Extending SAP Solutions to the Mobile Enterprise with IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation

Book excerpt: SAP solutions provide a rich set of composable application modules, and configurable functional capabilities that are expected from a comprehensive enterprise business application software suite. Enabling mobile access to SAP business functions and data for enterprise clients, employees, and business partners is a typical requirement for SAP projects. This IBM® RedpaperTM publication describes the benefits of the IBM MobileFirstTM Platform Foundation security framework, which is an essential building block of the IBM MobileFirst platform. This paper also discusses key capabilities in IBM MobileFirst Platform to authenticate with SAP business systems from mobile applications. The scenarios in this paper demonstrate these features: How to develop a custom login module with IBM MobileFirst to authenticate mobile user access to an SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. How to implement single sign-on (SSO) authentication in a mobile application to access SAP business systems using a pre-built adapter for IBM Cast Iron included with IBM MobileFirst and the ready-to-use adapter for SAP NetWeaver Gateway, also included with IBM MobileFirst. How to take advantage of the offline capabilities included in IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation V6.3 to store business data locally, act on this data, and synchronize the data with the originating SAP ERP system. This paper is for mobile application developers and technical consultants who design and build systems of engagement to interact with SAP solutions in the heterogeneous enterprise.