ClickSo ware s Mobility Suite and the Sybase mobility solu ons

Transcription

1 ClickSoware s Mobility Suite and the Sybase mobility soluons A ClickSoware White Paper Copyright Notice Copyright 2010 ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied without the express written permission of: ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. Publication Notice The information contained herein does not constitute a warranty of any kind. ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. reserves the right to revise this publication and make changes without notification. ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. assumes no liability for losses incurred as a result of information contained herein.

2 Executive Overview The Components of a Mobile Solution Mobile Infrastructure and Business Frameworks Mobile Infrastructure Frameworks and Mobile Business Applications....4 Different Expertise Required The High Cost of Mobile Infrastructure Framework Development Combining MIFs and MBFs into a Monolithic Solution is a Problem MIFs and Mobile Strategies Custom Mobile Business Applications and MIFs MIFs and ERPs MIFs and Mobile Device Management Enterprise Software Solutions and Mobile Extension Design ClickSoftware Mobility Suite and the Sybase mobility solutions

3 The purpose of this paper is to identify the components of a typical mobile enterprise solution, and to define the role each of them provides the user. We will focus on the unique roles and differences between a server-side enterprise application, a client-side mobile application, mobile business frameworks (MBF) and mobile infrastructure frameworks (MIF). We will explore the relationship between each of these solutions and recommend best practices strategies, optimized combinations and mobile solution designs, and illustrate these recommendations by examining the combination of ClickSoftware's Mobility Suite with the Sybase mobility solutions. An enterprise mobility solution has many parts and each of these parts play an important role: 1. Mobile device (smartphone, handheld computer, laptop, tablet, etc.) 2. Mobile operating system (OS) (Apple ios, BlackBerry, Android, Microsoft, etc.) 3. Mobile device management 4. Mobile enterprise application (the business software with business rules, business logic and user interfaces that resides on the mobile device) 5. Mobile data connection (provided by a Mobile Network Operator (MNO)) 6. Mobile middleware client (mobile client database, security and synchronization technologies) 7. Synchronization server (server-side mobile middleware) 8. Integration solutions (APIs, web services, J2EE connectors, adapters, etc.) that connect the business software on the server-side with the mobile client application 9. Server-side workflow and business process engine, coordinating the interaction of mobile devices and serverside enterprise applications Each of these components must work together in order to get a functioning end-to-end mobile enterprise solution. Today, it is the best practices trend to group various mobile solution components into separate standardized mobile infrastructure frameworks and mobile business frameworks to ease development efforts and maximize flexibility for both the vendor and the end user. In the enterprise mobility space, however, many enterprise mobility vendors continue to support and develop their mobile applications on a single monolithic framework. This is where one vendor attempts to develop all the components of the mobile infrastructure framework (MIF) and all the components of the mobile business framework (MBF) themselves and combine them together into one inseparable solution. This is a difficult, slow, and expensive strategy. In addition, purchasing all mobile components and frameworks from one vendor does not allow the IT organization the scalability and flexibility most require. As mentioned earlier in this document, combining a MIF and a mobile business application into a single monolithic solution is not a good IT strategy. First, most mission critical mobile solutions have a subset of features that are common. These include: Together these common features can be grouped together and formed into a category called mobile infrastructure framework (MIF) and developed independent of any mobile business application. Well designed MIFs can be used to support many different mobile business applications, even from different vendors, all at the same time, without conflicts. Unlike the common features that make up MIFs, mobile business applications are often very different from each other and require customization based upon business processes, ERPs, industries, working environments and customer preferences.

