Enterprise Mobility Vendor Pyxis Mobile Becomes Verivo

Pyxis Mobile becomes Verivo

I received a call early this week from Pyxis Mobile's CMO Chris Willis.  He wanted to let me know of big and exciting changes happening at Pyxis Mobile.  The most obvious is their name.  They will henceforth be known as Verivo, The Enterprise Mobility Company.  On a branding and marketing note - they have also adopted the color purple.

In addition to their new fondness for all things colored purple, they are now sitting on top of a truck load of green cash from big name investors including Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Ascent Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital.  A grand total of $17 million in new cash from this latest round of funding.  This latest round is intended to fund their new super sized ambitions, new offices, new global expansion (Asia and Europe) and a lot of new hiring.  If you are a mobility expert looking for new and exciting work contact them.

Verivo (formerly Pyxis Mobile) has a lot of interesting mobile technology and a very unique pricing structure based not on numbers of users, but on servers.  This can dramatically simplify pricing and allows for unlimited numbers of mobile users.  This contrasts with many mobile vendors and ERP companies that charge by the user or transaction.

Verivo did well last year as Pyxis Mobile.  They reported 220 percent increases in license bookings, and revenue run rate of 50%.  Their customer base increased by 170%.  They are now focused on scaling globally.

It will be very interesting to watch how Verivo manages their growth and expansion in 2012.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobile Health News Weekly - Week of January 9, 2012

The Mobile Health News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to medical mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

The m-Health market earned revenues of $230 million in 2010 and is estimated to reach $392 million in 2015, according to a new report from research firm Frost & Sullivan. Read Original Content

According to the latest research, the global telemedicine market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of around 19 percent during 2010 to 2015. Read Original Content

Research company Technavio predicts that the global mobile health applications market will reach $4.1 billion by 2014, up from $1.7 billion in 2010. Read Original Content

Webalo technology eliminates the need for traditional mobile application development tools and custom programming to provide in hours, instead of weeks or months, mobile access to the specific enterprise data and functions that smartphone and tablet users rely on to do their jobs.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Webalo, www.webalo.com.

WebMD, the leading source of health information has released a new WebMD Baby App for iPhone and iPod touch, a free mobile application for parents looking for medical advice for their children. Read Original Content

Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 9, 2012

The Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

Pyxis Mobile, a Waltham-based provider of technology that helps businesses build and manage mobile apps, has raised $17 million in a round of venture capital and changed its name to Verivo Software.  Read Original Content

Intel announced its first smartphone customers, signaling the arrival of Intel Inside smartphones. Lenovo and Motorola will release smartphones based on Intel's upcoming Atom chips code-named Medfield, said Paul Otellini, Intel's CEO.  Read Original Content

The majority of smartphone users (7 in 10) are shopping and/or browsing for products online and will use their smartphone for practically any type of purchase as long as it's convenient according to Market Strategies International.  Read Original Content

ClickSoftware is an SAP mobility partner and the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by ClickSoftware - http://www.clicksoftware.com/.

A report published this week by The NPD Group shows that Apple's iOS skyrocketed to 43 percent of all smartphone sales in October and November (shortly after the launch of the iPhone 4S) from 26 percent reported by Apple in its third-quarter earnings report.  Read Original Content

Enterprise Mobility and Institutional Memory

This tablet mentions the
Library at Alexandria

During the past year I consulted with many different utility companies around the world that all seemed to be facing the same challenge, recruiting and training a new generation of workers before their aging workforce retires.  Their biggest concerns were capturing institutional knowledge that resided only in the minds of their aging workforce, and passing it down to the next generation before it was lost forever.

The challenges faced by these utilities reminded me of the ancient Library at Alexandria (Egypt). It was the first known library of its kind with funding and a mandate to collect books from around the world for the purpose of aggregating the world's knowledge in one place.  It succeeded for a time, but during Julius Caesar's visit to Alexandria in 48 BC his forces "accidentally" burned down the library and its entire collection.

