Mobility in Enterprise Solutions

As computing becomes pervasive more and more users want the applications they can access on their desktops to be accessible on their mobile or handheld devices.For enterprises this gives an unique opportunity to reach the customer while he is on the move. eBusinesses no longer need to wait for the customer to have desktop access. For once mobile solutions are grabbing the attention of folks in the Enterprise application space.In this article we examine few mobile solutions available off the shelf and how they compare.

Desktop Synchronization , the old paradigm

The mobile application development space is facing a shift in focus from pure client side applications or games to Client server or internet applications. Even before the current focus on enterprise mobile computing in reality a niche market existed for large sized phones which were derived from the PDA or Hand held device. On a closer look we can see that hand held devices has their lineage in the popular electronic diaries and it is no wonder that they are modeled as connection less devices. To transfer content synchronization frameworks - call it hot sync ,active sync , intelli sync ,desktop redirector - were used. OMA went ahead and even defined a Synchronization Markup . It is only natural that when PDAs and Phones converged as PDA/Smart Phones they retained their synchronization capabilities.

Wireless Synchronization

Those applications that used desktop synchronization to add content or configuration now had a new channel to access data and thus was born the wireless synchronization libraries. This lead to another slew of applications which use the synchronization model taunting features like off line content viewing and scheduled synchronizations. This model became the mainstay for many mobile content providers (Avant Go etc) and they established the market for mobile applications at a time when carrier bandwidth resembled the trickling water connections in third world countries.

Java and Games

Mobile gaming industry gradually hooked on and with the advent of BREW and J2ME / MIDP enabled phones application development became more rampant and so did the incompatibility issues with various models of phones. Connection speeds were another bottle neck. Many applications became true client server applications (Mobile IM ,Multi player Games ) which mad heavy demand of connection bandwidth. By the first 5 years of the new millennium mobile applications saw widespread acceptance and the no of users who use their mobile data connection for accessing web grew rapidly.

Elephants Dance

Carrier companies soon realized that with sloppy gprs connections they cannot sustain the growth and many took initiatives to offer better speeds now. A fully connection oriented content delivery model is now a viable option. However the challenges of trans coding the content to fit into the limited screen of the devices is a mammoth task. Some browsers (Blazer from Palm and Blackberry browser , browsers from Nokia etc ) do some restructuring and reformatting of content at the device side. The vast variety of content formats and the wide array of devices prevent the application developer from providing a one size fit's all solution to mobile content delivery.

Transcoding the new panache

Content trans coding proxy servers are the latest panache to these woes. Opera for example has a network of servers which transcode the content in a way ie suitable for the devices that use the opera mini browser. Again this requires the services of an intermediate proxy and possibly can work only with client applications from the same vendor. Here comes server side filters and trans coding agents. There are a variety of server side plug ins which reside in the server and actively trans code and do advanced services like pagination caching etc. This ensures that the content is accessible to desktop users and mobile users alike.

Enterprise mobility frameworks

Product companies started eying this growing market of mobile enabled web services and thus was born the enterprise mobility frameworks. One popular server side transcoding engine is the Open Source WURFL which essentially is a collection of xml resources which describe the capability of the devices and a set of library function written in various lanugages including java and php to both trascode the content and query platform capabilities. This solution is well supported by the wireless community and will be an ideal choice for both small business and enterprise customers. The device repository is constantly being updated by the community but there is a general perception the repository does not cover low cost mobile devices marketed in Asian countries.
MobileAware has few products meant for solutions ranging from mobile CRM to content transcoding ,Mobile Interaction Server and associated java based libraries offer a very powerful set of utilities to help you with content management on mobile devices. Inbuilt functions can handle image transcoding as well. Coupled with a client side stack MobileAware offers a well supported easy to use and elegant solution for enterprises and mobileaware is included in the Weblogic Mobility Pack. If you are exclusively targetting mobile web users then WURFL should be a lowcost alternative, but if you are looking at building complex enterprise grade applications that include CRM,Content Synchronization etc , i would recommend mobile aware .
Sybase has a pretty powerful content synchronization framework which is based on their reputed "AvantGo" core, but the web solutions aren't as mature as those of MobileAware or WURFL. If you are looking for a synchronized delivery mechanism with offline capabilities like email,rss feeds , etc, Sybase is a good and well supported choice.
mFoundry offers a powerful framework upon which you can build applications for mobile devices and has specific products targetting mobile banking and payments
IBM's WebSphere EveryPlace family of products offer a comprehensive set of solutions ranging from offline database synchronization to libraries to assist with mobile enabling web content.The everyplace client agent is very powerful and would be an ideal choice where offline content storage and database management are critical requiremtns like field force automation etc!.
Last but not the least Sun has also a Mobility Platform, which includes real time data synchronization and server side mobile transcoding solutions.Other enterprise products have extensive tooling support while Sun's tool support is minimalistic but easy to master!.
From my personal experience in evaluating and recommending these platforms to my clients, i would recommend WURFL if you need zero upfront cost but reliable solution, mobile aware if you need a well supported platform for web enablement, AvantGo for content synchronization and IBM EveryPlace if offline database management is a primary function of your application.