HTML5 and the Future of PhoneGap and WebView+

By Peter Rogers, Principal Architect, Mobility, Cognizant

HTML5 is still one of the most discussed topics amongst us technical types.  The key challenge, however, has remained unanswered for a long time. How do you effectively wrap HTML5 for use in native mobile applications? Unfortunately I do not have a universal answer, but I do have a solution for Android.

Firstly, I recommend looking into the use of Vellamo in order to benchmark the performance of HTML5 on Android (http://www.quicinc.com/vellamo/).  Vellamo is designed to be an accurate, easy to use suite of system-level benchmarks for devices based on Android 2.3 forward. Vellamo began as a mobile web benchmarking tool that today has expanded to include two primary chapters: the HTML5 chapter evaluates mobile web browser performance; and the Metal Chapter measures the CPU subsystem performance of mobile processors.

I have my own custom architecture that extends RESS (Responsive Design + Server Side Components) called P-RESS (Performance RESS). The idea is to include performance based information inside the device family configurations. This means that an HTML5 based mobile client can query the RESS server to ask about the performance characteristics of its device family. This can be used to downgrade the graphical experience, for example removing a parallax scrolling background.

The big problem up until recently was that wrapping HTML5 into a WebView on Android meant that you had to use the default web browser, which unfortunately was not Chrome. Instead you ended up with the Android Stock Browser, which was a long way from Chrome. With Android 4.4 (KitKat) we now have the ability to use the Chrome browser through the WebView by default and this is very much welcome (https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/webview/overview#what_version_of_chrome_is_it_based_on).

There are two downsides to this effort though:

1. It only works on Android 4.4
2. The WebView shipped does not have full feature parity with Chrome for Android (it is based on Chrome 30 as opposed to Chrome 33)

This means that the following features are not available:

• WebGL (3D canvas)
• WebRTC
• WebAudio
• Fullscreen API
• Form validation

There have been a number of open source efforts to deliver a Chrome WebView that works across Android 4 and now it appears two companies have started to offer their own versions: Famo.us (http://www.infoworld.com/t/mobile-development/famous-were-building-better-phonegap-236267); and Ludei (http://support.ludei.com/hc/en-us/articles/201952993).

There is a subtle difference in marketing though: Famo.us claim to be building a better PhoneGap; whereas Ludei claim to be building something that is PhoneGap compatible. Both systems bundle the latest edition of the Blink engine (Chrome 33) with the App using a Cloud based build system. The two companies also have cool demos of WebGL running through a WebView on various Android 4 devices. This also means that when Chrome 34 arrives then it is presumed that could be bundled instead – depending on backward compatibility with earlier versions of Android 4.

Famo.us actually answer one of the key questions. Does each app have its own separately bundled edition of Chrome? Each time a Famo.us app needs a particular version of Chrome, that version is installed in such a way that other apps that need it can also use it – think shared libraries. At the moment the footprint for Chrome 33 is around 15-20MB but they predict the size will come down to 10MB. They can also have it not be part of the initial download of the app, but rather as an app upgrade.

It is unclear if Ludei will offer a similar shared library system at this time. One thing Ludei do mention is the increased portability and performance that WebView+ (as they call it) brings to the web environment. Ludei used to only offer support for games but just recently they added application support as well and this is when I really took notice of CocoonJS.

With one consistent HTML5 environment then it means the developers know the feature set to code towards. It becomes a sort of HTML5 Reference Implementation for Android. The minor downside is this only covers Android 4 and above. The major downside is this only covers Android. There is no way of bundling the latest version of Safari with an App on iOS and Windows 8 is even more problematic.

The other thing that Ludei and indeed Intel XDK offer is technology that cross-compiles HTML5 Canvas into OpenGL(ES) for Android or iOS. That means that if you are wrapping an HTML5 Canvas into a Native App then it makes far more sense to cross-compile it into Android or iOS native code. Ludei claims to have the fastest accelerated HTML5 Canvas, but Intel acquired similar technology from AppMobi.  When Web Components become more widely supported then it would appear to be the next candidate technology to be cross-compiled into native code.

Oracle offers ADF Mobile which combines a Java VM with an HTML5 presentation tier, the benefit being totally portable plug-in extensions. Unfortunately when I looked into the solution there was no backward compatibility with existing PhoneGap plug-ins. Ludei has been clever here and made sure that PhoneGap plug-ins are explicitly supported and I am sure Famo.us will follow.

I had a chat with the W3C recently and asked if there was likely to be any standardisation in the following spaces:

1. Control over hardware acceleration
2. Mixing native code and HTML5
3. Pure HTML5 deployable Apps

The answer was that only the latter is being standardised and they are not seeing much uptake outside of Firefox OS. The manifest specification is being thoroughly updated through and this will see improvements to both HTML5 Cache Manifest and its future replacement called ServiceWorkers – all to be discussed in my next Blog (‘The future of HTML5’).  They also told me that the Windows 8 App Store allows you to host pure HTML5 applications.

This means that outside of standardisation, we are going to need to be looking at a new gold standard for HTML5 based Hybrid Apps as follows:

• A Chrome 33/34 WebView for advanced performance, feature set and portability
• An HTML5 Canvas to OpenGL(ES) conversion for Native Apps
• PhoneGap backwardly compatible for existing plug-ins

These are Peter Roger's personal observations and opinions and don't necessarily represent his employers.  You can contact Peter Rogers directly at Peter-2.Rogers-2@cognizant.com.

