Architecture of the SAP Mobile Infrastructure

Mobile business increases flexibility as well as making it easier to provide information to field sales representatives. A sales employee can dynamically access customer and order data without having to download and save it from the backend before visiting a customer. A third point is getting rid of piles of paper where data has to be entered into the IT systems afterwards. This speeds up processes, reduce the amount of work required for field sales representatives and is less error-prone as the data is entered when it is created. However, you can also use SAP MI to mobilize non-SAP based applications. SAP MI is locally installed on a mobile device and is equipped with a web server, database layer and a dedicated business logic. Hence, remotely working employees never have to wait for a network connection to complete time-critical business transactions but can work offline. To synchronize the data on the mobile device with the back end, SAP MI provides tools for synchronization and data replication. SAP MI is equipped with a Java Virtual Machine and provides an open programming model with which developers can develop mobile applications. This open system architecture facilitates platform independence of mobile devices as well as networks and supports mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptops and smart phones.