Every time I think about this disaster I cringe.  Just think about the volumes of history and knowledge that were lost in that ancient fire!

Now let's return to the challenges facing the utilities.  The knowledge they seek to collect and save, is often the unwritten knowledge.  Knowledge about the locations of assets, projects, job sites and the history behind each.  The lessons learned, experiences and knowledge about the most effective ways to accomplish various tasks.

Enterprise mobility solutions may not help solve their current problems, but it can help resolve this problem in the future.  Mobile devices and mobile apps can today be configured to automatically capture all kinds of digital data rather than just ink on paper.  It can capture date, time, location, photos, bar code, RFID, geo-tags, data from any bluetooth enabled data capture devices, audio files and videos.  All of these data capture tools are in addition to the standard mobile app data fields where data can be manually entered by the mobile worker.

PSION EP10 Durable PDA

This captured digital data can be stored in data warehouses, associated with a GPS coordinate and analyzed.  This data can be associated with physical locations, and when the next generation of workers (or next year's) need archived information about a location, job, project, customer, plan, infrastructure design, etc., real-time business intelligence systems will analyze the "big data" and provide this information in seconds to mobile devices.

Collecting and utilizing institutional knowledge has never been easier.  However, it must be part of your mobile strategy and enterprise mobility plan or this opportunity to capture institutional data will be missed yet again.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Mobile Marketing News Weekly - Week of January 9, 2012

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

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

A new report from Juniper Research, the Mobile Coupons Whitepaper, shows that the total value of coupons redeemed via smartphones will reach $43 billion by 2016, a redemption rate of 8 percent. Read Original Content 

Merchants running mobile advertising campaigns claim that between 5 and 10 percent of their digital purchases are coming from mobile devices, according to a Mojiva executive. Read Original Content

Google is on pace to generate 2012 mobile advertising revenues in excess of $4 billion, according to a new forecast issued by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. Read Original Content

Pyxis Mobile provides an agile, powerful, and secure mobile enterprise application platform.  It enables rapid cross-platform application development, unlimited data integration, enterprise-grade security, and the unique ability to change and update applications in real time.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Pyxis Mobile, http://pyxismobile.com/

According to Research and Markets, with a compound annual growth rate of 37 percent, the mobile ad market is forecasted to be worth $17.2 billion during 2016. Read Original Content

Enterprise Mobility - Controlling Devices and Software

Today we are fortunate to have a guest blogger from Dell, David Malmborg.  David works with the Dell Kace solution.  He enjoys writing about technology, computers and saving money.  Thanks David!

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The need to consistently deliver reliable software and IT support to remote users for a large enterprise has become the rule rather than the exception in modern business. As staff and employees spread out across the country, or even into the international market, they still require access to the same applications and security that employees receive on-site.

There is a huge opportunity for enterprises to improve efficiencies and increase productivity by implementing mobile strategies and procedures, but only if all the devices and software are updated with the most current versions of the software and have the important security updates and patches. It has become critical for the IT team to have control over remote administration, software distributions, and installations in order to keep every department (and especially the mobile users) connected and up-to-date.

Problems to Avoid

As the number of personal and corporate smartphones, tablets, and laptops continue to go up, it can become extremely difficult for the enterprise to ensure that every mobile user has the ability to reach the information or applications they need to be truly effective. Technologies continue to change and applications are updated to keep pace, and this can lead to some costly problems for many organizations.

If these mobile assets are not meticulously tracked and managed, it won’t be long before the enterprise could start over-purchasing software licenses or find itself lacking the necessary assets when a user requires immediate access to something. All of these problems can end up costing the company a lot time and money.

A System for Software Deployment

Effective enterprise mobility requires that the IT department has the ability to track software resources, streamline the delivery system, and automate management. A software installation in-house was once handled manually, but since then companies have moved to a distribution system that is much faster and provides better tools for taking inventory and automating installations.

