Many things have changed in the mobile space over the last few years. Here’s an update on our strategy for mobile apps for the E-Business Suite.

We’re building our family of mobile apps for the E-Business Suite using Oracle Mobile Application Framework. This framework allows us to write a single application that can be run on Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. Mobile apps for the E-Business Suite will share a common look-and-feel.

The E-Business Suite is a suite of over 200 product modules spanning Financials, Supply Chain, Human Resources, and many other areas. Our mobile app strategy is to release standalone apps for specific product modules.

Our goal is to support smaller screen as well as larger screens, with the smaller screen versions generally delivered first. Where possible, we will deliver these as universal apps.

DEPLOYING EBS MOBILE APPS

The mobile apps, themselves (i.e. client-side components) can be downloaded by end-users from the Apple iTunes today. Android versions will be available from Google play. You can monitor this blog for Android-related updates.

Where possible, our mobile apps should be deployable with a minimum of server-side changes. These changes will generally involve a consolidated server-side patch for technology-stack components, and possibly a server-side patch for the functional product module. Updates to existing mobile apps may require new server-side components to enable all of the latest mobile functionality.

All EBS product modules are certified for internal intranet deployments (i.e. used by employees within an organization’s firewall). Today, many organizations running the E-Business Suite do not expose their EBS environment externally and all of the mobile apps that we’re building are intended for internal employee use. Recognizing this, our mobile apps are currently designed for users who are connected to the organization’s intranet via VPN. We expect that this may change in future updates to our mobile apps.