SAP Fiori - Let's look at the available options

Using modern UX design principles, SAP Fiori delivers a role-based, consumer-grade user experience across all lines of business, tasks, and devices. SAP Fiori has multiple access options, with the browser based solution being the most popular one. Though there are other options available and others under development, the browser based option is still the most preferred option primarily due to its simplicity and ease of use.

Let us look into the different options available for users to run Fiori apps:

1. SAP Fiori using a browser

SAP Fiori is a web based application primarily targeted for the mobile phones. The Fiori framework is designed in such a way that the applications could be used from any device (mobile, tablet or desktop) using the standard browsers available with the system.

Web based Fiori apps can basically be delivered in 2 ways:

1. On-premise, where the apps are installed on an on-premise SAP Netweaver Gateway server.
2. Cloud Edition, where the apps are available on the cloud through the Hana Cloud Platform

2. SAP Fiori Client

Fiori client is a Kapsel (meaning “container” in German) runtime container that needs to be installed on the phone and runs the same Fiori apps (which are meant for the browser) using the container webview. It caches the application assets (like javascripts, css, images, etc) and thus provides a lot of performance benefits. The client can be downloaded from the public app stores for iOS, Android or Windows and can be configured in 6 easy steps.

Customizing the Fiori client - What if you have further customizing requirements? Customers can use the SAP Mobile Platform SDK to build a custom SAP Fiori client (for iOS and Android) to adjust the branding, add support for custom authentication schemes, or add additional SAP, partner, or open source plugins.

3. SAP Fiori Hybrid applications

Isn’t there an option to use the Fiori applications as native mobile apps? Well here is another interesting option available for customers in which the SAP Fiori applications, which are originally available for the browser, can be packaged as self-contained native apps. It delivers a robust user experience because only the business data uses the network resources. It also allows certain SAP Fiori apps be used in offline mode. Use the SAP Mobile Platform SDK to package the apps as native apps for iOS or Android.

4. SAP Fiori Native applications

Isn’t Fiori supposed to be for the mobile? So why don’t we have an option to create a true native Fiori application? Well this is a question which many people including customers, developers have been asking. SAP and Apple came out with a strategic partnership announcement by which Apple would develop an iOS SDK (based on its popular platform Swift) to develop and deliver SAP Fiori native apps for iPhones and iPads. We need to wait for a few more months to hear more on this development. With Android being the most popular consumer mobile OS, it is not far that we can hear a similar partnership with Google.

Incase of any discussions or requirements that you may have, feel free to write to [email protected] and we would be happy to help you.