These systems, like the enterprise software deployment tools offered by Dell, have made it possible to create disc images and deploy them to every computer on the network. This also extends to remote locations and offices, and the same principles can be applied to the growing reliance on smartphones and tablets for mobile users.

Whether the company is updating the security features of an application or migrating to an entirely new operating system, the discovery, deployment and maintenance process can make the change more effective. The discovery phase can determine exactly what devices need access to the network, and what software is currently in use. The software installation can also be automated, if the right tools are employed. Finally, continued maintenance is about making sure that each of these devices are receiving the right updates and software to continue serving as an effective tool wherever they are used.

Guest blogger: David Malmborg

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Mobile Commerce News Weekly - Week of January 9, 2012

The Mobile Commerce News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

Mobile commerce sales in the United States are expected to hit $5.3 billion in 2011, up 83 percent from a year ago, according to Barclays Capital. Read Original Content

In a recent study, IBM found that online shopping jumped 16.4 percent on Christmas Day over the same time in 2010. The dollar amount of those purchases using mobile devices increased 172.9 percent. Read Original Content

eMarketer estimates that mobile commerce will increase from $6.7 billion in 2011 to $12.6 billion by 2012. Read Original Content

Pyxis Mobile provides an agile, powerful, and secure mobile enterprise application platform.  It enables rapid cross-platform application development, unlimited data integration, enterprise-grade security, and the unique ability to change and update applications in real time.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Pyxis Mobile, http://pyxismobile.com/

Mobile payment device maker-Square has agreed to sell their devices at both UPS and Office Max stores totaling 1,000 new locations. The company now has over 10,000 retail stores selling their devices. Read Original Content

Mobile Apps the Front End to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence

I wrote an article last week called, The Value in a Mobile Enterprise Solution in which I penned, "I proposed that the core value in an enterprise mobility solution is in the back end systems.  The back end systems are where the business logic, business processes, big data and business analytics are primarily located.  Most enterprise mobility solutions are extending back end systems.  This may seem like an obvious thing, but for many it is not."

Why do I believe that?  I recognize the value that real-time enterprises can gain from receiving assistance in making real-time decisions in uncertain environments.  Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla writes,  "The venture capital business has injected a lot of new energy and exploration for using experts and expert systems, probability and statistics, machine learning, self organizing machines and many less-discussed and some yet-undisclosed systems. Data, and big data especially hold “truths & likely correlations...”  VCs recognize we need help making real-time decisions in uncertain environments.

Khosla believes many tasks can be preformed better and faster by machines.  He listed areas such as medicine and education that can benefit greatly from artificial intelligence and the analysis of big data.  I would add to those tasks, field service management.

As you change physical locations and job statuses, so also should the instructions in your mobile app change.  Instructions such as the location and time of your next job.  The predicted parts and expertise needed.  The best location and price to buy parts and replenish supplies.  The optimal route for driving to the next job.  All of these instructions should be determined by a system benefiting from artificial intelligence, GPS tracking and one that utilizes big data in real-time that can find "truths and likely correlations."

More from Khosla's article The Surprising Path of Artificial Intelligence, "We essentially let the computer “figure it out” using lots of past problems and solutions that include probability assessment systems beyond any hard-coded rules. Reasoning under uncertain conditions underlies a major area of recent progress." 

Today, investors are funding companies with solutions that provide "reasoning under uncertain conditions!"  The 20th century military strategist John Boyd would appreciate this focus.  Here are a few of his relevant thoughts and strategies:

• How one thinks about uncertainty, imprecision, and mismatches is critical to success. 
• Not being able to read the environment and take advantage of opportunities that it presents is the definition of failure. 
• Life is defined as a process of adaption.  Some adaption is successful.  Some is not.  The key is the capacity for the combination of analyses and syntheses that enables us to exploit changes.  This in turn leads to successful adaption...
• Advantage in observation and orientation enable a tempo in decision-making and execution that outpaces the ability of the competition to react effectively in time.

