Patni Teams with Top Software Firms on Enterprise Mobility 
Patni, a worldwide computer services firm, is teaming with the top enterprise software makers to create a Mobility Application Architecture (MAA) that will allow IT to easily support mobile access and collaboration with legacy and web-based data and applications.
Patni, a worldwide computer services firm, is teaming with the top enterprise software makers to create an Mobility Application Architecture, a multi-part framework that will allow enterprise IT to easily support mobile access and collaboration with legacy and web-based data and applications.
To ensure simplicity and efficiency, Patni’s MAA team is working closely with Oracle, SalesForce.com, SAP, Sybase and other top enterprise software firms, a Patni executive told Integration Developer News.
“We are seeing organizations refusing to standardize on just one smartphone, so many are allowing a couple devices or more, including Blackberry, iPhone and new Windows mobile devices,” Girish Avantsa, Vice President and Practice Head for CRM and EIA at Patni said. This willingness for companies to allow freedom of choice of mobile devices could create complexity for IT, so Patni’s MAA looks to help eliminate that, Avantsa told IDN.
According to Patni documents, MAA is focused on these IT and end user mobility benefits:
- Native Application built using Cross Platform Development Framework. Write once using Framework API and create builds for all platforms
- No (or less) cost of porting
- Just one codebase needs to be maintained
- Rapid application development
- Simplified MVC style client side framework, which allows devs to create apps using very light-weight coding options ( HTML, CSS, Ruby, etc.)
- Real-time integration with Siebel Business Objects using SOAP web services
- Multiple platform supported :-iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian
“We see the need for IT and application developers to have an environment that can let them easily accommodate multiple mobile OSes, for all phases end to end,” he said. Patni’s MAA is architected to support many specific end-to-end tasks, including: provisioning, integration, runtime management, data access, security and on-going maintenance.
MAA also has ready-to-deploy templates that address customer profiles or ‘problem statements,’” Avantsa told IDN. “We didn’t want to boil the ocean for mobility, so for us the key is to take a practical view at solving the most requested use cases – both for mobile end users and IT managers.”
“We see the need for IT and application developers to have an environment that can let them easily accommodate multiple mobile OSes, for all phases end to end.”
Girish Avantsa
Vice President and Practice Head for CRM and EIA
Patni
This “first-things-first approach” by Patni placed mobile support for field sales as a top focus, Avantsa said. As a result, MAA supports rapid and reliable data updates, look-ups to retrieve, update and create new information, and communicate non-sales data and applications.
Patni’s MAA also takes on the challenge of making mobile UIs manageable, consistent and scalable. “We will allow you to retain a common UI across all devices,” Avantsa said. “We are using Web 2.0 technologies and best practices to allow [companies] to maintain uniformity across all their various devices, which provides users a consistent look and feel and helps IT to avoid time-consuming and [device-specific] UI tweaks.”
In addition, Patni’s MAA provides what Avantsa called an “integrated view,” and goes beyond simple point-to-point mobile tie ins with single datasets or application. “Our architecture can integrate different streams from applications and data,” Avantsa said. “The key is to allow enterprise IT to integrate data from various sources, and then use the mobile UI to display the results from an integrated view of the data.”
Under the covers, Patni’s MAA includes these key components:
Device Component
A small device-resident application with key components for reliable access and integration (including communication manager, sync client, device DB, and security/encryption).
If the application is browser based, no device component is required. The mobile application will be accessed on the device through its browser using a url of the application server.
Server Components
- Synchronization Server to connect to the enterprise applications directly or through an application layer. It supports data synchronization for mobile devices.
- Application Server to integrate the sync server with enterprise applications. The result: a single input stream for mobile applications from a wide range of systems within the organization.
Enterprise Mobile App Store, which provides an easy-to-access and manage repository for multiple device-enabled applications, as well as installables and documentation.
Access To Enterprise Applications including CRM, ERP, and other SaaS-based applications that can be extended to mobile devices via web services or direct BAPI/ RFC, etc. calls. In addition, this enables legacy network-based applications and data to be connected to mobile users via flat file or csv, etc. data exchange. Patni’s MAA is designed not be 100% dependent upon bandwidth for performance. “We’ve architected the solution so that if or when you get disconnected, you can still receive a remote data connections,” Avantsa added.
As part of its lifecycle approach to enterprise mobility, Patni’s MAA also aides maintenance by providing IT admins a set of pre-defined, mobile-ready stylesheets and templates for letting users view and interact with their traditional desktop and web-based applications.