4 Vendors that focus on delivering mobile business applications often develop their own mobile business frameworks (MBFs) to enable the efficient delivery and support of sophisticated and complex mobile business applications. Mobile business applications may require barcode scanners or RFID support, ruggedized handheld computers that use only one mobile operating system (most often Windows Mobile), battery life that lasts the entire day, specialized screens that work well in the sun, user interface designs that takes into account that the user wears gloves. All of these requirements are customized for the end user depending on their specific use case. Mobility vendors that develop mobile business applications require very different skills than vendors developing MIFs. Developing mobile business applications require industry and domain expertise, user interface design experience, business process knowledge, customization capabilities, deployment and support systems. These skills are often foreign to MIF developers that focus only on mobile middleware and synchronization issues. As a result, different development resources, skill sets and IT personnel are required for each of these frameworks. MIFs, because they involve complex, mission critical databases, mobile middleware, security and synchronization technologies require huge investments of time and resources to develop. This investment must be recovered and this requires scaling to large numbers of users. Specialized mobile business application vendors rarely scale to a large enough size to recover the costs of developing their own proprietary MIF inhouse. As a result, mobile application vendors most often look to partner with a popular MIF vendor to provide these features in an economical manner. In addition to the high costs of developing a MIF, there are other reasons that a mobile business application vendor would want to find a popular MIF vendor in which to form a partnership. It is nearly impossible for more than one MIF to run on a single mobile device without causing conflicts. If a customer wants to run multiple business applications on the same mobile device, the applications need to share a common MIF. If the MIF is only associated with one application vendor, then you can only utilize the mobile business applications from that same vendor. That is rarely an acceptable scenario for enterprises. As a result, most enterprises want to separate the vendors of mobile infrastructure frameworks from those of mobile business applications to ensure maximum flexibility. The combination of MIF and MBF into one platform creates a solution which is often called MEAP - Mobile Enterprise Application Platform. For the reasons explained here, selecting a MEAP solution can be problematic unless the MEAP vendor makes it easy to separate out the MIF and MBF components and use each one independently. Indeed, most of the MEAP vendors have found it difficult to recruit application vendors to build on top of their platform, and have been driven to provide packaged applications of their own. A notable exception to this rule is Sybase, and indeed one of the factors contributing to Sybase's success is their clear separation of components. In the early days of mobility, industrial grade and rugged handheld computers and their software applications were developed for single purpose business tasks. Today, however, the mobile workforce utilizes smartphones with dozens of different applications from different vendors for both work and personal tasks. A mobile device that supports only a single application, running on a single MIF is no longer acceptable to the general enterprise mobility market. Flexibility requires separating the MIF from the mobile business framework.

5 As companies are developing their enterprise mobility strategies and designing mobility architectures today, they need to separate requirements for the MIF from the requirements of their mobile business applications. The IT organization should prepare for the support of many different mobile applications, but seek to standardize on just one MIF when possible. Although MIFs and mobile business applications are separate layers in the solution stack, there are dependencies between the two. Mobile business application vendors must design their MBFs to run on and support a specific MIF - or invest more R&D effort in supporting more than one MIF. The particular MIF used by each mobile business application vendor should be scrutinized by enterprises prior to any purchases, as this is an important and foundational component of an enterprise mobility strategy. Developing custom mobile business applications that integrate with a MIF requires a substantial learning curve. IT organizations and systems integrators will quickly realize that gaining competency in MIFs requires significant investment, and it is not something you want to do multiple times. ERP vendors such as SAP recognize the importance of MIFs and have moved to add this technology to their portfolios. In early 2010, SAP acquired Sybase and their mobilty solutions. Today, if a company uses SAP as their ERP, they will want to utilize and standardize on Sybase for all of their mobile interactions with SAP. SAP has standardized on Sybase to make it easier for both customers and partners to support mobility. Standardizing on Sybase will enable different mobile business applications, from different vendors to reside on the same mobile device. One of the mobility solutions included in the acquisition of Sybase was Afaria, the powerful mobile device management and security technology. Afaria is the industry's most powerful and flexible mobile device management and security solution for the enterprise. It provides a single administrative console to centrally manage, secure and deploy mobile data, applications and devices. Afaria is designed to support nearly all mobile applications and mobile devices. It is an important component for managing the deployment, security and maintenance of mobile devices, mobile applications and the data on them. Companies that have unique business process needs that require the development of custom mobile business applications will want to as their first step, decide on a standard enterprise MIF. MOBILE APPLICATION OBJECT API GENERATED MBO CODE IN C#, JAVA, AND OBJECTVE C PLATFORM SPECIFIC DEVICE FRAMEWORK REPLICATIONBASED SYNC MESSAGEBASED SYNC

