Building Mobile Apps Is Your SOA Enough? Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com 1
CONTENTS Executive Summary... 3 Why SOA Is Not Enough... 4 Mobile devices have different limitations... 4 Connectivity is intermittent... 4 Mobile devices are mobile... 4 Mobile App Servers: The New Black... 5 Authentication... 6 Working off-line... 6 Device actions... 6 Data services... 6 Business logic... 6 Verivo Akula... 6 Conclusion... 8 Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com 2
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY If you plan on building mobile apps, you probably want a pluggable framework that allows you to easily use and reuse mobile services. You can then effortlessly access back-end systems, rapidly assemble new apps, and easily update individual services. Déjà vu I hear you cry isn t that what my service-oriented architecture (SOA) gives me? Yes and no. A SOA gives you much but not all of what you need and understanding the line of demarcation can prevent you from making expensive mistakes. Your SOA does much of the heavy lifting But SOA is not quite enough to support mobile apps. Mobile devices add a layer of technical challenges to implementations that are not met by the SOA designed to meet the needs of web applications. Don t build infrastructure into an app When development teams begin to create mobile apps, they can quickly run into the limitations of their SOA and often begin building mobile services including security, authentication, and data services to name a few directly into the app. Let IT manage, secure and govern all infrastructure when development teams build infrastructure into an app, it results in ad hoc code that is hard to update and even harder to govern. Let development teams focus on the user experience and leave IT to IT. What is an IT department to do? Luckily, your existing SOA infrastructure provides most of what you need, and the additional services you need can be added without much difficulty. Chris Marsh, a principal analyst for enterprise mobility at 451 Research said, Enterprises need an open and extensible platform that, rather than just sitting as another silo, can work with existing IT infrastructure and scale policy, security, and compliance across mobile assets. At Verivo, we couldn t agree more, and we believe that this future-thinking approach is the one enterprise leadership should take when embarking on building and deploying mobile apps to position their companies for the long term. Verivo, a mobile app company with over 15 years of experience building enterprise apps, has worked with large organizations to help them develop, deploy, and maintain mobile apps. Having helped large enterprises build more than 500 apps, we know what your SOA can do and how to get the most out of the assets you already have. Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com 3
WHY SOA IS NOT ENOUGH SOA is not enough because mobile devices are not like the platforms of yore. They bring unforeseen complication into the world of IT, and when you couple that with the potential power of mobile apps and ubiquity of devices you have a set of needs that requires a thoughtful and strategic approach. MOBILE DEVICES HAVE DIFFERENT LIMITATIONS Mobile devices whether a cell phone, tablet, or mini laptop are amazingly powerful, but are constrained by bandwidth and battery life. Apps have to be architected to conserve both or the user experience suffers. Mobile devices require apps that are architected to Conserve bandwidth you cannot send a large, metadata-encrusted SOAP objects to a phone the way you can with larger platforms. Likewise, you also should not send unfiltered data sets filled with unnecessary data and have the device to extract the one field it needs. Doing so consumes unacceptable amounts of bandwidth and ultimately leads to frustrated users. Conserve battery when a mobile app performs significant amounts of computation, the device chews through a significant about battery power. As much business logic as is possible must be done service-side to keep the mobile devices functioning at their peak. Most apps written for a larger platform are intolerable on a mobile device, and more than just the UI has to be re-engineered. CONNECTIVITY IS INTERMITTENT One significant inconvenience of mobile devices is that connectivity is not always available. It is a mild annoyance when you are not able to play your favorite game on the subway, but it cuts into productivity if you cannot conduct business in basements, remote regions, or other areas with no cell service or Wi-Fi. Mobile workers need to be able to continue work off-line because the work does not stop when connectivity stops. Working off-line is not difficult to implement if the app provides read-only access to background information, but if the app is designed to provide near real-time support for transactions, the app needs to store and sync data which is a nontrivial task. MOBILE DEVICES ARE MOBILE One of the most difficult challenges of working with mobile devices is that they are mobile, making it very difficult for IT departments to secure the data used by the device and govern the activities taking Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com 4
place on the device. They move beyond firewalls, travel across international borders and get lost in cabs. The prevailing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy makes it even more difficult, as corporations have less control. And, phones and tablets typically used for both personal and business purposes. IT has to secure employees from Non-business apps a user can inadvertently download an app with spyware which could compromise corporate data Non-employee users phones are often picked up by friends or children who are not authorized to use corporate apps Lost devices if a phone is left behind, IT has to be able to wipe sensitive corporate data without harming personal data such as pictures or music Security is always a challenge, but mobility adds a new dimension to the problem. MOBILE APP SERVERS: THE NEW BLACK Because of the complications that mobile devices bring to the table, additional technology on top of exiting SOA infrastructure is needed to support mobile apps. In much the same way that the shift to web-based apps required an app server, the shift to mobility requires a mobile app server. The purpose of a mobile app server is to bridge the gap from SOA to mobile. Figure 1. Mobile App Server: bridging the gap between SOA and mobile Consider what a mobile app server can do. Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com 5
AUTHENTICATION It is not practical for a mobile device to authenticate against multiple back-end systems, multiple times. These are tasks that can be managed by the mobile app server. It can manage all authentication including governance rules about who is authorized to do what and the mobile device only has to authenticate once with the server. WORKING OFF-LINE Mobile devices often lose connectivity, and being able to continue working off-line is beneficial for most apps and usually critical for enterprise apps. Storing data locally on the device is part of the solution, but the majority of the solution is synching transactions made while off-line back-end system and with transactions made by other devices. Again, the mobile app server can and should provide this service. DEVICE ACTIONS Another service that a mobile app server can provide is the ability to push actions to devices. If a device is lost, an employee s access rights change, or a corporate business process is altered, IT needs the ability to execute actions on the device. These actions can include wiping data, forcing a log out, or uploading a newer version of an app among others. When to issue these actions, and who to push them to, is managed by the mobile app server. DATA SERVICES Mobile devices are small. They need data to be in small packages and prepared for easy consumption. A mobile app server can host data services that not only pre-process (collect, integrate and filter) the data to lighten the load on the device, but convert it to the efficient REST format as well. BUSINESS LOGIC In an effort to lighten the load on the device as much as possible, and to create reusable services that are shared by multiple apps, the mobile app server should also host mobile services that are specific to the organization. In addition to making it easier for development teams to build apps, centrally hosting services makes it easier to update apps. Instead of having to modify multiple apps and then force all users to upload the new version, changes only have to be made in one location. VERIVO AKULA Verivo, with over 15 years of experience in enterprise mobility and the father of the app server as CTO, is revolutionizing the industry with the world s first mobile app server. It offers all of the above functionality and more to help organizations develop, secure and govern mobile apps. Akula can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud, and is extensible to accommodate any business requirement. Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com 6
Figure 2. The Verivo Akula Mobile App Server The open and extensible platform consists of a J2EE-compliant server, client SDKs, a server SDK, and a GUI management console for Comprehensive mobile security - Akula leverages existing security infrastructure and policies to extend authentication, authorization, data protection, and logging to mobile devices. Enterprise Data integration - Data is retrieved, aggregated and presented in a mobile-friendly format, and synched with back-end systems so apps can be used off-line. Proactive App Management - IT can monitor the state of all deployed apps centrally, and push actions to devices on-demand. For more information, please visit Verivo.com. Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com 7
CONCLUSION Mobility brings its own uniqueness into the enterprise, but fortunately the SOA you already have gives you most of what you need and a mobile app server does the rest. As Chris Marsh of 451 Research said, Winners will be companies with a comprehensive mobile strategy rethinking their application architecture. With our 15-year track record, Verivo has helped companies accelerate the development and deployment of mobile applications. Verivo s Akula is the only open mobile application platform that empowers teams to centrally secure and govern their enterprise mobile apps rapidly and across multiple devices. If you have any questions about Verivo, Akula, or building mobile apps in general, please do not hesitate to contact us. To reach us or download any of our other resources, please visit www.verivo.com. Verivo Software 1000 Winter Street Waltham MA 02451 781.795.8200 sales@verivo.com 8