Chat Mobility with Me (Kevin Benedict) on December 7th

Tweet Meet Dec. 7th, 9:30 AM EST
I just read about a company that conducts weekly Twitter chats with their community and thought that was a great idea.  Is anyone interested?  It will be interesting to attempt to communicate about a complex topic such as enterprise mobility in 140 characters, but I am always up for a challenge!

For those interested in chatting with me via Twitter, let's all gather on Twitter at the hashtag #kbmobile next Friday, December 7th at 9:30 AM EST and see how it goes :-)

Cheers!
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
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.

Connecting the Strategic to the Tactical - Enterprise Mobility

There is a term, revolution in military affairs, that when searched brings up many interesting articles that directly relate to enterprise mobility and business transformation.  One article in particular found at http://www.defencejournal.com/2000/sept/military.htm and written by Sharjeel Rizwan offers deep insights.

Here is one of the article concepts as interpreted by me - mobile technologies permit a direct connection and data exchange between the strategic and the tactical levels of an organization.  Many layers of  management hierarchy, IT infrastructure and paper based reporting processes can be eliminated and huge savings and speed of data delivery can occur with mobile technologies.  These capabilities permit changes in processes, organizations and strategies, which enables agility, speed, productivity increases and efficiency gains.

Let me share a quote from Matt Green, VP of Product Management with Software AG, "Imagine a single activity stream that carries an alert every time a customer calls in with a product issue.  For the first time the customer sales rep, the R&D organization, the consulting organization, and the customer support rep can all opt to receive the same notification.  The sales rep knows that his customer is having an issue at the same time that R&D reads about it and at the same time that the on-site consultant gets it.  The visibility and transparency that this gives allows each participant to work together as a team and to work as a unified team with the customer."  That is a great example of shared situational awareness!

How many good ideas from the tactical part of a business never reach the strategic level because of politics, laziness, ego, lack of time, ignorance or they simply get lost in the noise?  How many strategic messages get missed or diluted trying to filter through all the layers of management before they reach the tactical teams?  With both mobile technologies and the effective use of enterprise social collaboration solutions many of these problems can be resolved.

Here is more from Matt Green, "People used to say that email was collaboration.  Then chat became collaboration.  Then wiki’s came to the scene as an attempt to work together more efficiently.  New social platforms will break the mode entirely in 2013 and dramatically increase how people work together with computers and mobile devices.”

I think of the Pony Express implemented in the United States during the 19th century for mail delivery.  The Pony Express had more than 100 stations, 80 riders, and between 400 and 500 horses.  It lasted only 18 months but during that time riders covered 650,000 miles and carried 34,753 pieces of mail.   This legendary system lasted only 18 months.  Why?  The telegraph replaced them.  If you could instantly send a message across the country, why use expensive horse-based middleware?

How many of our companies are still using horse-based middleware and managing as if we were using horse-based middleware?  Real-time communications, real-time visibility, real-time collaboration completely changes the game.  Are you playing?
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
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.

Mobility News Weekly – Week of November 25, 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 News Weekly
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 SMAC News Weekly

Within the last three months, iPhone 5 sales boosted Apple to the number one spot in the U.S. market, with handsets running on Apple’s iOS operating system accounting for 48.1 percent of smartphone sales in the country, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.  Read Original Content

The Nokia Lumia 920 is starting to make some rumbles in the smartphone market, selling out on Amazon.com and seeing some wait times on AT&T for some versions. Read Original Content

According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Android has claimed a dominant lead in the Australian smartphone market with a market share of 62.2 percent, with the platform pulling ahead of Apple.  Read Original Content

Founded in 1979, DSI is a global provider of Enterprise Mobility Solutions®, helping companies worldwide increase productivity and profitability regardless of data source, device type, operating system or network connectivity.  DSI serves clients globally through its offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by DSI.

According to new Market Data from ABI Research, by the end of this year revenues accumulated by the global mobile application market will pass the $30 billion milestone with that figure including money made from pay-per-downloads, in-app purchases, subscriptions and in-app advertisements. Read Original Content

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, finds that the Latin American mobile broadband market earned revenues of $6.74 billion in 2011 and estimates this to reach $34.41 billion in 2017, driven by increasing demand for mobility, penetration of smart devices, and convergent services and bundles.  Read Original Content


According to research firm comScore, Google Android and Apple iOS account for respective 53 percent and 34 percent shares of the smartphone subscriber market.  Read Original Content

According to IDC, the third quarter report has Sony standing in third position while last year for the same quarter Sony had the sixth position. Read Original Content

