Integrating the Digital and Physical Worlds with Enterprise Mobility

New York City oversees 900,000 buildings and picks up 12,000 tons of trash per day.  They know how much electricity is used in the average house/apartment.  They know how many people live in the average unit.  They know what neighborhoods complain the most.  They know the health inspection records of restaurants in the area.  They have information on boilers, sprinkler systems, local taxes paid, numbers of heart attacks, fires, roach complaints, construction noise, commuting habits and test scores all stored in massive data archives available for Big Data analysis.

This is digital data, however, if you are looking to move into a new physical neighborhood in New York City, you might find this information incredibly valuable.  Real-time and Big Data capabilities integrated with location services on smartphones have the ability to revolutionize the way we live and work.

It is not hard to imagine wearing Google Glasses with this kind of data coming up on your lenses in real-time as you look at different buildings while walking down the street.

The data in New York City archives can tell you the average response times of the N.Y.P.D. to crimes in progress by neighborhood.  They can tell you where crimes were reported, the type and frequency of the crime and how it compares with other neighborhoods and cities.  They can tell you which zip codes have the youngest populations, highest SAT scores, most electricity consumed, most rat sightings reported and most laundromats.  All of this information can augment the reality of what you are seeing from a street view as you are walking down the sidewalk.

This is the kind of data that provides true situational awareness.  I want this kind of information when I am walking in a new city.  I want this kind of information when I am looking to move to a new neighborhood.  To me, this is a killer mobile app that I am willing to pay for, and what is funny is it is really all about Big Data.  The mobile app and GPS sensor on your smartphone are querying Big Data analytics in real-time as you are walking down the street.

If I want this capability personally, what about enterprises?  Where is the best place to locate a business or sell a product?  Where are the demographics that are best for your particular products and services?  What neighborhoods are safe, and which are not for your construction crew and projects?

I personally want to know this information, but is this knowledge good for society?  I am not sure.  How does a neighborhood become revitalized and move past its historic data record?  How do we integrate ex-cons and ex-sex offenders back into society if they cannot move beyond their past?  These are all interesting problems to ponder.

The bottom line is that enterprise mobility integrated with big data analytics is going to change the way we see the world around us and conduct business.  The physical world is going to be augmented by the digital world.

For more information on this subject read, The Mayor's Geek Squad in the Sunday, March 24, 2013 edition of the New York Times.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

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Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Advanced Mobile Strategies and Integrated Sensors

Last week I watched a presentation recorded at GigaOm Structure:Data conference featuring Gus Hunt, CTO of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  In his presentation, he identified SMAC (social, mobile, big data analytics, and cloud) as the culprit for the massive increase in available data in the world.  He explained that the average smartphone generates huge quantities of data from the following embedded sensors:

• proximity sensors
• 3-axis accelerometer sensors
• touch sensors
• image sensors
• microphone sensors
• light sensors
• GPS (geo-location) sensors

You can imagine, with the billions of phones around the world, how much additional data is produced each day!  Now add the mass volumes coming out of social media!

Hunt went on to say there is a time-value-of-data.  This is an important concept for us to understand.  The value of data is worth more this second, than it is worth in two weeks.  When I activate the GPS on my iPhone, I want something to happen now not tomorrow.  The GPS sensor needs to give me immediate feedback.  Likewise, information about the location of a bad guy this second is much more valuable than where he was last month.

Have you ever had a slow GPS navigation system?  I have.  It told me to turn after I passed by the exit. GRRRRRR!

The CIA has a unique mission that involves filtering through mass volumes of big data sources for information that is important to our national security and interests.  Hunt identified seven universal constructs for analytics, or ways of organizing data that I found very interesting:

1. People
2. Places
3. Organizations
4. Times
5. Events
6. Concepts (value judgements - good or bad)
7. Things (Internet of Things)

In my SMAC strategy sessions, I spend a lot of time educating my audience on five of these seven.  I might now need to re-think how to incorporate organizations (project teams?) and concepts into my sessions as well.

In the context of enterprise mobility, the location of your people and places (think job sites, customer locations, supply depots, etc.) are all very important.  However, time and events are equally important for project management and scheduling.   What time did you start and finish a job?  How long will it take to drive to the next job site?  What did you do while at the job site?  Did you complete the task?  All of these things are very important.

It is important to again look at what Hunt said about the time-value of data.  You cannot optimize a service technician's schedule if you don't know when he starts or finishes a job.  You can't optimize his driving route if you don't know when he is driving.

Today GIS (Geospatial information systems) are beginning to associate where things are at a particular moment in time, and how they are related to other objects, people, events, etc, around them.  These relationships will be very important.  For example, a construction manager may require a backhoe to continue on a project.  The backhoe is three hours from being on the job site.  This is important information for planning and scheduling.  It is important data that has a high time value if known in advance. However, it has very little value if it is only known after the fact.

What are the relationships between the construction manager, project, P&L and backhoe?  The manager owns the project and project P&L.  The project is on hold until the backhoe arrives, which jeopardizes the profitability and completion of the project.

All of this data about location, things, relationships and times is critical to optimizing projects and plans.

In the very near future, software developers will need to be much more familiar with the physical world, as the digital and physical are integrating around real-world data.  I will emphasize again that the value of the data is dependent upon the speed in which it is collected, analyzed and shared with those who can use it in the field.  But that is not all!  Here is a final quote from Mr. Hunt,  “The power of big data can only be fully realized when it is in the hands of the average person.”

Mobile strategies are not just about managing smartphones and securing data between the office and mobile workers.  It is about all of the things identified in this article and more.  It is about the time, location and relationships between moving players, concepts and events.  This is where the real fun is today!