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Increasing Productivity and Getting Strategic with Geospatial Information Systems

By Caleb Benedict, Research Analyst, GIS/IoT

Companies in many different industries are realizing applications of GIS (geospatial information systems) can provide competitive and strategic advantages, productivity increases and efficiencies in operations. GIS, when combined with mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops and other handheld devices allow organizations to use GPS sensors, digital maps and editing software in order to view, document and analyze all kinds of things in new and innovative ways.

Once you represent your environment, location and processes digitally, you can build all kinds of analytics, algorithms and processes to take advantage of this data.

Even in simple scenarios interesting analytics and processes can be done. Knowing the location of a mobile asset at a date and time is helpful.  If it is moving, knowing how fast it is going and estimating the time of arrival is useful.  Knowing where a mobile worker is located and their skills, qualifications and job status enables you to plan their next job dynamically.  All of these items start with knowing their location.

Some additional examples of GIS applications are:

• Tracking fleets of vehicles with dynamic maps to estimate time of arrival and ensure safety and compliance
• Monitoring the location of employees to ensure safety and optimized utilization
• Mapping underground utility lines for sewer, cable, electricity, to provide safety and optimized construction and maintenance activities
• Mapping construction progress to ensure deadlines and schedules are met

A decade ago, GIS technology required expensive hardware and software to support it. Today, however, relatively inexpensive iPads and smartphones can be used with Google Earth and other GIS databases.

ESRI, the largest GIS software developer, allows workers to use tablets and smartphones to input data and create maps.  ArcPad, ESRI’s application for mobile devices, allows field workers to collect and input data on their mobile device and sync that data with their desktop programs such as ArcMap or ArcGIS. This technology is relatively new and is increasingly important for companies of all kinds.

Examples of GIS in action:

Columbia County, Georgia is using field GIS applications to map underground broadband Internet lines in order to have accurate locations of their utility system. Using field workers equipped with GPS devices and GIS software the county was able to quickly collect this data with the highest level of accuracy. (http://bit.ly/1hy7OxU)

Australian mining companies are using GIS to increase productivity and safety for their operations. Using GIS the mining companies have been able to track supply shipments by outfitting truck drivers with iPads that relay their locations to other iPads with the same real-time, dynamic map of mining sites. In addition companies have been tracking employees to ensure their safety when working in dangerous environments. (http://bit.ly/Pr9jrr)

The North Charleston Sewer District in South Carolina is using GIS to track construction progress and asset locations. This has allowed project managers to supervise the construction progress with more detail and to have better accountability on county vehicle usage. (http://bit.ly/1mWdQOd)

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

The Latest on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8.1 for Enterprise Mobility and IoT

By Guest Blogger and Cognizant Mobile Expert Peter Rogers

A lot of attention lately has been given to Android and iOS, but let's not forget developments from Microsoft. Microsoft made some exciting announcements at Build 2014 that we should consider.

The Windows 8.1 update was given an imminent release date (April 8th) and Windows Phone 8.1 Dev Preview Program is just starting. There was a nice quote reflecting their intentions with Windows Phone 8.1, “We believe Windows Phone is the world's most personal smartphone”.  Microsoft is bringing Windows Phone 8.1 to all Lumia devices running WP8  and the next generation of Lumia devices were shown with ridiculously good cameras and a Snapdragon 400/800 chip inside (1.2/2.2 GHz).

Cortana is Microsoft’s version of Siri (with a husky voice), that is powered by Bing, and has been fully integrated into the phone experience. Windows Phone 8.1 also comes with an enterprise VPN and Internet Explorer 11. The desktop version of Internet Explorer now has an enterprise mode for improved compatibility (white listing of sites) and finally supports WebGL (3D).

The first announcements that was of keen interest to me was the new Universal Apps. These are based on the Windows runtime environment and are portable across the following: PCs; tablets and even Xbox. There is an update to Visual Studio 2013 that allows you to build such Universal Apps. A demo showed the same App running on both Xbox and Windows Phone; and there was also a demo showing the improvements in DirectX 12.

The second thing of interest for me was that ‘The Internet of Things’ got a lot of air time and Microsoft were very keen to talk about Intel and their new Quark chip. It's the smallest SoC the company has ever built, with processor cores one-fifth the size of Atom's, and is built upon an open architecture. Quark is positioned to put Intel in wearables and they even showed off a prototype smartwatch platform Intel constructed to help drive wearable development. Intel President Renee James pointed out that Quark's designed for use in integrated systems, so we'll be seeing Quark in healthcare too. The link for Microsoft was of course their Azure Cloud platform and the shock announcement that Windows will be available for free for Internet of Things-type devices - and indeed for phones and tablets with screens smaller than 9 inches.

The third thing that sparked my interest was from one of the questions in the Q&A, “What's the vision for Microsoft? The vision twenty some-odd years ago was ‘a computer on every desk’. But that's basically been achieved.”  Microsoft's answer, “Mobile First, Cloud First, and a world based on concepts like machine learning.”

I like “Mobile First, Cloud First” as a concept because it stresses the important relationship between the two. Microsoft may not see the success they desire with Windows 8.1 (even when the start menu returns) but it is clear that they are still a force to be reckoned with, and Windows 9 will have all the necessary learning in place to succeed.

