Systems and applications are going ‘mobile’ – even colossally large corporate enterprise system such as SAP. Of course, only small parts of its ‘back-end’ functions and data are getting deployed to mobile devices. The deployment is in the form of the little apps that appear on the mobile device (such as an iPhone or iPad).
In the case of SAP, part of the project that we are working on is to provide field technicians with a mobile device that shows their work orders for the day, along with the technical documentation that they need to perform the work. (It’s a mobile deployment of SAP Plant Maintenance called ‘SAP Work Manager’). Every day before the technician goes out to the field, they will ‘synch’ their mobile device with the back office. The synch can also be done several times a day. Nothing is instantaneous, though! We still live in the real word. There are real zeroes and ones that need to get transmitted in little wireless internet protocol packets, so that the data can be written as magnetic zeroes and ones in the memory of the device. And out in the field the band-width may be limited – or there may be no connection at all.