Human weaknesses, biases and frailty impact our ability to make good real-time decisions in uncertain environments.  Uncertain environments is what we often find ourselves in outside of the four walls in mobile and remote places.  It is difficult for us to process large volumes of data to find "truths and correlations." 

Artificial intelligence systems using big data that are connected to GPS enabled mobile devices can offer enormous value to the mobile workforce and the enterprises that employ them.  Let the fun begin!

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Enterprise Mobility is Not for Everyone, Just Most

Sybase's Willie Jow

A couple of months back I listened to a presentation by Sybase's VP of Mobile Solutions, Willie Jow, and later interviewed him at the Enterprise Mobility Exchange.  During his presentation he emphasized that enterprise mobility is for nearly everyone in a company, not just a select few.  On one of his presentation slides (see image), he listed various roles in most enterprises that can benefit by having mobile solutions:

• Business leaders
• Managers
• Knowledge workers
• Marketers
• Sales
• Plant Operators
• Warehouse staff
• Field technicians
• Partners
• Consumers

I took note of this list.  Why?  Because in my mobile strategy consulting with large companies, they have rarely considered mobile solutions for more than a few of these categories.  For example, seldom have they ever considered how their partners and suppliers could benefit from mobile solutions.

However, I was consulting with a large water utility in Europe yesterday that was, in fact, planning to provide mobile solutions for their partners.  These partners provided important services and were a critical part of their service delivery system.  They had the same need to have real-time access to important back office data on mobile devices as the FTEs (full time equivalents).

Supporting partners has its own set of challenges.  It is hard to dictate what mobile devices partners should use.  They most often have their own preferences.  The water utility I mentioned above is looking to utilize mobile HTML5 apps so their partners can easily utilize them on a variety of mobile device platforms and operating systems.

The list above highlights the large variety of users, use cases and potential mobile apps.  It also emphasizes the importance of enterprise mobility to the future of businesses.  Companies that don't support enterprise mobility in these areas will suffer.  It is impossible to manage a real-time enterprise that involves a mobile workforce without supporting mobility.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Mobility Charts Weekly - Week of January 9, 2012

The Mobility Charts Weekly is a weekly publication of charts depicting the current and future status of the enterprise mobility market.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

According to IDTechEx the real time location systems market will increase over the next ten years, eventually rising to $4 billion by 2022. This market includes devices that help track items, animals and people in real time. Read Original Content

eMarketer expects the mobile commerce industry to rise through 2015 to eventually reach $31 billion. At the same time the company believes this figure still represents a very small level of overall consumer spending. Read Original Content

Flurry Analytics has gathered data surrounding the amount of time consumers spend on mobile apps versus web browsers. In their findings they discovered that the average consumer spent more time on mobile apps than on web browsers during June 2011 than during June 2010. Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Click Here!

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

Enterprise Mobility Asia - Week of January 9, 2012

This is my first edition of Enterprise Mobility Asia.  Asia is predicted to be the fastest area of growth for enterprise mobility between now and 2016, so it seemed like a prudent time to start reporting on this growth on a weekly basis.  If your company would like to be a sponsor of this weekly newsletter, please email me.

China Telecom Corp Launches in UK and has Plans for France and Germany
China Telecom plans to launch mobile services in the UK during the first Quarter and they are looking at also expanding to France and Germany to help drive overseas growth. Read Original Content

GlobalOne announces Mobile Cloud Services

GlobalOne announced a new practice, GlobalOne Mobility, which will offer professional services for building, deploying and maintaining mobile cloud apps for both consumer and enterprise environments.  The new group will help clients build a vision and roadmap for mobile enterprise apps, and mobile social enterprise apps, and then develop and deploy them in cloud environments. Read Original Content

Galaxy Tabs in the Indian Educational Market
Samsung has unveiled its smart solution for the educational market. This solution includes customized software applications on its Galaxy Tabs.  Samsung is targeting 20,000-plus education institutes in India. Read Original Content