6 When it comes to enterprise business applications that have mobile extensions or mobile clients, there are many reasons to use the same software vendor for both the server-side and mobile client-side enterprise application. Let me provide a scenario. A server-side field service management application is used to open work orders, schedule the work, and dispatch work orders to the mobile devices of service engineers. Both the server-side and the mobile client need the same definition of a work order, work order statuses, allowed values for each field, business rules and business logic in order to function together. In addition, many field service management solutions are also designed to allow a new work order to be opened and scheduled from the mobile device. This requires that the mobile client application be able to send all the required data fields to the server-side field service management solution. If the server-side enterprise application and the mobile client application are from two different vendors, there is an increased level of complexity, risk, errors and incompatibility issues which increase the solution's TCO (total cost of ownership). mobile infrastructure framework. This is yet one more reason to separate the MIF, which is about enabling mobility to work, from MBF, which is about creating business value on top of mobility: The MBF part is the one that should be closely matched to the server-side business application. The recommendations in this paper are showcased in the combination of Sybase's mobility solutions and the ClickSoftware Mobility Suite (mobile business framework). ClickSoftware provides both the server-side enterprise application and the mobile client-side of the field service solution. The integrated and optimized workflows seamlessly facilitate the execution of the work order's full lifecycle and efficiently manages the collaboration of managers, team leaders, dispatchers and field service engineers and their interactions with end customers. ClickMobile integrates with Sybase mobility solutions and uses it as the standard MIF for their solutions and integrations with SAP. The ideal solution architecture is to have the server-side enterprise application and the mobile client application share the same design, workflow, database schemas, business rules and business logic. They should be developed together, optimized to work as a unified solution, utilizing a best in class mobile business framework, and a separate best in class The optimized architecture between ClickSoftware, SAP and Sybase enables users to efficiently support their mobile workforce and add additional mobile applications in the future on a standardized mobility infrastructure. 6

7 ClickSoftware is the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business. Our portfolio of solutions, available on demand and on premise, create business value through higher levels of productivity, customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Our patented concept of 'continuous planning and scheduling' incorporates customer demand forecasting, long and short term capacity planning, shift planning, real-time scheduling, mobility and location-based services, as well as on-going communication with the consumer on the expected arrival time of the service resource. As the pioneers of the 'W6 ' concept more than 20 years ago, we have perfected solutions for solving a wide variety of problems on Who does What, for Whom, with What, Where and When. The combination of proven technology with educational services helps businesses find the right balance between reducing costs, increasing customer satisfaction, employee preferences and industry regulations/legislation. ClickSoftware's solutions manage over 200,000 resources in service businesses across a variety of industries and geographies. Our flexible deployment approach, breadth and depth of solutions and strong partnerships with leading CRM/ERP vendors and system integrators makes us the number one choice to deliver superb business performance to any organization. The company is headquartered in the United States and Israel, with offices across Europe, and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit Follow us on Twitter. Sybase, SQL Anywhere and Afaria are registered trademarks of Sybase Inc. or its subsidiaries. ClickSoftware and W6 are registered trademarks of ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. indicates registration in the United States. Sybase, Inc., an SAP company, is an industry leader in delivering enterprise and mobile software to manage, analyze and mobilize information. We are recognized globally as a performance leader, proven in the most data-intensive industries and across all major systems, networks and devices. Our information management, analytics and enterprise mobility solutions have powered the world's most mission-critical systems in financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing and government. For more information, visit Read Sybase blogs: