Unwired Platform provides a solution architecture that extends the reach of your enterprise systems. The key elements of the solution architecture are mobile business objects, device applications, synchronization paradigms, security, and application deployment.
- Connecting and interacting with various enterprise information systems and applications that exist in any large or medium size corporate IT infrastructure that supports customers, employees, sales, partners, suppliers, and executives.
- Implementing a data model that fits the application requirements and physical restrictions and capabilities of the mobile device, such as network bandwidth, storage capacity, connectivity, security, and availability of consistent data.
- Reliably propagating user transactions initiated on a device that may or may not have network connectivity.
- Ensuring secure access to data and application functionality that is available only to authorized users.
Developers need to build the most intuitive application possible without compromising on latency and the user interface. In general, once an application is built, it is passed from developer to production deployment, where the production staff manages application routing within Unwired Platform.
Managing mobile applications requires a streamlined process to deploy applications to mobile devices, and to manage routine device tasks, security, and application upgrades. Unwired Platform offers a solution architecture based on years of field-tested, enterprise-level mobility experience. The key is to manage the complexity of large scale deployment, while keeping it simple enough for line-of-business application types for small segment of users. This allows the customer base to grow, and expand their mobile reach.
The cornerstone of the solution architecture is the concept of the mobile business object (MBO). Interaction with any enterprise information system (EIS) data source requires appropriate knowledge of the objects in the EIS. The MBO represents the data model of the mobile application, and provides an abstraction layer that simplifies EIS complexity, mobile connectivity, and network issues. MBOs are built by developers familiar with the data and transactional requirements of the mobile application, and how that connects to the existing EIS data sources. The MBO development captures the intrinsic details of mobile application data and transactional functions.
The solution architecture also covers the options the platform offers for device application development for supported platforms. There are inherent issues with building applications for multiple platforms, and the details covered here help describe how Unwired Platform simplifies the most complex aspects of the device application development. Production deployment scenarios and specific platform components are discussed later.