Mobile Payments in the Indian Market

Some projections have mobile payments replacing credit and debit cards and hard currency as the primary mediums of monetary exchange over the next five years. However, in a country like India, where the masses don’t use relatively expensive smartphones, the concept of mobile apps will not work. Nokia, the manufacturer of some of the most widely used mobile phones in India, is seeking to address this under served market with its recently launched mobile payment service, Nokia Money. Read Original Content

Starbucks Uses Mobile HTML5 Ads in China

Mobile ads were placed in three mobile apps for a Starbucks Christmas promotion in China. Starbucks rewarded customers with a bigger size of drink for their social check-ins at over 200 Starbucks stores across Shanghai, Jiansu and Zhejing provinces. Read Original Content




Research Firm Predicts Asia-Pacific Lead in Enterprise Mobility Growth

Global market research and consulting company, MarketsandMarkets, predicts that the growing acceptance of enterprise mobility by large, small and medium businesses, plus the introduction of sophisticated mobile devices and solutions will fuel growth in the Asia-Pacific markets. The Asia-Pacific market is predicted to lead the world in enterprise mobility growth rate. Read Original Content

Preludesys India files for IPO to Accelerate Development of Enterprise Mobility Solution 
Preludesys India, has filed documents in preparation for an IPO.  They intend to use the proceeds for setting up a global delivery center, paying back loans, opening 8 branches across USA and Asia Pacific regions and accelerating the development and go to market efforts of their enterprise mobility solutions. Read Original Content

The Role of Mobile Technology in mHealth in International Development
mHealth is making a difference around the world and especially in Asia. In Afghanistan, health workers are receiving training via SMS.  In South Africa, Project Masiluleke sends text messages with important information about HIV.  In South Asia pregnant women are receiving important maternal health information also via text messages.  In Cambodia, a solution called FrontlineSMS, allows health workers in Cambodia to report cases of malaria in real time using a text messaging system that sends texts between groups of people and online mapping systems like Google Earth. Read Original Content

DoCoMo and Chip Makers Join in Smartphone Venture
Demand for mobile devices is expanding rapidly, and as a result, a group of Asian electronics companies are teaming up with Japanese mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc. to develop semiconductors used in smartphones. Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Field Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 9, 2012

The Field Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to field mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

RFID monitoring stations were used recently in a government construction project in
Virginia. Radio frequency identification tags were used to track tools and equipment throughout the construction site to limit lost supplies and resources. Read Original Content

A British Columbia based transit system is using RFID sensors to track vehicle routes and identify individual busses as they enter the warehouse to be refueled. Read Original Content

Throughout Taiwan motorcyclists use tablet devices for GPS and map features that help drivers navigate through busy streets and avoid traffic. Read Original Content

Since 1995, Syclo has enabled hundreds of companies in 37 countries and industries supercharge their businesses with mobility.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Syclo. http://www.syclo.com/.

According to IDTechEx the real time location systems market will increase from $255 million to $293 million in 2012, and reach $4 billion in 2022. Read Original Content

M2M News Weekly - Week of January 2, 2012

Welcome to 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.  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.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

According to AolEnergy, by 2012 the world smart meter market will be worth $50 billion with countries Brazil, Poland and Singapore leading the market. Read Original Content

Smart meter and smart grid deployments have increased significantly during 2011, particularly in North America, according to a newly released report by Pike Research. According to the firm's analysis, global smart meter shipments reached 19.2 million in the third quarter of 2011, which represents a 5.3 percent increase over the second quarter of 2011. Read Original Content

According GTM Research, the European smart grid market will add 100 million smart meters by 2016. Read Original Content

Tech Endeavour structures a mobile application as a multi-layered application consisting of user experience, business, and data layers. The mobile application development process starts with definition of the mobile application, understanding key components, learning scenarios where it will be used, learning key patterns and technology considerations as well as identifying specific scenarios such as deployment, power usage and synchronization.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Tech Endeavour, http://www.techendeavour.com/.

