Business Intelligence tools are the starting point for SAP BusinessObjects Mobile. With the exception of SAP BusinessObjects analysis for Microsoft Office, the other SAP BusinessObjects BI tools provide good support for mobile deployment. Mobile apps are the future of data consumption and analysis. Integrating your mobile device into your analytical world is just natural progression. iOS and Android are supported, and there is also limited support for BlackBerry. Specific mobile platforms support different SAP BI tools. We will look at this in more detail later. For specific versions supported by each OS, refer to the Mobile PAM.
SAP BusinessObjects Mobile is the only app you need for high-quality reporting. Mobile reporting provides the following benefits:
- Access to your business data anywhere, anytime
- Connections to live business data and make smarter decisions
- An interactive experience for business users and executives
- The ability to intuitively access, navigate, and analyze data
- Smart search for relevant information
- SAP BusinessObjects Mobile architecture
The following diagram illustrates the architecture of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform 4.2:
The preceding diagram defines the following BI tool grouping: discovery and analysis; dashboarding and apps; and reporting. These groupings are important because different groupings are supported by different operating systems for mobile devices (except for iOS, no other OS supports all of these groupings).
The SAP BusinessObjects Mobile solution enables a user to make faster and informed decisions on the fly based on the visualization that was created based on SAP BusinessObjects Intelligence's content and data. It contains three components:
- SAP BusinessObjects Mobile client (SAP BI app)
- SAP BusinessObjects Mobile server
- SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform server
These also have optional elements for enhanced security in the landscape:
- A reverse proxy server
- A sybase unwired platform server with a relay server