Enterprise Mobility Deployment Options

As enterprise requirements for mobility continuously evolves due to the ever changing
business landscape and requirements of their stakeholders, one of the biggest challenge to
mobile application development is re-purposing of existing data in the new context.
Enterprises have large amounts of data across a number of applications, including CRM, ERP
and other home grown legacy systems and when it comes to integrating mobile application
with enterprise backend, then the question arises in terms of how and what approach to take.
Most enterprises take into consideration the number of data integration points together with
the number of mobile applications and operating systems when they look at such
deployments. They then arrive at the most optimal approach whether to go for a Point-toPoint integration,, Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) or a hybrid appraoch.
The objective of this article is to describe and compare these approaches to then provide
recommendations taking into consideration how most successful enterprises have
implemented this.
Point-to-Point: A mobile application integration technology where individual mobile clients
are directly integrated with backed data sources. This is a typical old solution and works well
for a small deployment or if the number of connection points are less.
Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP): An application middleware designed
especially to deploy and manage entire lifecyle of mobile solution. While most of the MEAP
also have mobile application development capabilities, in this paper we will only discuss the
integration capabilities brought by MEAPs.
The Approach
Point-to-Point approach
The typical Point-to-Point approach has a native mobile application operating system wise,
supported by middleware/server, each holding individual resources like data and business
rules for various Enterprise applications use cases.
Since these applications are native, the user stands to benefit from a rich user experience and
better performance due to fewer systems in between client and data server. However as the
number of mobile applications increase, the performance gradually begins to get impacted.
To introduce any changes in the application will require developer intervention and the need
to keep building based on specific business requirements with limited potential of reusability. Sometimes, this requires third party adaptors to integrate with the external system
depending upon the kind of integration sought.
MEAP approach
Using MEAP, enterprises can deploy, secure, operate and manage mobile applications using
a single scalable platform. The MEAP allows enterprises to quickly build and deploy mobile
applications across a range of device platforms given that most have comprehensive
integration capabilities to back end corporate systems. However, enterprises need to carefully

consider the complete investment that such MEAP entails not only from a license standpoint,
but also the following and make a careful decision as it could have a long-term impact on
their Enterprise Mobile strategy:
-

Implementation costs and available skill sets of partners who develop applications
using the platform
Comparison between various MEAPs and which one is the best considering the
specific needs of the enterprise.
On-going support of such applications and the costs thereon

Point to Point vs MEAP - Comparison

The following table provides a quick comparison between both approaches:
Parameters
Customization scope

TCO

Performance

ERP connectors

Security

Coding

Point-to-Point
Native and can be 100%
customized being grounds
up
development
for
respective mobile operating
system
Initial cost depends on
customization needs of
business users. Also cost is
directly proportional to the
number of mobile operating
systems and some times
with the device form factor

MEAP
Can be customized but many
a time MEAP has their own
IDE and the feature and
functionality may be limited
depending upon the product
Initial investment for a
MEAP is high and post that
administration and support
cost is less. Generally
license is based and
proportional to number of
devices and users. The cost
gets optimized as more and
more
applications
are
deployed on this platform
Initially good as less nodes Optimized
and
highly
between and client and data scalable
base
but
inversely
proportional to number of
mobile applications hosted
Integration is usually a Popular ERP connectors are
separate project in this generally pre-integrated
approach
Security is built individually Data is centrally located and
as part of development
easy to secure. With device
management,
security
features like remote lock,
wipe etc . are relatively
easily added
Native coding
Sometime
manual

programing and coding is

required.
This
largely
depends on the product.
Easy to manage as MEAP
acts like a single tool for
deployment,
application,
device and security related
needs.

Release Each application is like an

independent project.
To
manage the complete cycle
including
application,
device, security etc. a
separate tool is required.
The number of vendors to be
managed
significantly
increases in this approach
requiring a lot of process
orientation around vendor
management
Not available out of the box
New
backend
or Custom coding
traditional portals
Change
and
Management

Which Approach to take?

Before Enterprises take a decision on this, it is important to ensure that such decisions are
closely tied to their overall mid to long term Enterprise Mobile strategy. In general, if an
enterprise requires multiple mobile applications across multiple device operating systems
over a short period of time, the MEAP approach could be a more favorable approach. There
are various MEAP vendors and picking the right MEAP is as critical as the approach itself
and needs careful consideration. The other alternative is to start small and do custom
development of applications if use cases are limited. Hybrid is another approach where
Enterprises can start development on specific vertical use case but keeping horizontal
requirement intact, and over a period of time establishing platform capabilities based on best
practice guidelines, tools and codes that can be reused across applications. The pros and cons
of each approach needs careful evaluation before the ultimate decision, as it does have long
term implications on not only meeting your enterprise mobility goals but also on your overall
costs.
About Avaali:
Avaali Solutions (www.avaali.com) is a company that focuses in the Enterprise Information
Management (EIM) and Enterprise Mobility space.
In EIM, Avaali focuses on supporting enterprise customers manage the lifecycle and
generate value from un-structured content (contracts, documents, emails, vendor invoices,
HR data etc). Avaali has partnered with various Best of Breed vendors in this space
including Silver partnership and SAP Competence Partnership with OpenText, SAP reseller
partner and Canto Silver Certified partner (worlds leading provider of Digital Asset
Management). Avaalis consulting and implementation skillets on OpenText is perhaps one
of the largest theyre equipped with consultants who come with strong global

implementation experience in SAP OpenText solutions.

Avaali also has offerings for shared services (SSC) where they provide advisory services
and implementation services to help set up and scale SSC for enterprises. A company profile
can be found on http://www.avaali.com/Avaali_corporate_presentation.pdf
Their offerings for shared services can be found on this link - http://www.avaali.com/sharedservices.
In their Enterprise Mobility practice they provide advisory services, enterprise mobile
application development and managed services. More about Avaalis mobility practice can be
found by clicking this link : http://www.avaali.com/enterprise-solution-focus/enterprisemobility
Contact:
Info@avaali.com
+918049602727