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

In Defense of Mobile Platforms - Guest Blogger David Akka

In several past articles published here, the ever opinionated mobile expert Peter Roger's shared his belief that the age of traditional mobile platforms had passed.  In this article however, guest blogger and mobile expert David Akka shares a different opinion.
***

Over the last six months I met with a wide range of customers and prospects in order to understand how they understand enterprise mobility, and especially to learn whether they see it as a business opportunity or just another piece of technology. It’s no secret that the past few years have seen a debate between two paradigms: whether to write specific code for different devices, or to take a wider approach. The rapid advances in mobile technology have led to a world where there is no single accepted approach, but history looks to be repeating itself from the desktop world, and I believe that application development platforms are the way forward.

In general, the company I work for has two types of customer: ISVs, who develop solutions and typically have some investment in a certain paradigm or technology; and end users across industries from financial services in banking and insurance, through logistics, leisure and more, who may have a preference for one internal environment but who have usually ended up with a mix of technologies. This range makes their perspectives on mobile technologies varied and fascinating.

I have written a lot on the application technologies war, mostly focusing on HTML5. What I’m seeing in the market is that people who have been convinced to develop specific code for each device are sticking with this route, as are those who have chosen to use HTML5 web apps. However neither of these approaches is completely issue-free.

Regardless of whether you choose to code natively or use HTML5, there are both pros and cons. Organisations using HTML5 for mission-critical applications find that they suffer from delays caused by the need to deploy patches; while custom code has proved to be very expensive in terms of time and effort needed to support the multiple versions needed for different mobile ecosystems and device types and keep them all up to date. Just take a look at the iOS and Android Facebook clients for an example of this. The question is, how to move forward?

Once upon a time…

I have long been an advocate of using a mobile business platform in order to build applications with true multi-platform and multi-channel capability, and this is not a choice between developing HTML5 or native applications. Platforms can do both, and which you choose is a deployment, not a development, question. This is not about generating code, rather, it is about pre-packaged functionality that can be configured through a development process and activated across any platform, whether native or HTML5.

Handy component pieces

The real advantage of using platforms is that they provide a uniform approach to develop, deploy and manage applications. From collecting data and processes from multiple sources, whether these are located on premise or in the cloud, traditional enterprise systems or social media, and reusing it in an auditable and governable way, to consumption of data services and user interface across multiple devices. For example, you can set policies to ensure that certain data or applications can only be accessed in certain countries, or only when an employee is working from home, via geofencing.

Platforms have the ability to encode auditability and governance automatically into your applications, going beyond the user interface. You can determine policies for how the application should handle data when there is no connectivity, such as underground or on trains. Offline access needs to be built in, as does security. Today’s enterprise mobile users are carrying out tasks that would previously only have been available behind the firewall, so it’s increasingly important that security is built in at the device, application and user levels. Platforms enable all of this, not as a patch-based solution but as a single-stack solution to enable features to be easily built in.

I have written many times about the benefits of platforms, but I find that their benefits are often misunderstood. Especially in organisations where there is a strong understanding of HTML5, mobility experts fall into the trap of believing that just because they can make HTML do what they want that this is all their solution needs. For example, just because you can fire a HTML wrapper at a problem doesn’t mean that this is the easiest solution to maintain, upgrade or deploy to multiple devices.

The real benefits of platforms lie in the ways they enable you to predictably develop, manage and experience your applications, such as allowing you to concentrate on service consumption and provisioning at all levels and across all your applications. Rapid development is also a benefit, as the pre-packaged functionality in the platform allows you to reduce your development time by up to 80%, thus reducing your time to market as well as costs. Likewise, this rapid, agile development allows end users to participate in all stages of development, ensuring that the resulting applications are better adapted to user requirements and market needs. As most platform vendors incorporate the latest mobile technology into their platform via updates, allowing you to use it without researching the technologies in great detail, it becomes easy to keep your applications up to date. This has always been a benefit of using platforms, but it is especially noticeable with mobile due to the rapid evolution of the technology, especially when it comes to security, data standards, and ecosystems.

To examine why platforms are so important, let’s take a trip to “ancient history”, or as you might know it, about 20 years ago and the early days of ecommerce on the web. When websites first became important business tools they were written directly in HTML, and while there were some very impressive efforts, overall this trend led to sites that were little more than an online version of the company’s paper catalogue or brochure. This also led to pages becoming increasingly complicated as revisions were made or new technologies adopted. Consider that in the space of a few years customers started to expect embedded media, secure payment, live stock levels, mapping and online reviews: trying to code all of this into a page by HTML was very complicated.

The solution to the ever-increasing complexity of webpages was to use platforms which allowed new technologies to be implemented as standard objects, rather than having to write everything from scratch, to the point that today webpages resemble a Lego model rather than a hand-written essay. For example, if you want to create a blog site, using platforms such as WordPress or Eblogger is an obvious choice, while Magneta, Shopify and Voluta easily handle the complexities of an e-commerce website, and for a CMS there is a plethora of choices such as Drupal, Squarespace, and Movable. Platforms can also be easily updated to cope with new requirements, thus simplifying maintenance, while custom HTML or Java is used to customise rather than create. Remember that the purpose of mobile apps is not just to present information, but to be able to reuse existing business logic behind a new user interface.

Is the past relevant to mobile?

I believe that the picture in mobile today is very similar in that while many organisations have used HTML or Java to create a mobile experience, but today they are finding that it is no longer enough to wrap these around a page to make a mobile app.

The challenge is that users are trying to do far more on mobile now. Mobile apps don’t just need to present data to a user in an attractive way: users need to be able to update that data, and the more we do, the more important it becomes to ensure the right data gets to the right people, when they want it. Today’s mobile apps need to be able to set intelligent policies regarding who can access what data, they need to have security built in, along with management tools. As users increasingly rely on mobile, offline access becomes critical, and apps need to be updated rapidly as demands change, in a world where “rapid” could mean “within 30 minutes”.

Further, as users try to complete more of their computing tasks on mobile, the mobile experience needs to grow far beyond the cut-down “mobile interfaces” we have come to expect. Mobile users are expecting to have all their workflows at their fingertips, and the logical, integrated processes that result are no less at home on desktop. This means that it makes no sense to separate mobile apps as a standalone page: because we need a template, the full business logic and workflows, mobile is moving beyond a “look and feel” issue. What we are moving towards is a world where collaborating and sharing data is enabled by seamless processes, making users quicker and more effective.

This look at the past shows that many organisations today are just dealing with a thin layer of what mobility is all about. Yes, you can easily design HTML pages yourself, but it is hard to upgrade the look and feel, maintain the applications or assign and control user rights. Learn from the dotcom era and content websites, and move toward using a platform today, to better manage your logic, processes and data in a maintainable way for the long run.

The industry has already acknowledged the key role of platforms in its mature desktop web technology: now it’s time to learn from the past, embrace platforms in mobile and avoid a future disaster.

Watch the Google+ Hangout interview with Dave Akka, http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/2014/04/mobile-expert-interview-dave-akka-on.html.

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Notes on the Location Based Services Market

By Caleb Benedict, Research Analyst, GIS/IoT, Netcentric Strategies

IBM has recently invested $1.1 billion USD into Location Based Services (LBS) and Application Programming Interface (APIs).  The investment was in the development of BlueMix, a cloud-based service, that when combined with Pitney Bowes' API programs, allow businesses to collect data on consumers based on their location and geography.

GPS enabled smartphones are introducing a whole new precision to LBS.  No longer are companies needing to triangulate between cellular towers to get a general location, when GPS data can identify the exact business location.  This enables location, business type, company name and more to be added to time and date.  Patterns of life can start to be recognized and marketing and promotional campaigns created based upon these findings.

In addition to smartphones, the IoT (Internet of Things) enables equipment, supplies, materials, vehicles, trailers etc., to all be located on a map in real-time.  We will talk more about this in another article.

It is my analysis that investments into business intelligence and meaning-making based on LBS is a requirement going forward for many industries. When user locations are recorded and studied by a cloud-based business intelligence system and strategies adjusted based upon the meaning-making of this data, then you can start delivering competitive advantages.

Benefits of Location-Based Services for companies…

·      Companies are able to study consumer habits based on geography

·      Companies can adjust business practices based on consumer locations

·      Marketers can advertise based on precise locations

·      Consumers can participate in location-based coupons and daily deals

           

Some additional notes from my recent research on the LBS market:

Facebook and Google dominate the market share of LBS - controlling 46% according to a recent Berg Insight report. As long as Facebook and Google continue to purchase companies like Instagram they will continue to dominate.

According to the same report the LBS market will grow at a 16% CAGR through 2018 and Facebook and Google will continue to control roughly half the market share throughout those years.

Heineken has been using Foursquare to allow beer drinkers to check-in when purchasing Heineken beverages. This mobile campaign is aimed at engaging consumers and building brand loyalty by offering the chance to win sports memorabilia as incentives for checking-in when drinking Heineken products.

Facebook’s Instagram is threatening the future of Foursquare by experimenting with a new, in-house location-based check-in function in place of Foursequare’s service.  Foursquare’s major clients are currently Flicker, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest, and Path. If Instagram and their 200 million users switch to an in-house check-in service and replace Foursquare this would dramatically reduce Foursquare’s market share in the location-services market.

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Wake Up! Your Business Has Changed!

We have all been there. Sitting in a stuffy conference room white-boarding and sharing innovative ideas only to be shut-down by the words, "Our IT environment won't support that."  I remember during my time as an IT manager hearing those words over and over.  We were encouraged to be innovative and to beat our competition by being faster, quicker, cheaper, but every idea met with an insurmountable IT obstacle.  It was, at least, insurmountable from our perspective and pay grade.

I see the following weekly:

• Outdated technology stalls company's growth
• Outdated technology kills future potential
• Outdated technology limits and prevents adjustments to business models
• Past IT investments never achieved predicted ROIs so future investments denied

How does the CEO make the case for a do-over with his/her IT environment to prevent an extinction event?  It's a hard case to make, but a necessary one.  I believe that is the appeal of cloud services and companies like Salesforce.com.  You can use their services, and remain flexible to change if the market demands it.  You are not locked into massive upfront financial commitments and decades worth of business models and processes cemented by outdated ERPs.

Today more than ever a company's ability to compete and be successful is dependent on technology. Technology evolves so rapidly every company should have a dedicated team studying emerging technologies and their potential impact on their industry, market and company.  IDC and Cognizant are now identifying a third platform of computing emerging.  It follows the platforms of mainframes and client/servers.

The third platform of computing is made up of four evolving technologies that have combined:

• Social
• Mobile
• Cloud
• Big data

This third platform is transforming IT much faster than previous platforms ever did. This has tremendous implications for the IT industry's budgets and priorities.

CIO magazine's managing editor Kim S. Nash writes in the March 28, 2014 edition, "Some of the most effective competitive moves happening today in social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies weren't on anyone's threat horizon until recently."  Nash is emphasizing the incredible speed in which these changes are happening and impacting the IT environment.  And as we know whatever impacts the market impacts the IT environment and the business.

In my last meeting with Forrester VP John McCarthy in London he stated, "Enterprise Mobility will be as transformative as the introduction of ERPs."  That is a bold prediction and one that many CEOs/CIOs are not yet tuned into.

I work with strategy groups in large enterprises around the world, and I must say most do not realize the speed at which digital transformations are happening around them.  They feel they can delay budgeting significant IT transformation projects another few years.  They think they can maintain a slow iterative pace.  My response,  "If a company does not keep up with technology at the same pace at which their customers are adopting the technology, they are losing the race and opening up opportunities for competitors."

Salesforce.com's President Keith Block predicted this week that they will be bigger than SAP.  He might be right.  The market is evolving and adopting cloud services that fast.

Download Cognizant's free Code Halo app for iPads here - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/code-halos/id752380930?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 and learn how Code Halo strategies are changing the rules of business.

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

The Growing Importance of GIS to Organizations, Industries and Municipalities in 2014

By Caleb Benedict, Research and GIS Analyst

During the past decade GIS (Geospatial Information Systems) has grown from a term representing simple navigational devices and GPS handsets to something much more complex and useful. In the past ten years the GIS market has steadily grown in numbers of applications, use cases, industry adoption and users. Newly published forecasts for the GIS market predict that the GIS industry will grow at an estimated 8% CAGR through 2016.

It is my analysis that GIS applications in both public and private sectors are growing faster than 8%. By researching job announcements on city employment pages, it is obvious there is an increasing demand for GIS analysts, specialists, and technicians.

This growth is due to advancements in GIS technology and the realization that GIS applications are important tools for just about every municipal government, engineering firms, industry and organizations with remote and mobile job sites, projects, assets and workforces today. Digital mapping and remote sensing (the use of satellite imagery outfitted with sensors) is delivering increased safety and savings in the form of time, money and resources.

GIS in the news…

The U.S. government increases the U.S. Geological Survey budget by $41 million to $1.1 billion total. (http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/32343/2/)

Peoria, Illinois is using GIS and LIDAR imagery to collect information on city streets in order to understand street conditions and plan for infrastructure improvements. (http://peoriapublicradio.org/post/peoria-survey-streets)

GIS planning has resulted in a 30% decrease in traffic related deaths in Abu Duabi after GIS planning improved traffic lights and street management. (http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/abu-dhabi-road-accident-deaths-drop-30-in-five-years-1.1310328)

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

The Evolution of Mobility - B2B B2C B2I

I have spent the last 14 years working on enterprise mobility projects, researching and writing about them.  In the year 2000, mobility was used mostly in warehouses, grocery stores, utilities and in field service roles.  We sold mobile development projects to businesses so they could take advantage of mobile apps customized for internal use.  That was the age of B2B (business-to-business) mobility.

With the introduction of Palms and iPaqs, mobile app developers started pondering personal productivity apps for handhelds.  Calendars, notes, planners and mobile forms were developed as part of what was to become "PIMs" (personal information managers).  That evolved with wireless connectivity and broadband Internet access to the mobile consumer apps we all know today.  That is the age of B2C (business-to-consumer) mobility.

Today, with the introduction of "Code Halo" strategies and "mass personalization" the era of B2I (business-to-individuals) mobility is introduced.  This is the era when companies collect "Code Halo" data and maintain massive amounts of information about each consumer that they can use to provide an instant and personalized mobile user experience for each person.

You land at an airport and must connect to another flight.  You open your Delta airline app and it knows you.  It knows your location and itinerary.  It tells you the connecting gate, estimated time to get from your gate to the connecting gate and shares the flight status with you.  All of these conveniences are due to the fact it knows you, and the data in the app is personalized.  The days of generic websites and generic mobile apps will soon be gone.

We have grown to expect more from our website and mobile app experiences.  I would be so annoyed if when I opened my Delta app it asked who I was, what flight number I wanted to look up, and what airport map did I want to review.

Download the free Code Halo app for iPads here - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/code-halos/id752380930?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4.

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Digital Transformation Expert Interview: Author Paul Roehrig

I love Google+ Hangouts.  They enable me to catch up with busy, world traveling digital and mobile experts anywhere in the world and record interviews with them.  Today, I have the privilege of sharing an interview that I recorded last week with author Paul Roehrig who is also the Co-Director of the Center for the Future of Work here at Cognizant.  Paul's new and important book that will be published by Wiley in April is titled "Code Halos - How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business."  There is also an accompanying iPad app "Code Halos" available now for free here.

Viewers may have caught the interview I published with Paul's co-author on the book Ben Pring last week.  In this interview we cover a different set of strategy discussions.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10RYDcvbJng&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Digital Transformation Expert Interview: Author Ben Pring on Code Halos

I had the privilege of interviewing Ben Pring the co-author of the book Code Halos - How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business this week!  In addition to the book, there is also a free companion Code Halos iPad app available for download.  As well as writing books, Ben Pring is also the Co-Director of the Center for the Future of Work at Cognizant.  Wiley will be publishing the book nationwide in 2 weeks.  It is available now for pre-order. Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2uhEPxOMEg&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

IoT and M2M Cloud Controlled Programmable Hardware

My friend and Cognizant colleague the ever opinionated Peter Rogers shares more of insights into the world of IoT (Internet of Things) geekdom and how it really works under-the-covers.
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Facebook invested more cash this week when they acquired one of my favourite Kickstarter projects Oculus VR for a seemingly ridiculous $2b. The VR (virtual reality) headset was the best in class technology (in its price range) and had just added a head-tracking software solution to reduce motion sickness. Of course it wasn't just the VR headset that Facebook acquired, but the CTO of Oculus VR, who is no other than the legendary game creator John Carmack.

There is every indication that Facebook will let Oculus VR do their own thing but I do worry about the lack of support from game developers, so John Carmack needs to rally the forces. We all agree there is money in wearable technologies in 2014, right? I actually classed virtual reality headsets as my favourite form of wearable technology, but I am a gamer at heart and spent a lot of time playing VR games in the local arcades as a teenager/adult. With the problems of motion sickness being alleviated and fast refresh rates then we can all look forward to recreating scenes from Disclosure very soon and it proves this is happening now.

IFTTT

I was recently looking into IFTTT (if this then that) which is a service that lets you create powerful connections of Internet services. Channels are the basic representation of online services (Facebook, LinkedIn, Evernote, etc.). Triggers are actions that place on a channel, such as “I check in on Foursquare” or “I am tagged in a ridiculous picture of the office party on Facebook”. Actions are the tasks to perform such as ‘send me a text message to warm me of photos I am tagged in on Facebook”.  Recipes are therefore the final ‘if this than that’ statement which combines triggers on channels with actions to perform. You can have personal recipes, one example of such being a text message warning system for photos that you are tagged in on Facebook within days of an office party.

I didn’t realise until recently that some of the non-enterprise MBaaS (mobile backend as a service) systems offer a similar IFTTT construct. If we look at Firebase which is probably more of a real-time connectivity platform than a MBaaS, but has come into the spotlight after a strong partnership with Famo.us. Firebase offers hooks to inject conflict resolution logic into the proceedings. Likewise, Telerik  allows you to inject custom JavaScript code to be executed before/after CRUD (create/read/update/delete) operations on data items. This offers a simpler alternative than a Node/GAE service tier and with the merging of API Gateways and Enterprise MBaaS on the horizon (a topic for a later Blog) then I have a strong feeling we will see this level of configuration-programmatic control in the near future, especially in the wearable space.

Tessel

Tessel start with asking a great question, “How do you teach web developers about hardware?” and it is a question I have long been pondering from a resourcing perspective. The answer they give is fantastic, “You don’t. You teach hardware about web developers”. You use familiar web development language such as JavaScript and Node to make programming hardware a much higher level construct.

Tessel is a micro-controller that runs Embedded JavaScript. The guys at Tessel seem to think that JavaScript is the perfect embedded language and I am inclined to agree. Tessel are targeting the affordable embedded processor range of Cortex-M0 to Cortex-M4 which are the lower end of the performance spectrum but come in at the $4@1k range. The options are to either run a JavaScript VM (which comes in at around 10Mb of memory) or run a Lua VM (which is highly portable and comes in at around 30K). I was curious what Embedded JavaScript actually was and I guess we will see quite a few definitions of cut down versions of the ECMAScript but Tessel have a unique take on all this. Originally on a local computer there would be a JavaScript file and a g-zipped Lua file which was then sent to a Tessel micro-controller which ran a Lua interpreter. To improve performance they have now moved to having a JavaScript file on the local computer and then on the actual Tessel they will compile JavaScript to Lua bytecode and run this through a LuaJIT (just in time compiler) based custom RTOS.

I remember all of the MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms) used to support Lua and soon everyone quickly moved away to the more familiar JavaScript language. Corona was the first to see an exodus of game developers due to the closed nature of the solution. Now in the MCAP space everyone is moving away from JavaScript VMs to cross-transpiled / cross-compiled JavaScript solutions (Hyperloop, Cocoon, Intel XDK). This means you get to write in JavaScript but you end up with native code which is a win-win – unless you hate JavaScript. The future is that it will become feasible to embed in every product a micro-controller powerful enough to run a high level language but for now JavaScript (or Embedded JavaScript as it will be called) seems to be the language of choice.

Firmata

I later discovered trailr which allows you to build and deploy Arduino ‘environment-aware’ sketches over WebSockets. This basically means that you can effectively reprogram the hardware by sending an environment configuration over the air. This led me onto Firmata, which is a generic protocol for communicating with microcontrollers from software on a host computer. It is intended to work with any host computer software package. Basically, this firmware establishes a protocol for talking to the Arduino from the host software. The aim is to allow people to completely control the Arduino from software on the host computer. Firmata is therefore a simple Arduino sketch that allows you to control all of the pins on the micro-controller dynamically without loading a new program on the board every time you want to do something.

SkyNet and Cloud Programmable Hardware

I have to mention SkyNet once again after they amazed me by lighting up their office with Phillips Hue light bulbs that change colour (red or green) as their stock price fluctuates (using the Yahoo Stock Market API). You can see the video here at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNiHQXmawys. SkyNet have firmware that allows an Arduino to automatically connect to SkyNet and await Firmata instructions. SkyNet then becomes the compute cloud for controlling devices and collecting sensor data without CPUs or custom device apps.

As Chris from SkyNet says, “You could literally duct-tape an Arduino, MicroArduino (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/microduino/microduino-arduino-in-your-pocket-small-stackable), Spark device (https://www.spark.io/), or RFduino (http://www.rfduino.com/) to a light pole with a small rechargeable battery and solar cell.  It connects to SkyNet allowing you to stream sensor data from connected sensors or you could turn on pins for lights, relays, motors, etc. via SkyNet messages. SkyNet messages could be sent from people all around the world.”

I must admit that I find the whole concept of Cloud controlled programmable hardware very exciting.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Top 10 Mobile Expert Interviews from Mobile World Congress 2014

In case you missed any or all of these interviews with mobile experts at the Mobile World Congress 2014 a few weeks back, here they all are in one list for your viewing pleasure:

• Experience Mobile World Congress 2014
• Mobile Expert Interview: SAP's Adam Stein
• Mobile Expert Interview: Good Technologies' CEO Christy Wyatt
• Mobile Expert Interview: SAP's Martin Heisig
• Mobile Expert Interview: SAP's Mimi Spier
• Mobile Expert Interview: SAP's Dinesh Sharma
• Mobile Expert Interview: VMWare's Sanjay Poonen
• Mobile Expert Interview: Micron's Michael Rayfield
• Mobile Expert Interview: Microsoft's Rob Tiffany
• Mobile Expert Interview: ClickSoftware's CEO Moshe BenBassat

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Must Read Code Halos - The Book

Amazon beating Borders, Netflix beating Blockbuster, Apple beating Kodak, and the rise of companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Pandora are not isolated or random events. Today's outliers in revenue growth and value creation are winning with a new set of rules. They are dominating by managing the information that surrounds people, organizations, processes, and products.  They are employing a "Code Halo" strategy.

Code Halo is the name for all the relevant data that surrounds customers, prospects, employees, products, organizations, etc.  The data that if collected, analyzed for meaning, and used to customize an experience adds tremendous value.

We are seeing "Code Halo" strategies being deployed everywhere.  In fact, Google's new semantic search capabilities are using it as demonstrated by this excerpt from the book Google Semantic Search by David Amerland, "Search programming [now] looks at what we have typed in search, looks at our personal search history, and tries to guess our intent behind what we are looking for."

The underlying principle of a Code Halo strategy is this - there is value in personalizing or customizing an experience, rather than providing generic experiences.  When you visit a website that has no knowledge of you and simply shows you the generic company website - it is a generic experience.  There is no value added.  When you go to a website like Amazon, and the site greets you by name and shows your history and recommends different products based on your past preferences and what others with similar tastes to you have bought - that is a Code Halo enabled site with exceptional value added.

What does an IT environment look like that is Code Halo enabled?  What does the IT architecture look like?  What does a marketing strategy look like that is Code Halo enabled?  How do companies treat employees when the company is employing a Code Halo strategy?  These are all great questions that need answered.

My colleagues at Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work, Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig and Ben Pring have just completed a new book on Code Halo strategies that will be released by Wiley in April. I have read it and recommend it. You can read more about it here http://www.unevenlydistributed.com/codehalos/book.

Every company in every industry and market needs to ponder the impact of Code Halo strategies on their business.  Code Halos are an integral part of a digital transformation and are changing the face of business.  Companies that don't "get it" won't survive long.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Internet of Things Platforms and IoT Strategies

My friend and colleague, the always opinionated Peter Rogers, shares his latest research on The Internet of Things and the technology and platforms that are used to support it.

There seems to be two main groups of thought as to when wearable technology will become mainstream. The first group are those that believe that wearable technology is here today and are engaging both hobbyists and future entrepreneurs in building all parts of the ecosystem now. These people are creating their own hardware and working with systems to communicate with third party hardware right as we speak. The second group of people are more commercially minded and are looking at creating a full platform for the future. They are looking at big data style real-time analytics, next generation IP, and constrained REST architectures with cast iron security.

Personally I am impatient.  I want to start playing with this IoT stuff today and allow the dedicated platforms to mature over time so they are ready when the market really picks ups.  With that said I believe there are currently two tiers of vendors:

1. Those that have something that works today and that we could build products and services on top of now.
2. Those that have an actual platform that is slowly maturing and we can use in the future 

My advice is to look at combining a selection of low-end propositions to start testing custom products for their effectiveness today.  In my view the best people to start talking with for effective low risk deployments, would be those offering end-to-end solutions based around plugging in any device to a simple Cloud PaaS and with their technology readily available to hobbyists.

