Delivery Options for Oracle Mobile Apps on iOS and Android

What are your options when it comes to building cross-platform Oracle mobile apps? Let's discuss popular mobility solutions for Oracle shops.

Oracle has been in the business of delivering the most comprehensive suite of enterprise applications since its inception. Over the years it has built a formidable range of on-premises applications to support productivity in large organizations. Many enterprises rely on Oracle’s applications to power their daily operations.

However, faced with technological disruptions like cloud-native computing and containerization, and competition from much smaller startups, Oracle’s large enterprise customers are now looking to integrate those business critical systems into a mobile-first world. In this post, we'll discuss popular options for Oracle shops.

Oracle has a wide range of solutions and products to cater to every kind of enterprise. Here is a list of the key platforms that Oracle delivers:

Key Oracle Platforms

1. Oracle EBS
   1. Oracle’s cash cow thus far, the EBS platform includes products for CRM, ERP, SCM and more.
   2. EBS has modules for order management, procurement, finance & more.
2. Oracle Siebel
   1. Siebel is the CRM platform that Oracle recommends to its customers who want to go all-in with Oracle. Many large organizations run their CRM operations in Siebel.
   2. A mature CRM platform for Sales teams, Siebel has been around for a while, and includes modules for marketing, service management and more.
3. Oracle PeopleSoft
   1. Alongside SAP and ADP, Oracle PeopleSoft is one of the leading HCM solutions for large enterprises that started out before Workday came on the scene.
   2. PeopleSoft is primarily focused on making HR operations simple with modules for approvals, expenses, and eProcurement.
4. Oracle JD Edwards
   1. Though aging, the JD Edwards platform is still supported by Oracle for its legacy customers who rely on it as their ERP platform of choice.
   2. JD Edwards ERP software comes in two avatars - JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World.
5. Oracle Fusion Applications
   1. The Oracle Fusion platform is a combination of LoB applications and middleware tools.
   2. It delivers solutions for ERP, CRM, and HCM.
   3. It also serves to integrate data across various enterprise applications.
6. Other Applications Built on Oracle Databases
1. Third party ISVs have developed a number of applications on Oracle databases over the decades. Popular versions of the leading relational database include 8i, 9i, 10g, 11g and 12c.

Organizations that rely on Oracle’s products typically use more than one Oracle product, or an entire suite. They use Oracle products for multiple teams like Finance, Sales, HR, IT and Marketing. These organizations ideally want to have their applications and data tightly integrated across teams. Some enterprises have decades worth of data in these systems.

This data needs to be accessed and consumed not just on a local network but by new digital business initiatives and a modern workforce that’s increasingly mobile-first. However, beginning with on-premise implementations, these organizations have accumulated significant technical debt over the years and face various challenges when looking to drive mobility.

Requirements to Deliver Mobility for Oracle Applications

1. Talent developing mobile apps: Hiring app developers, choosing between native, web and hybrid apps, developing for both iOS and Android, and ensuring the app works across all mobile devices - all this makes mobile development very complex, especially for enterprise applications like Oracle’s.
2. Integrating cloud & on-premise: Applications built in the pre-cloud era are fundamentally different from their modern counterparts. Most Oracle applications are aging and require a carefully-planned migration to the cloud.
3. Enforcing security policies: Security is the top priority for any business application. In a mobile-first world, there are new challenges like device management, especially in BYOD scenarios, and data encryption in transit and at rest.
4. Setting up access controls: To enable access to Oracle applications from mobile devices it requires role-based access controls (RBAC) across multiple devices. Depending on the setup, it may also require integration with external tools like Active Directory.
5. Integrating & accessing data: The data in Oracle applications become more valuable when they can be integrated with data housed in other systems. But data integration between legacy and modern apps is a big challenge. Good data management results in low latency, real-time access, and mature offline functionality on mobile devices.

Options for Enabling Mobility for Oracle Apps

Option 1 - Oracle’s Cloud & Mobility Solutions

Oracle is well-aware of the dilemma facing its customers. They chose Oracle’s enterprise solutions in the pre-cloud era, and are now looking to evolve their technology stack. Oracle recommends that customers move their on-premise Oracle applications to the Oracle Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform. Oracle Mobile Platform particularly focuses on extending legacy platforms like EBS and JD Edwards and enabling a new layer of mobility for them. Not only this, Oracle has made numerous efforts to create mobile apps with modern user interfaces. The Fluid redesign for Oracle PeopleSoft is the best example of this effort. In recent years, Oracle has shown that they have a comprehensive vision for cloud adoption and enterprise mobility. Oracle mobility solutions are a great option for organizations looking for enterprise-grade technology and the desire to work with one strategic vendor in Oracle.

Option 2 - Third-party Platform Option from Progress Kinvey

When considering alternatives, Progress has decades of experience integrating Oracle technology and works with more Oracle shops than any other ISV in the mobile appdev space. The mobility solution from Progress is Progress Kinvey, which delivers Oracle mobile apps with enterprise-grade integration using Kinvey Accelerate data management with Progress DataDirect.

Progress Kinvey delivers a number of benefits versus other third party mobility solutions:

• Data abstraction and protection for Oracle systems enables rapid app development using modern approaches, without having to replatform or upgrade existing Oracle systems.
• Truly Native iOS and Android Support for Oracle systems is achieved with NativeScript, the popular open source framework created by Progress, to deliver native cross-platform apps using enterprise JavaScript developers that are easy to find.
• Enjoy the ease of serverless: Kinvey is a full-stack solution taking care of the IaaS plumbing so you don’t need to. It provisions compute power, storage space, and configures networking between the underlying host instances. All you need to do is focus on building the best mobile apps, Kinvey takes care of the rest with its serverless backend.
• Optimize mobile app performance for Oracle systems: Kinvey Accelerate enables mobile apps to deliver sub-second responses for every request to meet requirements of more demanding mobile users.

In summary, Progress Kinvey is the low-risk and low-friction approach for organizations to deliver Oracle apps using a third party mobile platform. If you’re looking for an application development partner, you can request a quote from a Progress Kinvey partner with deep Oracle experience.

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