Choosing the right Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) partner is essential when considering your mobile strategy. Understand how organisations can keep their enterprise app portfolio manageable, and successful. This whitepaper will give you the tools you need to make the most of your MEAP: - the importance of developing, integrating, deploying and managing your mobile project with your MEAP partner - the differences between MEAPs, be they existing, custom propriety or hybrid platforms. - the pros and cons of each type of MEAP

1. Part 3:
Choosing a Mobile Enterprise
Application Platform (MEAP)
The essential guide to becoming a
Mobile Enterprise
Rock Star

2. The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 3)
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Introduction
Enterprise mobility is one of the most exciting opportunities within
the workplace these days because of all the change management
opportunities it provides organizations. There is a real paradigm shift
occurring in terms of how organizations are looking at their business
processes and how they can change – really CHANGE – them with
mobile enterprise applications.
This 3 part series will guide you and your enterprise through:
1. Developing an actionable mobile enterprise application
strategy
2. Creating a mobile enterprise application business case
3. Choosing the right Mobile Enterprise Application Platform
(MEAP) partner
Source: Symantec 2012
of businesses are
making line-of-business
apps accessible from
mobile devices
Over
Half

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Standardising your Mobile Enterprise
Application Platform (MEAP)
“MEAP vendors offering approaches that support mobile OS
diversity have significant advantages over application suite or
mobile OS platforms/tools in three situations: (1) when there
are three or more applications; (2) when there are three or
more targeted OSs or runtime platforms; and (3) when projects
involve the integration of three or more back-end systems.”
Gartner’s ‘Rule of Three’ (2012)

4. The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 3)
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To keep up with market demand, many big organisations have given business units the
freedom to create and launch dozens or even hundreds of apps. While this has enabled
business units, across markets, to get to market quickly innovative applications and benefit
from the rapid return of investment, one year later the benefit of freedom has turned into a
major challenge.
• Maintaining the applications with bug fixes, support of new devices and OS updates,
ensuring that content is up to date, etc
• Keeping the apps up to date when backend platform, external service APIs and other
integration points change
• Updating content from a myriad of content management systems, back office tools
and admin interfaces
• Measuring and comparing applications equally to apply insights and learning’s from
one initiative and apply for others
• Listening to user feedback on the app stores (or internally) and update the apps to
keep users satisfied and engaged
• Inconsistency of brand and look and feel implementations
• Securing data (confidential and public), managing user authentication, traceability
where logging is important

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So what should organizations do to
make their enterprise app portfolio
manageable?
As originally stated by Gartner, any organisation planning on creating 3 or more enterprise
class apps in the coming years should consider establishing a standardised Mobile Enterprise
Application Platform (MEAP). Short term it may require a bit more work and investment but
the investment will quickly pay off with:
• Faster speed to market and ease of keeping the applications up to date
• Lower cost of development and maintenance
• Enhanced business intelligence
• Data and user security
• Other benefits such as brand consistency, change management, CRM and system
architecture.

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MEAP
DEPLOY
DEVELOP INTEGRATE
DEPLOYMANAGE

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How to choose a MEAP solution
Once the requirements are clear there is a choice between choosing an existing platform and
vendor, building one or possibly a hybrid of the two.
1. Existing Platform: There are various vendors out there although most are also tied
into a specific backend supplier. Existing solutions include SAP Mobile Platform,
IBM Worklight, KonyOne and GG/DMI Open MEAP. Most of them are primarily paper
products as each implementation is 80% custom development, but provide a good
starting point.
2. Creating a Custom Proprietary Platform: An alternative is to establish a standard
framework based on a combination of best practice guidelines, tools and code that
can be reused across the applications. Organisations such as MTV and ESPN have
done this successfully over time.
3. Hybrid Model: The third option is to use an existing platform and customize it based
on the organisations needs. This may be an especially great alternative if there are
many common platforms and processes already and can be leveraged to create a
standard for the applications as well.

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What are the pros and cons of each
model?
Pros Cons
• Faster speed to market
• Potentially lower cost
• Ongoing support
• Tailored to the organisations
needs
• Flexibility
• Combining the best of
an existing platform and
custom development
• License cost
• Lock-in to one supplier
• Keeping up to speed with
technology development
• Can be costly to develop
and keep up to date
• License costs
• Lock-in to one supplier
• Flexibility
Existing platform
Creating a custom platform
Hybrid model

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An overview of available platforms
Description Benefits
Create and deploy mobile apps for
the workforce and customers
Mobile application platform to
build, run and manage mobile
applications.
One of the first MEAP solutions
which claims to be standard based
and reducing coding by up to 90%.
• Provides the greatest number of plugins and
tools for SAP integration.
• Cross-platform development based on
Phonegap which is the most established
dev tool
• Plugins and tools for other IBM platforms
• Supports HTML5, Native and Hybrid apps
• Segment solutions and references for all
major verticals
• Framework for cross-platform development
SAP Mobile Platform (previously
Syclo)
IBM Worklight
KonyOne Studio

10. The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 3)
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Description Benefits
Mobile cloud platform that manages
the mobile lifecycle from Design,
Build and Integrate to Publish, Run
and Manage apps
Backend as a Service solution,
offering data integrations, legacy
system mobilization, as well
as complete app backends for
developers creating apps
Open development framework with
reusable components, back-end
plugins for most major platforms,
content management, middleware
and best practice guidelines.
• Open platform allowing standardized tools
• Client technology enables “write once,”
deploy on any device, any version
• Backend as a Service reduces cost of
backend development
• Plugins for Oracle, Salesforce
• 100% based on open source
• Using a combination of native development
and web technology
Antenna Software AMPChroma
Kinvey
GG/DMI Open MEAP

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Conclusion
Avoid worrying too much about the challenges of maintaining a portfolio of different
applications and find the right MEAP solution for your organisation will deliver benefits from
mobile enterprise applications in the short and long term.
For more information on how to become an enterprise app rockstar read the other parts of
our series.
• Part 1: Developing an actionable mobile enterprise application strategy
• Part 2: Creating a mobile enterprise application business case

12. About Golden Gekko
We transform existing businesses and help create
new industry leaders in the mobile space through
our experience, technology innovation, UX design
and reliable quality solutions.
Our services include service concept design, UX/UI
design, native app, HTML5, mobile web and backend
development, quality assurance and distribution. With
1500+ projects delivered and 150+ clients we provide
solutions for telecom, retail, CPG, media, enterprise,
government, healthcare/pharma, transportation and
travel.
For enterprise clients, we offer solutions such as
Meetr, a mobile productivity and collaboration solution
providing secure access to documents, business
intelligence, meeting planning, data gathering, CRM,
ERP and more by aggregating existing enterprise
platforms.
London
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