levels: Identity management is used to properly authenticate users and devices. A variety of services is available to interact with active directory, SAP SSO tokens and the SAP security sub-system The mobile database can be totally encrypted and locked to a specific device All network traffic can be encrypted using industry strength algorithms Profiling and SAP security controls ensure that users only receive the data they are authorized to 11

12 Network Proxy and secondary factor authentication using certificates are supported Data can be encrypted on the SAP host A strict session key management option can be enabled to prevent spfing and man-inthe-middle hacking attacks. Security has been successfully passed by two of the Big4 auditing firms with code scanning and hacking tests. Kony is the fastest-growing, cloud-based enterprise mobility solutions company and an industry leader among mobile application development platform (MADP) providers. Kony empowers today s leading organizations to compete in mobile time by rapidly delivering multi-edge mobile apps across the broadest array of devices and systems, today and in the future. Kony offers pre-built business mobile apps to help organizations better engage with customers and partners, as well as increase employee productivity through mobile device access to company systems and information. Powered by Kony s industry-leading Mobility Platform, enterprises can design, build, configure, and manage mobile apps across the entire software development lifecycle, and get to market faster with a lower total cost of ownership. For three years in a row ( ), Gartner has named Kony a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms. Kony was also named a Leader in The Forrester Wave : Mobile Infrastructure Services, Q report. In additional to these recognitions, Kony was also honored in the Mobile Star Awards for achievements in enterprise application development; named the 1st place winner in CTIA s MobITs Awards in the Mobile Applications, Development & Platforms category, and included on the Inc list of fastest growing private companies in America Kony, Inc. All rights reserved. For more information, please visit Connect with Kony on Twitter, Facebk, and LinkedIn. Phone: info@kony.com