According to Gartner, Samsung sold the most smartphones during the third quarter, spearheaded by the Galaxy S3, which recently surpassed the 30 million units sold milestone. The company sold an accumulative of 55 million smartphone units, while Apple sold 23.6 million iPhones.  Read Original Content

Mobile Health News Weekly – Week of November 25, 2012

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

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read SMAC News Weekly

A new Pew Research report found that 31 percent of cellphone users had used their device to access health information. That was nearly double the 17 percent who said they did so two years ago. Read Original Content

A new report from Juniper is the latest in a flurry of forecasts about the role smart wearable devices, or wearables will play in the mobile technology market over the next few years. Juniper says wearables will be a $1.5 billion market by 2014, up from just $800 million this year. Read Original Content

A new survey on Mobile Health from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds 19 percent of smartphone users have at least one health app downloaded onto their device. Read Original Content

Antenna Software provides a complete cloud-based enterprise mobility suite that enables both IT pros and business executives alike to create and manage mobile apps, websites and content across the entire business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Antenna Software.

In April 2012 there were 13,600 health apps, and by 2016 mHealth apps for patient monitoring are expected to be a $20 billion industry. As many as 90 percent of clinicians are expected to be using smartphones as clinical tools by the end of 2012. Read Original Content


Nearly 247 million mobile phone users around the world are expected to download a health app in 2012, according to Research2Guidance, a global market research firm. Read Original Content

Mobility, Business Transformation and the Fifth Dimension


Enterprise mobility is not simply a new set of gadgets and technologies for communications.  Enterprise mobility is transformational.  Business transformation is a process that impacts at least four major areas:

•          Concepts
•          Processes
•          Organizations
•          Technologies

Most often changes and innovations in any one of these areas, invites change in all of the areas.  Is your company re-thinking concepts, processes, organizations and technologies because of the capabilities mobile and SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) solutions have made possible?

Historically militaries have focused on four dimensions of warfare: land, sea, air and space.  They have focused all of their attention on building military platforms (guns, tanks, ships, aircraft, missiles, etc.) that work in these physical environments.  Today they have added a fifth dimension – information.  Today, modern militaries are focused on information-based capabilities such as quality sensors, communication links, M2M (machine to machine), and avionics and analytics as being key areas that offer military/competitive advantages.
I am here to say that the fifth dimension is also the area where industry will find their competitive advantages in 2013.  The fifth dimension involves the ability to collect data, communicate data, analyze data and report it.  The faster this is done, the bigger the possible competitive advantages.  The role of enterprise mobility and SMAC solutions are key to all of these areas.

How does a company transform itself to achieve these competitive advantages?  I suggest companies need to be smart about their development and use of mobile applications, big data, real-time business intelligence, social media monitoring and cloud-based applications that maximize agility.  However, technology is only one of the areas that need to experience innovation during true business transformation.  Companies also need to explore how they can transform their concepts, processes and organizations to work effectively in these new environments.

Running a real-time data driven business is different.  In requires new ways of managing so real-time action can be taken based on real-time data.  This may require organizational changes and new business and operational models.

*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
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.

Mobile Commerce News Weekly – Week of November 25, 2012

The Mobile Commerce News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile commerce and marketing, mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking, mobile ads 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 Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read SMAC News Weekly

Smartdevices continue to gain momentum and according to Tapjoy’s recent study, m-commerce is expected to globally explode by 300 percent. Read Original Content

U.S. social media ad revenues are expected to reach $9.2 billion in 2016, up from $4.6 billion in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate of 19.2 percent, according to the fall update of the BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Forecast. Read Original Content

Mobile payment volume through PayPal on Black Friday increased 193 percent compared to last year’s Black Friday, and customers shopping through the site increased 173 percent, according to research by the National Retail Federation. Read Original Content

Founded in 1979, DSI is a global provider of Enterprise Mobility Solutions®, helping companies worldwide increase productivity and profitability regardless of data source, device type, operating system or network connectivity.  DSI serves clients globally through its offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by DSI.

Deloitte predicts the UK will see a 17 percent hike in online retail sales this year, with £330 million of transactions made through smartphones and £500 million through tablet computers. Read Original Content

IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers latest report reveals that growth in mobile advertising continues to skyrocket as it increased 190 percent YOY and 25 percent on the prior period to $22 million. Read Original Content


Research firm, ABI Research, predicted earlier this year that an estimated 80 million NFC-enabled smartphones would be shipped this year. Read Original Content

IBM recently reported that total online sales saw a surge of 20.7 percent in spending from last year. eBay-owned PayPal is reporting that Black Friday global mobile payments volume was up 193 percent from last year. Read Original Content

Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5 – Week of November 25, 2012

In this update on "What's New in HTML5" the debate around the merits of HTML5 continues as Brightcove's CEO Jeremy Allaire says Mark Zuckerberg was "dead wrong" about HTML5.

Now for the news...

Nokia’s new free cloud-based map service, HERE, will be available on multiple operating systems, including an HTML5 version for Apple’s iOS.  Read Original Content

Mobile social gaming platform GREE is expanding its compatibility with HTML5 and will roll out the enhanced HTML5 functionality worldwide in open beta this month.  Read Original Content

Caplin Systems has launched a Web-trading tool, Caplin Trader 3, built entirely in HTML5 to provide support for all platforms from one codebase.  Read Original Content

The New York Times has redesigned its crosswords page with a new HTML5 version to enable game play within the browser, allowing players to access puzzles without leaving the NYTimes.com website.  Read Original Content

BoosterMedia provides an infographic detailing the world of HTML5 mobile gaming in this article featured in me mobile entertainment.  Read Original Content

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire believes hybrid apps are essential to getting the technical economy highly productive, and states Mark Zuckerberg was “dead wrong” and it was “shameful for him to throw HTML5 under the bus because Facebook had an outdated and poorly written hybrid app”.  Read Original Content

Mobile and digital consultant Michael Nuciforo compares the native vs. HTML5 debate to choosing whether to purchase a Ferrari or a Toyota in this article in Finextra.  Read Original Content


Computer maker Dell has created tablet-optimized catalogs and smartphone mobile commerce sites for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  The digital catalogs are HTML5-based so consumers can view them on any mobile browser.  Read Original Content

LongTail Video has released a major update to its video player with enhanced HTML5 support leveraging many of the recent advancements in HTML5 browsers, including the HTML5 Fullscreen API.  Read Original Content

Tylted has launched GameDrop Network, a mobile advertising platform that integrates Tylted’s HTML5-based ad server with an app publisher’s existing ad server.  Read Original Content

ViewTube is a userscript compatible with various web browsers that replaces Adobe Flash Player with an HTML5 video player on popular websites, giving users the opportunity to try out HTML5 video.  Read Original Content

HTML5 Web-publishing platform Wix has formed a partnership with e-commerce website solution Shopify to enable Wix’s users to integrate Shopify into their HTML5 websites.  Read Original Content

Gaming site JackpotCity Casino has added two new HTML5 mobile casino games.  Read Original Content

Apex Studio has released the new generation of HTML5 Movie Maker for Windows, enabling users to convert multiple formats video files to HTML5 video to play on browsers and mobile devices.  Read Original Content

Magic Software’s David Akka believes the hype around HTML5 continues to gather momentum, but won’t be ready as a reliable development tool for the enterprise for another 2-4 years.  Read Original Content


*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
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.

Speed, Mobility and Online Sales

I read an article in the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) today titled, Big-Box Stores Wrestle E-Commerce Gorilla.  Here is an interesting excerpt, "Amazon sells many of the same products as big-box stores but can undercut them on prices due to lower overhead.  It also uses computer algorithms to adjust prices in real time.  Traditional retailers often can't move as rapidly because online prices must match those in stores."  I would like to also point out that an increasing amount of Amazon's sales are coming from mobile devices.  That means Amazon stands to benefit from the show-rooming trend where customers search online for deals while in big-box stores.

Note the mention of "real-time" and "rapidly" in the excerpt.  Amazon is beating big-box retailers on speed, real-time analytics, business strategies and dynamic responses.  Yesterday, I wrote an article titled, Time-Space Compression and Enterprise Mobility.  In this article I discussed dromology, the science of speed, and chronostrategies, time based strategies.  Amazon is using dromology and chronostrategies to achieve a real competitive advantage.

The technology platform that Amazon uses was not mentioned in the article.  It was their business model and business strategies that were the focus.  Amazon's technology platform, however, enables Amazon to implement a business model, with a speed and expense advantage, that provides it with a competitive advantage.

I am going to hammer on this drum for a few days.  Technology supports Amazon's online, speed and low-cost business model.  The strategy, however, is not the technology but the business model supported by a speed and time advantage.

Enterprise mobility is a technology that should support your business strategy.  Is your strategy based on accomplishing speed, time, visibility and analytics advantages or a unique business model?  If so, enterprise mobility has the potential of making that possible.

The task of developing an enterprise-wide mobile strategy is always identified as one of the biggest challenges around mobility.  The reason, I believe, is that the business must recognize the potential impact of mobility, and then develop a business model that will take advantage of it.  How can the IT department develop an enterprise-wide mobility strategy without first having the business strategy and business model defined for the IT organization to support?
*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
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.

M2M News Weekly – Week of November 25, 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 Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read SMAC News Weekly

Compass Intelligence, a global consulting and market analytics firm, released its latest forecast of the M2M market today. The cellular M2M market will reach 33.3 million connections in the U.S. in 2012 and grow to 114.7 million connections by 2016 with an annual growth rate of over 36 percent. Read Original Content

Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas last month instituted a policy that requires students to wear ID cards implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip. Sophomore Andrea Hernandez refused to wear the device and was suspended. Read Original Content

Shipments of satellite-based communications nodes used for smart grid applications are forecast to more than quadruple between now and 2020, according to a new study from Pike Research. The market-research company expects node shipments to rise from about 11,500 in 2012 to nearly 48,000 by 2020. Read Original Content

ILS Technology provides ready-to-use cloud based platforms to implement and manage M2M (machine to machine) and embedded wireless devices that connect to SAP.  ILS Technology simplifies deployments and offers unparalleled security to protect company and customer data and to ensure regulatory compliance. This newsletter is sponsored in part by ILS Technology.

ProximaRF, a subsidiary of Tranzbyte Corporation, is working on the development of an RFID reader that could successfully track shipments of legally grown and distributed marijuana from the time the product is harvested to the time it is delivered to retailers. Read Original Content


U.K. mobile operator Three is rolling out a cloud-based M2M platform. The new platform reduces set-up time and costs for mobile virtual network operators and gives them control of their connections, such as activating and deactivating their connections, tracking data usage, setting alerts and applying data limits. Read Original Content

Last year there were roughly 110 million cellular-connected M2M connections in the world. ABI Research, a New York-based follower of technology trends, thinks we’ll see more than 365 million by 2016. Read Original Content

Time-Space Compression and Mobile Strategies - Video Comments

I have been doing a lot of research lately on technology trends and the impact of enterprise mobility on the way companies conduct business.  I am particularly focused on business transformation and mobility.  In the course of this research, I began studying time-space compression and how mobility relates to it.  In this Video Comments I share my latest research and observations in this area. 

Video Link: http://youtu.be/lrbdR8WJCtM

*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
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.

SMAC News Weekly – Week of November 25, 2012

Welcome to SMAC News Weekly, featuring the latest news and numbers relating to SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) that I come across each week.

Each of us is impacted by SMAC.  We all use mobile devices and social networking solutions like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  We use search engines, maps and weather apps, all of which use analytics and are in the cloud.  SMAC is the combination of all of these trends coming together on mobile devices.  This convergence is impacting businesses in many different ways.  We will do our best to capture these by reporting on the SMAC trends, numbers and forecasts in this weekly newsletter.

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

If 2012 was the year of big data hype, interest and pilot projects, 2013 will bring production deployments, early returns on investment and a bit of disruption. By 2014, big data projects and systems are likely to be commonplace. Read Original Content

Accenture Federal Services has received a $3 million, one-year contract from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help the Office of Health Affairs enhance its bio surveillance capabilities using social media analytics. Read Original Content

While social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies add a new dimension to your model, to fully maximize their value consider the sum is greater than its parts. The formula for the Future of Work is called SMAC - social, mobile, analytics and cloud on one integrated stack, where each function enables another to maximize their effect.  To learn more about SMAC and Cognizant please visit http://www.cognizant.com/futureofwork/smac.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Cognizant.

According to a new whitepaper by GFT and IESE, “The Impact of Social Media on the Financial Services Sector,” social networking is playing an increasingly important role in our buying decisions. Forty-seven percent of Americans, for example, claim Facebook has the greatest impact on their purchasing. Read Original Content

Customer data analysis and social media will play a major role in delivering banking services and maintaining customer loyalty in the coming days, according to Ajai Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director of Corporation Bank. Read Original Content


The ability to interrogate so-called “big data” from traditional structured sources and unstructured sources such as video and social media is one of the key customer-facing technology priorities for European bankers in 2013, says a survey by the European Financial Management Association. Read Original Content

SumAll has raised $6 million in a Series A for its data connection service that analyzes and visualizes information from Instagram, Google Analytics and a broad range of other services. The investment round was led by Battery Ventures with the participation of Wellington Partners. Read Original Content

