Mobile Expert Interview Series: 10seconds Software's Greg Donaldson, Part 1

10seconds Software's
Greg Donaldson

I want to introduce Greg Donaldson from 10seconds Software to you. He is the Founder and Director of the Australian mobility company, 10seconds Software, a company he started two years ago and now serves as the chief solution architect.

Greg has been working around enterprise mobility for the past five years and has spent much of his career working in the banking industry, but also has experience working in the RFID and barcode space.

Note:  These are not Greg's exact words, rather my notes from our interview.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Greg: I ride my mountain bike to work and carry my four year old daughter to school on a bike seat so am careful what I carry. I carry an iPhone, iPad and a Dell laptop.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device?
Greg: My Twitter app is used constantly, and so is WhatsApp (chatting app), Viber (VoIP app).

Kevin: Do you use your mobile device to buy things?
Greg: Yes, I buy music and apps.

Kevin: How many computing devices do you have in your home?
Greg: Four, two laptops, an iPad and an iPhone.


Kevin: What is different today, than when you started in enterprise mobility?
Greg: The connectivity and the speed of the connectivity is greatly improved. In the past it was only store and forward, now you can be online all the time.

Kevin: What industries do you see adopting mobility today?
Greg: Demand is horizontal. Any company that has a mobile workforce, especially in the services sector.

Kevin: What business processes do you see companies mobilizing first?
Greg: Manager visibility and approvals.

Kevin: What are some of the most surprising trends you saw in enterprise mobility during 2010?
Greg: The domination of mobility by Apple. Internal pressures from employees to mobilize. The internal staff demanding iPhone support and applying a lot of pressure. They want smartphones that work for them. It was a user driven demand. The consumer market is driving employees’ preferences.

Kevin: What are some of the biggest challenges you see in mobility today?
Greg: Education. The marketplace is changing so rapidly that companies can’t make decisions on what to do. Many are sitting on the fence waiting for things to stabilize. Someone needs to make a decision on where to start.

Kevin: How are enterprise mobility implementations different from other IT projects?
Greg: They shouldn’t be any different. I am assuming the company has a good infrastructure for supporting a mobile workforce. Mobility is just another way of looking at the same business data. From a project management perspective, it should be the same. The differences are the user experiences. Because the users have their own mobile smartphones, they expect more from the apps.

Click here to read more in the Mobile Expert Interview Series.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.