According to a new market study by Lucintel, the global smart grid market growth rate is likely to reach approximately $57 billion by 2016 with a yearly rate of 13 percent over the next five years. Read Original Content

M2M Growth and Enterprise Mobility

I had the privelege of interviewing RACO Wireless President John Horn this week. RACO is an M2M company (machine to machine) that achieved 300 percent growth in 2011.

Here is an interesting statement from John, "Telehealth and telemedicine are really starting to click now.  “Aging in place” enables people to live longer at home.  In 2012 I see this market really starting to connect."  John made this statement in the context of M2M or wireless devices being embedded in healthcare equipment located in the home.  M2M solutions can enable remote caregivers to closely monitor the health of patients in remote locations.  The machines wirelessly sends data to the caregiver so they can be reviewed without forcing the patient to come into the clinic or hospital.

I have been predicting for a couple of years now that enterprise mobility solutions and M2M solutions will be converging.  In the context of Network Centric Operations, it is all wireless data coming in from remote locations that can used to improve real-time decision making.

Additional areas where M2M solutions are really taking off now are in home and business security systems and enterprise asset management environments.  All of these systems send data to a central server for easy monitoring and tracking.

I recorded a video interview with Scott Taylor from Vivint, a home security company, earlier this year in Sydney, Australia on their adoption of mobile solutions and M2M in their home security systems.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Mobile Health News Weekly - Week of January 2, 2012

The Mobile Health News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to medical mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

Around 76 percent of small and medium-sized medical and dentals offices plan to purchase tablets in the next year, according to research firm NPD Group’s recently published Third Quarter SMB Technology Report. Read Original Content

Consult a Doctor, a U.S. telemedicine service, has been added to guest services at Marriott Hotels, giving customers the ability to remotely communicate with doctors from hotels around the nation. Read Original Content

The popular health app iTriage announced that it has integrated with Microsoft’s HealthVault to provide users a read-only view of their personal health records. The integration makes HealthVault data viewable via an iPhone app. Read Original Content

Webalo technology eliminates the need for traditional mobile application development tools and custom programming to provide in hours, instead of weeks or months, mobile access to the specific enterprise data and functions that smartphone and tablet users rely on to do their jobs.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Webalo, www.webalo.com.

According to Hospitals and Health Networks’ Most Wired 2011 survey, 27 percent of physician offices and 42 percent of hospitals indicated they are providing telemedicine services. Read Original Content

HTML5 Reflections on 2011 and Trends for 2012

Mobile Analyst's Predictions

I was moderating a panel of mobile analyst in November and asked them what percentage of enterprise mobility applications were going to be written in HTML5 by 2013.  The answers I received were 30-50%. My personal prediction is that it will be even higher, perhaps even 75%.

Flash loses to HTML5


In the war between Flash and HTML5 for mobile video,  Flash lost.  Adobe gave up on Flash in November of 2011 and put its support behind HTML5.
“Layoffs were paired with a halt to development of Flash Player for mobile browsers, with mobile Flash support limited to critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations.”

HTML5-based games included in the article,  “Zynga CTO:Four predictions for 2012”


Games developed using HTML5 are faster, smoother, and more responsive, says Cadir Lee, CTO of Zynga in a December 29, 2011 article for CNET.  One of his predictions for 2012 is that “open web stack will take hold for browser-based games”.


Read original content

2012 and the “App Internet”


In the debate about the future of the web, one prediction, from Forrester CEO George Colony, is a new “app internet”, in which HTML5 and JavaScript are two key components.  Dominiek ter Heide, CTO and co-founder of Bottlenose, states that “The combination of HTML, JavaScript and CSS is proven, widely adopted and already available on all of these platforms. When it comes to building apps, HTML5 and JavaScript is here to stay. The Document Web is dying, albeit slowly.”

Read original content


The rise of HTML5


Since HTML5 is now supported by all major mobile devices.  Adobe adds (in a November 9, 2011 Adobe blog post), “This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.”

