Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Custom Mobile Applications for the Enterprise

When I was managing a mobile applications company a few years ago, our entire market was SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises). In over half the mobile application development projects that we worked on there was NO existing backend database. Companies would contact us and say they needed the following:

A mobile application for a specific business process, inspection project, or unique business model.
They needed a database to store the data they collected in the field.
They needed mobile middleware to synchronize the data from the mobile devices to the database
Web access to the database so people around the company could easily view the data.
Reports on the data collected in the field.

Sometimes it is easy to focus only on the largest companies that use ERPs, but it is important to recognize that the majority of companies in the world do not use big ERPs and these companies are often service companies doing work in the field. These SMEs do not often have their own mobile middleware. They want as much simplicity as possible.

iPad Databases, Gartner and Enterprise Mobility

I was given a demo of ClickSoftware's field services application using HTML 5 and running on an iPad earlier this week. Very cool! It runs in both offline and online mode and can store the data on the iPad in an offline mode. This is significant because iPad is not set up to store content on the device.

I wonder what HTML 5 will mean to Sybase's mobile database business. Will HTML make developing mobile devices easier? How will HTML change the opportunities for mobile application developers?

I attended a briefing by Gartner's Michael King this week on enterprise mobility. Here are some of his comments:

Security and Enterprise Mobility

A VC (venture capital) firm called me yesterday asking my opinion on the importance of security in enterprise mobile applications. I told him every large enterprise asks about security, but they generally expect the mobile platform to address this issue. For example, if a large enterprise purchased the Sybase Mobility Platform, they would expect that the platform would include a solid security component.

Is that how you see it, or am I wrong?

The VC was looking at potentially funding a number of mobile security start-ups. They wanted to know if there was a market for third party mobile security solutions in large enterprises. I would like your feedback and thoughts on this. Is security simply a check box on a feature list of a mobile platform, or will large enterprises look for additional third party mobile security solutions?

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility 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.

Questions about Enterprise Mobility and Recent Industry Developments

I have been contemplating two enterprise mobility subjects today.

1) Syclo is known in the industry for having a very good mobility platform. This has served them well, but may now also be the source of a dilemma. What are they to do with their mobile platform investment in light of SAP's acquisition of Sybase? Syclo, as a co-innovation partner of SAP, will want to support SAP and their Sybase Mobility Platform, but they have a decade worth of investment into their own comprehensive mobility platform.

Here is how Syclo describes their platform, "Syclo's mobile solution framework (Agentry Platform) makes it easy to deploy and manage multiple mobile solutions in all areas of your business. For over a decade, Syclo has built on its mobile expertise and experience at over 750 organizations worldwide to bring you a family of 80 percent preconfigured mobile products that automate work order management, inventory management, scheduling, rounds and readings, turnaround tracking and more. "I image Syclo will now want to offer their customers a choice of two very good platforms, 1) Agentry Mobile Platform, or 2) Sybase Mobility Platform. This will be great for customers, but the challenge for Syclo is developing on and supporting two different platforms and re-engineering their existing mobile applications to run on either. They are self-funded, and this is not a small or inexpensive task.

Kevin's M2M News Weekly - November 3, 2010

Welcome to Kevin's M2M News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to M2M (machine to machine) and embedded mobile devices that I read each week. I aggregate the information, include the original links and add a synopsis of each article. I also search for the latest market numbers such as market size, growth and trends in and around the M2M market.

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Remote sensing is helping a new radiotherapy treatment combat prostate cancer. The therapy works by using three tiny transmitters, the size of a rice grain, implanted in the tumor, which give off a constant stream of signals that are picked up by a receiver in X-ray equipment.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Remote-sensing-to-kill-prostate-cancer/articleshow/6814527.cms

Flexible Mobile Solutions - The Great Debate

When I was managing an enterprise mobility company a few years back, nearly all of my customers wanted the flexibility to customize their own mobile applications and develop new ones from scratch using our MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) and SDK (software development kit). The reality, though, was different. Our customers seldom wanted to take the time to learn how to develop enterprise quality mobile applications. They just called us and used our professional services to customize or develop new applications.

Here is the dilemma for mobility vendors: Do they develop mobile solutions flexible enough, and with SDKs simple enough, for their customers to build their own solutions, or do they lock down templates and mobile applications with only limited configuration and customization capabilities?

Mobile Applications and Their Real Value

Where is the true value in mobile applications? This is a big question right now for mobility vendors, especially in the SAP ecosystem. SAP acquired Sybase and their SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform), so the platform question is now answered. So where is the real value now for mobility vendors? What are they going to bring to the market that is of great value and provides them with a defensible market position?

Is it the ability to collect data?
Is it the ability to query data from a backend databases?
Is it the ability to synchronize?
Is it the ability to store data on a mobile database in an offline mode?
Is it a mobile apps or forms builder?
Is it the integration with ERPs?
Is it mobile web tools?

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - November 2, 2010

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile retailing applications, mobile payments and mobile marketing applications that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

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The number of financial institutions offering downloadable applications, customized websites and check depositing services for mobile devices is expected to skyrocket in the next year.

http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/175_203/mobile-banking-payments-1027486-1.html

What Do Customers Want from a Mobile Retailing Application?

I came across a interesting report today about mobile retail applications. This report came from the EDI/B2B company, Sterling Commerce. You may not expect an EDI/B2B company to be conducting research on mobility, but they provide web portals and other solutions that are now accessed by mobile devices. As a result, it makes sense to conduct research on why customers are accessing portals on mobile devices.

The Sterling Commerce report indicates that product availability is becoming a necessity for impatient shoppers. Nearly two thirds (66 percent) of consumers surveyed considered it important to very important to be able to conveniently determine in-stock availability before visiting a store. It was significantly more popular than store locators and even the ability to read product reviews while in the store.

Microsoft, Enterprise Mobility and Software Development Kits

I read an interesting article on CNET written by Josh Lowensohn on the future of Microsoft's Silverlight. He quotes Microsoft's president of server and tools, Bob Muglia, as saying "our strategy has shifted," and noted that major release cycles for the runtime had slowed. This is an interesting subject for the developers of enterprise mobility applications designed for the Microsoft platforms.

Here is another quote from Microsoft's Muglia, "When we started Silverlight, the number of unique/different Internet-connected devices in the world was relatively small, and our goal was to provide the most consistent, richest experience across those devices, but the world has changed. As a result, getting a single runtime implementation installed on every potential device is practically impossible. We think HTML will provide the broadest, cross-platform reach across all these devices."

Recently I have been seeing and hearing that more and more of the enterprise mobility vendors are looking at HTML 5, and hybrid mixes of native application support and HTML 5 for their roadmaps. I believe we are seeing a significant trend here.

What do you think? Is this a good thing?

Click to Download a Free Aberdeen Report on Mobility in Service

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst

Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility 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.