MEAP(Mobile Enterprise Application Platform) provides an environment for the development of apps, facilitating with tools and middleware that not only aids in development but also in deployment and management too. Particularly in the scenarios where organizations want a support for three or more applications, or three or more operating system, or at least three or more back-end data source, MEAP is extremely useful. The magic happens due to the intelligent architecture of MEAP, which can be considered as broken in two components viz middleware server and a client application.
The former one handles the complex tasks of cross-platform support, security, integration, etc. While the later one connects to middleware and acts as a driver for UI and core business logic of the app. The work scope of former does not include storing of data. Instead, it acts as a connecting path to the back-end system (can be thought as JDBC-ODBC bridge). The delivery of content to mobile devices can be either done through native app i.e. deployment of a dedicated software onto the device, a thicker approach, or making the website compatible with the handheld devices using technologies like HTML5, and CSS, which is actually a thinner approach.