I will list a few vendors that I think offer technology ready to go today and then in my next article I will look at those that I consider offer platforms for the future.  The main problem is one of being locked into a proprietary Cloud system that cannot be privately hosted and that only works with embedded client software that is explicitly supported by that vendor. If there is anything the ‘MBaaS v MEAP debate in enterprise mobility taught us is that open standards with flexible Cloud hosting solutions will win out. I don't see a perfect solution at the moment, but I do see a whole lot of very exciting propositions that will get acquired and combined effectively over time.

SkyNet

This open source project aims to let disparate devices communicate via a variety of protocols including MQTT, WS/S, CoAP, HTTPS/REST and WebSockets. It supports UUID authentication and TLS certificates. Eventually non-programmers could use Skynet to create a platform that lets us program the real and online worlds in a way that’s far more powerful than If This Then That (IFTTT) or Zapier. The end result is a flexible piece of open source software that can connect to everything from servers to sensors. SkyNet can be run on a public or private Node.js instance (such as Heroku) and they are even working on an open source home gateway.

IOBridge

ioBridge makes it easy for professionals and enthusiasts to monitor and control nearly anything via their smartphone or web app using a general purpose web gateway. This is a simple gateway that lets you monitor or send commands to anything compatible with the ioBridge through a web interface. It does sound like you can only access ioBridge-manufactured or third-party sensors, that are compatible with the ioBridge web gateway.  It also doesn't sounds like you can set up your own version on a private network just yet. When you purchase one of the ioBridge gateways then you get a free limited subscriptions. For example, if you want to log data faster than every few minutes then you need another subscription.

BergCloud

Berg is a Cloud platform but they also provide hardware with built-in connectivity for faster prototyping. Devshields bring the Device API to Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and ARM MBED. The Device API is provided as a client library that runs on your microcontroller, speaking via your wireless connection to the web. If you are prototyping and don't yet have connectivity, then the Devshield developer boards have that bundled too. You can manage and message all your devices using the RESTful Cloud API, built around secure HTTPS. You control the user experience with your own website, and treat your devices like just another web service.

Sense Observation Systems

CommonSense is a platform that helps you to keep track of all your sensor data, store it in a central location, and play with it. CommonSense also processes your raw sensor data into meaningful things like sleep, exercise, or your top locations. With the free CommonSense Dashboard  you gain insights into your behavior. With the free CommonSense Tracker you turn your phone into an advanced tracking device. You can combine them, add in your Fitbit or Twitter data, and you get a powerful self-tracking system. Connections are available now for iOS, Android, Fitbit, and Twitter. They are working on connecting more devices and services.

The data is stored in their Cloud, which happens to be in The Netherlands and has been certified with according to medical device regulations (NEN-7510). It does seem to have a good focus on Health Care and the Environment. CommonSense is currently in Private Beta and it sounds more like a real-time analytics platform at the moment.

Electric Imp

Electric Imp offers a complete end-to-end solution that makes it simple to connect almost any product to the Internet through an innovative and powerful cloud service tied closely to leading-edge hardware. The Electric Imp connectivity platform, featuring fully integrated hardware, software, OS, APIs, cloud servers, makes it possible to effectively empower your devices with intelligence, scalability and flexibility. If you’re a developer, hobbyist, or maker, then you can get started with one of their development kits and bring connectivity to your project, idea or concept.

Electric Imp offers a comprehensive solution designed to connect your product or project to the Internet quickly, easily and effectively. The platform includes:

• Imp Hardware: The Electric Imp platform starts with the imp, a powerful module containing WiFi and a processor that acts as the gateway to connect your device or service to the Internet
• Imp OS: The software foundation for the imp’s features and services that allows your code to concentrate on bringing your product’s functions to life.
• Imp Cloud: Their cloud allows you to run agents - server side code that runs in a secure environment - that are used to provide HTTP I/O and cloud-side processing, and easily connect your products to anything with Internet access. Agents can act as a central hub to your products, apps, third-party services, and even your own servers.
• Imp Open API: Enrich your customer experience and build your business by developing enhancements like messaging, monitoring, and much more.
• Imp BlinkUpTM: The proprietary Electric Imp setup solution (BlinkUp) integrates seamlessly into your apps, letting you and your customers connect products in seconds using just a smartphone or tablet.
• Imp Services - IDE and Ops Console: Maintain your software, push new code and features easily to devices anytime, ensuring that your users always have the latest features. The Ops Console enables you to gain more insight into your factory production lines and scale to millions of devices.

1248.io

1248.io offers Geras, which is a scalable time-series database for your sensor data with quick storage for your Analytics. They also offer HyperCat, which is an open, lightweight JSON-based hypermedia catalogue format for exposing collections of URIs. HyperCat is simple to work with and allows developers to publish linked-data descriptions of resources. HyperCat is designed for exposing information about IoT assets over the web. It allows a server to provide a set of resources to a client, each with a set of semantic annotations.

Geras offers the following:

• HTTPS support for strong security and per-user API keys
• Standard HTTP/HTTPS support allowing sensors to traverse firewalls and proxies
• Sensors can supply data over HTTP POST or very lightweight MQTT publish
• Supports modern standards for posting, getting and discovering data: HTTPS; JSON; RESTful; SenML; MQTT; and HyperCat
• Built on a fault-tolerant, distributed database
• Data can be stored in the country of your choice with an option to buy Geras as software and host the data yourself

If you have an IoT platform or technologies that you want Peter Rogers to be aware of please email him at Peter-2.Rogers-2@cognizant.com.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.