ACEEE Int. J. on Network Security , Vol. 02, No.
02, Apr 2011
Smartphone Enterprise Applications
Rahul Pandhare, Sunil Joglekar
Innovation & Research Labs, Patni Computer Systems Ltd, Seepz, Andheri(E) Mumbai 400 096.
rahul.pandhare@patni.com, sunil.joglekar@patni.com
Abstract— Smartphones like iPhone, Blackberry, Android,
etc. are a wonderful combination of computers and cell-phones.
They include many multi-media features that seem to be
capturing the interests of individuals. With the growing
popularity of these devices, enterprises have discovered them
to be useful for employees who are distant / dispersed from the
office. Therefore, developing smartphone applications for the
enterprises has become necessary. In this paper we describe
our methodology for smartphone enablement of enterprise
software systems. This comprises of a framework to assess the
business processes to identify the potential candidates for
smartphone enablement and also guidelines for re-factoring
the system architecture.As most of the enterprises are either
web applications and/or web services, the technical approach
will provide the details of developing the solution using web
technology. Based on our experience, we briefly discuss the
benefits and limitations of our approach. We conclude the paper
with a short note on the evolution of web technology in the
smartphone area.
I.ENTERPRISE ACCESS AND SMARTPHONES
Over the years, the software systems architecture has
evolved from monolithic to client-server to web applications.
Though the underlying functionality has remained same, the
UI and access mechanisms have made tremendous leaps.
With the availability of enterprise application on
smartphones, we can have immediate access to key customer
data while still on the field. Mobility can thus help in
improving operational effectiveness, visibility across value
chain and reducing operational cost of an organization. For
this, we need to have an enterprise wide mobility strategy in
place.
In the following sections we have described methodology
for smartphone enabling an enterprise application. In this
we first assess the suitability of a business process for
smartphone enablement and then go ahead with the technical
feasibility for development of smartphone enterprise
application.
II.ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK
The assessment framework focuses on bringing a clear
distinction between “must have” and “nice to have” solutions.
Prioritization of the business processes on the basis of
expected business benefits and creating road map would be
the key to ensuring maximum benefits and reducing the risk
of failure.
© 2011 ACEEE
DOI: 01.IJNS.02.02.68
A. Assessing business processes for smartphone
enablement
Mapping the advantages that mobility offers against
characteristics of the business activities could be of help in
identifying the potential business process suitability for
smartphone enablement. Once we identify the potential
candidates, we should check maturity of the existing IT
infrastructure and how it supports the desired business goals.
This qualitative approach should compare business benefits
and gaps in existing underlying IT infrastructure capabilities
and help in prioritizing the business process.
Anywhere anytime is an USP of smartphone solutions.
Extension of the enterprise systems functionalities such as
CRM, automation of manual data capturing and delivery of
real time data at point of activities are key enablers for the
operational effectiveness and efficiencies. Mobility also
enhances the responsiveness, collaboration among different
stakeholders. During assessment exercises, one should look
for the business processes with above requirements and its
business criticality too.
B. Assessment Framework
In order to assess whether a mobility solution would be
beneficial or not the following steps needs to be followed:
Business Need and Gap Analysis - The purpose behind
this is to evaluate business processes that have greater
benefits from mobility solutions. This will involve Need-
Gap analysis based on business processes requirement and
As-Is system capabilities to fulfill those requirements of the
organization.
Analysis and Recommendation – Based on the scores
obtained in the “Need for Mobility Solution” and the “As –
Is System Capabilities”, it helps us derive the Need-Gap
index which tells us whether we can go for a mobility solution
for the application or not. Fig .1 shows the result of a sample
assessment. Applications which fall under the “Most
Suitable” zone are ideal candidates for smartphone
enablement. “Suitable” are the ones which can be smartphone
enabled but the benefits may not be up-right justifiable. “Not
Suitable” are the ones, which should not be considered for
smartphone enablement.
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 ACEEE Int. J. on Network Security , Vol. 02, No. 02, Apr 2011
Fig.1. Sample Assessment of Enterprise Applications, which are being
considered for smartphone enablement.
Once the business processes are identified as potential
candidates for smartphone enablement then the re-factoring
of system architecture is done.
III.ARCHITECTURE APPROACH FOR SMARTPHONE ENABLING WEB
BASED ENTERPRISE APPLICATION
Almost 80% of the requests that come for smartphone
development are related to smartphone enablement of
existing enterprise applications. Essentially most of the
enterprise applications are either web applications or web
services. Accessing the same web application on smartphone
will not work owing to the constrained environment of the
device.
A. Native or Web Platform
In order to develop smartphone applications we can either
adopt native technology or web technology. Using native
technology, the entire application i.e. the presentation,
processing, data storage etc. will reside on the device. This
allows off-line operation, access to native features and better
performance. On the other hand, we run into issues of
deployment and distribution. With so many operating systems
like Android, Windows, Mac, we end up building systems
specific application. As most of the enterprise applications
are in web technology, it will be economical to choose web
platform for smartphone enablement of these applications.