Read original content


Prediction – Hybrid Apps with HTML5 Will be the Norm


From GigaOm’s “16 predictions for mobile in 2012," published on December 30, 2011:  “The standards for HTML5 are still in motion so native apps will continue to be stronger than web-based apps. But as in 2011, many of the native apps on smartphones will use HTML5 as a base with a native wrapper around them. With the number of HTML5 compatible handsets expected by 2013, we’ll see momentum grow for true web apps on low-end phones.”

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Mobile Marketing News Weekly - Week of January 2, 2012

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

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

New projections from research firm Berg Insight suggest the total value of the global mobile marketing and advertising market is on pace for record growth over the next 48 months. According to the latest estimates, the industry will see 37 percent growth by 2016, bringing the industry’s total value to $22.6 billion at that time. Read Original Content

To boost sales of its McCafe beverage line and drive in-store traffic, McDonald's has launched a geotargeted promotion that uses mobile ads to reach potential customers. Read Original Content

Mobile advertising impressions originating from Amazon.com's new Android-powered Kindle Fire tablet continued to increase over the holiday season, surging 261 percent on Christmas Day according to new data published by mobile ad network Millennial Media. Read Original Content

Pyxis Mobile provides an agile, powerful, and secure mobile enterprise application platform.  It enables rapid cross-platform application development, unlimited data integration, enterprise-grade security, and the unique ability to change and update applications in real time.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Pyxis Mobile, http://pyxismobile.com/

According to the Bangkok Post, Thailand will experience a surge in smartphone and tablet shipments during 2012, much greater than original forecasts had predicted. This is expected to increase the opportunities for mobile marketers in that region. Read Original Content

The Best Mobile Strategies Videos of 2011

I must admit that the selection is small, the video production is lacking, and these are all me, but it is the best of my Video Comments on mobile strategies from 2011.  In case you successfully avoided watching these in 2011, I am shamelessly promoting them again in 2012.

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: Field Services Velocity

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: 4D Mobile Field Services

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: Mobility Without Tactics is Wasted

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: Enterprise Mobility and Real Time Decision Making

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: Mobile Data and the Real Time Enterprise

Video Comments: Mobile Technologies and the Real Time Enterprise

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 2, 2012

The Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

The smartphone and tablet buying rush over the holidays spilled over into a corresponding deluge of app downloads, with the total weekly number exceeding one billion for the first time.  Read Original Content

RIM’s share of U.S. mobile phone subscribers in the three months through November dropped to 6.5 percent from 7.1 percent in the previous quarter, according to research firm ComScore Inc.  Read Original Content

According to market research firm NPD Group, the demand for tablets is expected to grow in the small and medium business market, companies with less than 1,000 employees, over the next year with Apple’s iPad taking the lead.  Read Original Content

ClickSoftware is an SAP mobility partner and the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by ClickSoftware - http://www.clicksoftware.com/.

Gartner is forecasting that some 50 percent of traveling workers this year will ditch their laptops in favor of handier devices.  Read Original Content

Mobility Charts Weekly - Week of January 2, 2012

The Mobility Charts Weekly is a weekly publication of charts depicting the current and future status of the enterprise mobility market.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

comScore recently released new numbers on U.S. online holiday spending for the season-to-date, and found that consumers continued to shop online in record numbers. For the first 56 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, $35.3 billion was spent online – an increase of 15 percent over the corresponding days last year, and a new record. Read Original Content

Pew Research has recently studied the relationship between per capita income and technology.  In a recent study they found that as a country’s per capita income increased, so did the number of mobile devices and overall usage of social networking. Read Original Content

According to comScore’s latest mobile subscriber data for November, the percentage of users who use apps has finally surpassed the percent of subscribers who turn to a mobile browser. Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Click Here!