Nielsen has acquired SocialGuide, a leading provider of social TV measurement, analytics and audience engagement solutions. Nielsen says it wants to develop and deliver comprehensive media measurement solutions and expand its social media research and analytics capabilities. Read Original Content

Cisco Systems has announced a deal to buy San Francisco-based Meraki, a player in cloud networking, for $1.2 billion in cash and retention-based incentives. Read Original Content

Recent Articles by Kevin Benedict

When to Be Cautious and When to Not - Time-Space Compression
ClickSoftware Named Gartner MQ Leader
Thoughts on Mobile Strategies and Social Collaboration
Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5 – Week of November 18, 2012
Mobile Expert Video Series: SMAC Expert Tom Thimot
Mobile Expert Video Series: Scott Musgrove
Mobile Expert Video Series: Kevin Benedict

Recorded Webinars of Note

Netcentric Strategies Enterprise Mobility Survey Results


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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
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.

Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of November 25, 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 Enterprise Mobility Asia 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 SMAC News Weekly

Survey technology firm Terrametrix is utilizing mobile mapping system StreetMapper to perform detailed surveys of 7,250 bridges throughout the state of California.  Read Original Content

In 2011, 21 million consumers used smartphones to scan a QR barcode, and the number is forecast to increase to 26 million.  Read Original Content

City officials in Hattiesburg, Mississippi used National GIS Day to explain to residents how GIS technology provides access to statistical and physical data to city planners to aid in planning for proposed bike lanes, transit routes and street improvements.  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.

As the standalone GPS market wanes, device makers are working with auto manufacturers to provide in-car navigation features as an alternative.  Read Original Content

Information Mediary Corp. is developing an NFC version of its drug-tracking products to enable customers to use NFC-enabled phones to track medication usage in clinical trials.  Read Original Content


Government agencies are finding many ways to utilize QR codes, including incorporating the codes on business cards, using the codes to provide information about park services, sports leagues, trails, and historic markers, and even using QR codes to enable citizens to make tax payments.  Read Original Content

Geospatial firm NAG has developed a new software platform which will be used on the International Space Station in January 2013.  The software will enhance the observation and collection of high-resolution imagery of the Earth for research and education.  Read Original Content

Time-Space Compression and Enterprise Mobility

There is a time to recognize sea change and to take action.  That time is now for developing an enterprise-wide mobile strategy and to start implementing enterprise mobility.  I think companies in the past couple of years have not been sure the role mobility would play in their specific company, markets and industries, however it should be clearer now.  It is time to act and be bold.

I propose that mobility is just the beginning.  Mobility is part of a historic time-space compression shift that is impacting all people and industries.  It is important for us to understand the impact this shift will have on each of our companies.

Paul Virilio wrote a great deal about time and speed, and time-space compression.  He calls the science of speed dromology, and strategies around time chronostrategy.  He proposed that the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature.  His argument is - that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower.  The bottom line, is companies that can see faster, analyze faster, communicate faster, produce faster, decide faster and act faster will have enormous competitive advantages.  Mobility is an essential element of all of this.

Time-space compression often occurs as a result of technologies that seem to accelerate speed and reduce distances.  These technologies today include the Internet, Skype, mobile communications, SMS, sensors, satellites etc.  In transportation they are things like trains, jets, rockets, overnight delivery systems etc.  In business, they are ultra-fast market trading systems, globalization, online sales, currency markets, faster production cycles, mobile banking and payments, etc.  

All of these components play a role in compressing time and space.  I can operate a global business, across all time zones from my Boise, Idaho backyard patio.  Speed changes things as Virilio proposed.  The very nature of a business or industry is transformed as time-space compression happens.

Is your company researching this topic?  Should it be?  Virilio suggests that there is a shift toward the emergence and dominance of chronostrategies (time strategies).  We can see this reflected in just-in-time manufacturing, overnight shipping, e-Readers, streaming video, mobile marketing, location based services, social networking sites etc.  All of these are about time and space compression.

I see chronostrategies as a key focus in the field services space.  Companies are constantly seeking ways to improve and optimize their scheduling to be more productive.  They are using their knowledge of location to reduce travel times and optimize routing.

The bottom line is the world is changing and so are your industries and markets.  Mobility is a supporting technology that will enable your company to compress time and space.  The debate should shift from whether mobility has value for your company, to whether your company can transform itself to keep up with the time-space compression that is happening all around it.

*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
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.

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