I fielded several questions over the last couple of weeks related to differences between the various mobile options that SAP has available for SCM, more specifically this is related to the offerings for a typical distribution center/shop floor.

SAP for a long time has offered SAPConsole which is a Gui to character based translator, for most companies this is the optimal tool for use in a distribution center or manufacturing plant, it is character based and has a pretty fast response time which is critical on a shop floor. In addition to this SAP has another offering which allows access to SAP’s mobile applications that is browser based. Up until recently this solution was WEBSAPConsole but now supplanted by a updated offering based on ITS and called ITSMobile.

Because the old WEBSAPConsole and SAPConsole were from a landscape standpoint deployed in a similar fashion with a separate server that hosted either a telnet server with the SAPConsole application or in the case of WEBSAPConsole a Web server with the WEBSAPconsole application, this was pretty straightforward. For a representative landscape for SAPConsole see our white paper.

What I hope to answer very quickly is what differs now that ITSMobile is SAP’s preferred solution for Mobile device access to SAP (for always connected clients). Since ITSMobile is based on ITS the main difference is that a separate server landscape to host SAPConsole is no longer necessary (It is possible to use a standalone ITS but let’s not muddy the waters). In the below diagram I have attempted to show the differences side by side.

SAPCOnsole vs ITSMobile

At the top of the diagram we see the using SAPConsole a mobile device connects to a separate SAPConsole server which communicates to the SAP system ( application server) within the SAP system the SAPConsole application is no different then a SAPGui user and accesses the ABAP applications directly.

In the bottom part of the diagram you notice the ITS based device does not require a seperate server and communicates directly to the SAP system, internally it communicates to the integrated ITS which then accesss the ABAP programs within the SAP system.

Technically the ITSMobile solution is easier to manage as there is no separate server but it does have an additional layer at the ITS level, for each screen within your ABAP application a template must be generated the represents the ABAP screen in HTML, this is an added step for the application developers. It may also be necessary to tweak these so that a useable presentation is displayed on the mobile device. You might want to add a Web developer to your efforts. Because a browser based screen is displayed SAP provides functionality and access to set a standard look and feel for all of your applications.

Note there is one last piece that should not be skipped, most devices in use today are based on Windows CE, (no no not the iPhone) and thus come preinstalled with IE mobile which is a fairly generic browser, there are replacement browsers available that provide additional functionality better suited to devices for use in a shop floor setting that provide more controls and better experience.

I do get asked about performance from time to time and our experience has been that character based screens perform better but in cases where the speed of the screen refresh is not a factor such as a QA environment etc. the ITSMobile environment provides many benefits not available in character based screens. Ideally it is possible to implement both in parallel and thus target certain devices to utilize the improved interface in ITSMobile but maintain the character based SAPConsole screens for the shop floor or productivity dependent areas.

Hope that helps some.