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Mobile Commerce News Weekly - Week of January 2, 2011

The Mobile Commerce News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

New York Waterway, which carries passengers across the Hudson and East rivers, will launch the first smartphone-based ticketing system for mass transit riders this week. The free app, developed by New York-based Bytemark, allows riders to purchase tickets in advance with an Apple or Android compatible smart device. Read Original Content

Recent predictions suggest that during 2012 there will be 30 to 40 million purchased smartphones enabled with NFC chips. Read Original Content

Juniper Research reports that nearly $55 billion in international remittances will be enabled via mobile devices by 2016. For 2011, it is estimated to be under $12 billion. Read Original Content

Tech Endeavour structures a mobile application as a multi-layered application consisting of user experience, business, and data layers. The mobile application development process starts with definition of the mobile application, understanding key components, learning scenarios where it will be used, learning key patterns and technology considerations as well as identifying specific scenarios such as deployment, power usage and synchronization.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Tech Endeavour, http://www.techendeavour.com/.

KPMG's fifth annual Consumers and Convergence survey has found that 23 percent of U.S. consumers are now "very willing" to use their mobile phones as a wallet and the number rises to 30 percent for younger adults aged between 16 and 34. Read Original Content

The Value in a Mobile Enterprise Solution

Have you ever pondered where the primary value in an enterprise mobility solution resides?  Is it in a smartphone with apps in your pocket or a tablet in your hand?  Is it the wireless connection to the Internet?   Is it the mobile middleware or integration to your back end systems, or is it the back end system?  

I proposed that the core value in an enterprise mobility solution is in the back end systems.  The back end systems are where the business logic, business processes, big data and business analytics are primarily located.  Most enterprise mobility solutions are extending back end systems.  This may seem like an obvious thing, but for many it is not.  Many people feel there is something magical about mobility and that mobile solutions, on their own, offer big value.

Let's think back a few years to when many of us were carrying mobile PDAs (personal digital assistants).  They were mobile and offered some value to us as individuals, but it would be hard to say they revolutionized the enterprise.  At that time, the enterprise's business solutions were rarely extended out to PDAs.  The PDA apps that did connect to back end systems, were mostly limited to synchronizing to a desktop via a docking stations or USB connections.  Back end systems and their value were not being efficiently exposed to mobile workers at that time.  

Today, however, back end systems can be efficiently exposed and made available to the mobile workforce.  It is this capability that can revolutionize a business.  The ability to make the back end system value, available to many more users.

As an increasing number of  enterprise mobility vendors enter the market, the ability to design, develop, deploy and maintain a mobile solution rapidly becomes a commodity.  The core value of a mobile solution moves from the the mobile app into the back end system again.  What does this mean?  It means the aggregation of data, business logic, business processes and analytics in a back end system designed to support the mobile workforce is where the biggest value is located.

Once the ability to implement mobile solutions is achieved, enterprises moving up the mobility maturity curve will turn their focus to providing more back end system functionality to support mobile solutions.  Mobility vendors that want to have longevity in the mobility market will recognize this trend and devote much of their R&D to building solutions that integrate and aggregate business logic, data sources, business processes and analytics into unique and usable services that support mobile workers and their different roles.

Enterprise mobility solutions provide the means to deliver back end system value to mobile workers. Do you agree or disagree?

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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

Field Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 2, 2012

The Field Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to field mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobility Charts Weekly

General contractors and builders at more than 30 construction sites within the United States are employing an RFID-enabled solution to track the number of workers on those sites, as well as their identities. Read Original Content

Global enterprises are shifting to mobile-only communications faster than expected, according to the BroadSoft 2011 Mobile Enterprise of the Future Survey. Read Original Content

TomTom vehicle management solutions have grown 30 percent yearly and now represent the largest fleet telematics provider in the Europe region. Read Original Content

Since 1995, Syclo has enabled hundreds of companies in 37 countries and industries supercharge their businesses with mobility.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Syclo. http://www.syclo.com/.

GAO RFID has recently released a rugged RFID scanner that allows livestock owners to more easily track and manage animals throughout farmland. Read Original Content