For refactoring the system architecture, we need to verify
set of preconditions like availability of - Use Cases, Business
Façade and Test Base.
B. Architectural changes
The architecture of a smartphone-based enterprise
application is very much similar to that of any enterprise
application. It follows the standard – web server, application
server and database server communication.
The changes that are to be incorporated in an existing
enterprise application are:
• Implement mechanism to identify the source of a
request. This can be done by recognizing the user-
agent in the request or through the proxy that is being
used or by means of WURFL (Wireless Universal
Resource File), WALL (Wireless Abstraction Library)
etc.
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© 2011 ACEEE
DOI: 01.IJNS.02.02.68
• Add a separate web server for hosting smartphone
specific input and output forms. The mobile web
server is a replica of the normal web server. The
requests from smartphones are recognized by the
proxy server and are routed to the mobile web server
in order to display the device specific content as
shown in Fig 2.
Fig.2. Architecture diagram of an enterprise web application
C. Steps for Developing Smartphone Enterprise
Application
Following are the steps for developing web-based
smartphone enterprise application:
1. The initial exercise will be to collate all the existing
use cases and the role based access mechanism that
is being followed in the current enterprise
applications.
2. Select the use case and roles which should be available
through smartphones.
3. The presentation layers including the forms and the
reports will have to undergo changes to take care of
the small screen size. Forms which earlier might have
been spanned to pages will now have shorter and
lesser content. Similarly the reports/dashboards will
need post-processing to fit onto device.
4. Identifying functions in the Business façade that will
be accessed by the smartphones. There may be few
cases where we may have to alter the business logic.
This can be handled by way of servlet chaining.
5. The existing functional and acceptance test cases can
be re-used for testing the smartphones applications.
VI.CASE STUDIES
We have considered two case studies to show the way
we have implemented this methodology for our customers.
They are – Time and Expense Management and Defect
Tracking System.
A. Time and Expense Management system
This application facilities addition of users, projects,
expense reports, timesheets along with approvals. The
smartphone application (Fig.3.) has a subset of these
functionalities like approval workflow and the timesheet
defaulter list.

Fig.3. Time and Expense Management System
B. Defect Tracking System
This is a defect management application which allows
project creation, entry of defects, changing of defect status
Fig.4. Defect Tracking System using smartphone
It provides dashboard which shows the details of the
defect count against each project. The same application when
accessed through smartphone provides dashboard in a pie-
chart which is much easier to read through smartphones
(fig.4).
V.BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS
Following are the benefits that we can derive by web
enabling smartphone enterprise applications:
• Reduction in cycle time as folks away from desktops
can have access to the applications.
• Reduced cycle time leads to improved productivity
as there is less wait period.
• Economical and cost-effective solution as we are
using the existing business facade.
• Effective management of application distribution
across devices.
The limitations of this solution are:
• Possibility of fragmentation.
• Internet connection and bandwidth availability.
© 2011 ACEEE
DOI: 01.IJNS.02.02.68
ACEEE Int. J. on Network Security , Vol. 02, No. 02, Apr 2011
VI.FUTURE DIRECTIONS
One of the major drawbacks of web applications in
smartphones is accessing device native features like contacts,
camera etc. There are workarounds like BONDI framework
which provide Application Programmable Interfaces (APIs).
These APIs allow application developers to access key
terminal features and functions.
There are browsers like Opera Mini which are evolving
into development platforms. It is specially designed for
mobile phones, smartphones etc and uses J2ME platform.
Added to this is HTML 5 which is another critical step for
web application development. It has in-built features like
providing field validation, off-line support and geo-location
APIs.
Combination of Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi)
and Cloud computing are making smartphones even more
powerful by providing services on demand. Based on the
geographical location that the user is in, the smartphones
are capable to detect and provide pertinent services which
can also be referred as location based context aware services.
All these areas are potential candidates for further
research in the area of smartphone enterprise applications.
REFERENCES
[1] Mobile developer’s guide to the galaxy (Published in 2009)
(http://www1.j2mepolish.org/downloads/
MobileDevelopersGuideToTheGalaxy.pdf)
[2] Patterns: SOA client access integration solutions (Published
in 2006) (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/
sg246775.pdf).
[3] Enterprise j2me developing mobile java applications
(Published in 2004) (http://books.google.co.in/
[4] Mobile applications with IBM WebSphere everyplace
access design and development (Published in 2001) (http://
www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246259.pdf)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rahul Pandhare is a Business Research Analyst in Innovation
Research Lab at Patni Computer Systems. He has around 5 years
of experience as software professional. His primary areas of interest
are Cloud Computing, Enterprise Mobility et al.
Sunil Joglekar is a Senior Technical Architect in Innovation
Research Lab at Patni Computer Systems. He has 18 years
experience as a Software Professional and has spent about 5 years
in United States mostly as a consultant at Sun Microsystems. He
specializes in architecting testable solutions for complex enterprise
software systems and their integrations such as EAI / B2Bi / SOA.
His primary areas of interest are: strategizing & architecting
innovative solutions with Web 2.0, Cloud Computing and
Autonomic Computing et al.
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