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

How Do You Make Money in Enterprise Mobility? A Prediction

For the past six months I have been pondering how does a MADP (mobile application development platform) company make money in enterprise mobility?  I talk to literally thousands of people a year who are involved in enterprise mobility, and it seems many in the enterprise mobility vendor world continue to struggle to make sustainable profits.

I spent many years as the CEO of a mobile platform and mobile app development company.   I can tell you from personal experience that it is incredibly hard to maintain an R&D funding pace that keeps up with, let alone surpasses, the pace of innovation in the market.  It seems like every time you identify a new set of features for a new version of your mobile platform, it is already obsolete and you are playing catch up.

Most traditional mobile platform companies I think are struggling with the challenge of keeping up with the rapidly evolving mobility market.  They have a business model based on the assumption they can achieve economies of scale by closing an increasing number of very large and lucrative deals that will all use the same mobile platform code base.  The challenge is that finding the economies of scale, when mobility is evolving so rapidly, is like chasing a rainbow.  It is very hard to achieve economies of scale with any particular platform version.

In my mind the SAP Mobile Platform is a successful anomaly.  SAP has a massive user base that will buy anything from SAP, even if they don't plan to use it for years.  SAP is often not selling a particular product and version, they are selling all mobile products and versions under the umbrella brand of SAP Mobile Platform.  In effect, they are selling a white box of mobile solutions that are near impossible to compare and contrast with competitors.  SAP doesn't have to be leading edge.  They just have to be in the neighborhood.  This is working for SAP.  Their massive user base, credibility and their customers' enormous investments make this possible.  However, this model does not translate to the rest of the mobile platform market which must stand on the merits of their latest platform versions.

I believe SAP product managers feel the same pain as the rest of the mobility market.  There is no way a company the size of SAP can respond fast enough to keep up.  That is why they have focused on their mobile platforms and MDM products which evolve more slowly.  They now embrace many different app development environments like AppCelerator, Sencha, PhoneGap/Cordova, etc., for development.  They will let smaller and more nimble companies battle it out in this hyper-speed app development market.

Even the Syclo solutions that SAP acquired last year are relatively immune from the fast paced mobile app market because they are primarily used for traditional field services organizations and utilities that are less motivated to be leading edge and that seek products with long life cycles (4-7 years).

Where does this leave traditional mobile platform vendors?  I see them increasingly moving toward the cloud.  My colleague at Cognizant, Tom Thimot, often says the ultimate place for most software solutions is in the public cloud, some will just get there faster than others.   I agree.

What do you think?

I believe traditional mobile platform companies in 2013 will be moving their solutions to the cloud, embracing HTML5 even more, and focusing more efforts on mobile application management and security in order to finally achieve the ever elusive economies of scale.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

My YouTube Video Channel on Enterprise Mobility

I checked my YouTube channel,  http://www.youtube.com/user/kevinrbenedict/videos, this morning and there are now 245 video interviews with mobility experts published there.  Did you know you can subscribe and be notified each time a new interview with a mobility expert is uploaded?  Among those interviewed are dozens from SAP, many mobile platform and MDM vendors, industry analysts and yours truly pontificating about mobile strategies.

I like to encourage you to enjoy yourself while watching these, but if that is not possible, at least grab some popcorn.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Predicting the Future of Enterprise Mobility

Figure 1 - Smartphones as
Internet of Things Hubs

How many advertisements for automobiles today promote the fact their cars are horseless carriages?  None! Why?  It is an assumption that your automobile will be horseless.  The same is happening today with mobile apps.  Who would develop a work order management or scheduling system today that does not support mobile?  Who would create business intelligence dashboards for executives that were not mobile?

Today it is a mobile first world.  Our first considerations for software app designs are:

• What mobile devices will be used?
• How do I integrate wirelessly with my back-end data sources and systems?
• What onboard and remote sensors can I integrate into the app?
• How do I secure it?

If all software apps are soon to be mobile, where will we find the next wave of innovation beyond traditional mobile apps and enterprise mobility platforms?  I believe it will come from sensors and integrating the physical world with the digital.

I have been working in the field of enterprise mobility for the past 13 years.  Early on there were very few sensors in mobile devices.  The sensors were the humans users, bluetooth add-ons, and barcode and RFID scanners.  Today, however, there are many built-in sensors in each of our smartphones and thousands of different kinds of data collection sensors available through the Internet of Things.

Let's ponder how our mobile apps are going to start interacting more with the physical world.  Sensors in parking lots can already notify us of available parking spaces.  Buildings can quickly report their own needs and status with embedded structural sensors that monitor vibration levels, energy consumption, security and more.  Your cars can wirelessly report their location, status and maintenance needs directly to your smartphone.  In urban areas sound sensors can lead you to quiet areas or noisy areas.  Traffic sensors can help you find the least congested routes.  Opt-in GPS tracking can help you navigate and meet up with friends and family members.  Weather sensors report the exact conditions at millions of locations.  Integrated with predictive analytics, you can anticipate weather conditions for the next week.  Using mobile banking apps, NFC, ATM sensors and POS sensors, you can be notified any and every time there is a transaction on your account - what was purchased, where and for how much.

Your smartphone is changing from a simple communication device, media center and personal digital assistance, to a hub between the physical and digital world.  That development opens up all kinds of interesting opportunities to ponder.  It is on the very edge of digital transformation where the integration between the physical and the digital happens where the next wave of innovation lies (see figure 1).

In the future software developers will become more and more like geographers and intelligence analyst as they increasingly work with real-world data.  They will be blending geospatial data, live remote sensor data and process data to create and understand relationships about where things are, how they are connected and what that data means to the success of the mission or plan.  This information will all be available on a smartphone and tablet near you.

*************************************************************

Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.