Mobile Expert Interview Series: Acando's Hans Nygaard, Part 1

 Acando's Hans Nygaard

I recently had the privelege of interviewing Hans Nygaard from Acando, a consultancy company with over 1,000 employees in six European countries.  SAP is one of Acando's most important partners.

Hans is the Manager for Mobile Solutions and focuses most of his time on blue collar and field services kinds of mobile projects.  They work on a lot of 100-200 user projects, but are currently working on a large deployment that includes 5,000 service technicians in 14 countries.

Hans has been working in the SAP ecosystem since 2003 and on SAP related mobility projects since 2007.  He has a wife and two kids and lives 45 minutes outside of Copenhagen.

Note:  This interview consists of both written and verbal responses from Hans.

Kevin:  Since you have been involved in SAP enterprise mobility since 2007, what are your thoughts about SAP's acquisition of Sybase in 2010?
Hans: I have mixed feelings.  It was a lot of money.  Sybase has great offline and push mobile technology, so that is good, but I am still confused about how Sybase's and SAP's middleware will merge into one mobile middleware solution.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Hans: iPhone 4, iPad and a laptop (PC).

Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded Handheld OS is Alive and Well

Kansas City Board of Public Utilities, a water and electric utility serving 65,000 customers, has recently implemented a new mobile inventory application from Syclo on Motorola MC9090 devices to streamline processes for its storerooms, water processing plant and service center.

Kansas City Board of Public Utilities list benefits as follows:

1. More reliable off-line capabilities
2. Improved security and better error tracking
3. Drastic improvement in cycle count processes
4. Easy integration to PeopleSoft and other backend systems

I believe it is important for people and vendors in the enterprise mobility space to recognize that nearly all rugged and industrial grade mobile handhelds are still using Microsoft operating systems such as Windows Mobile 6.5 or the upcoming Windows Embedded Handheld OS.  The excerpt above highlights the fact that large numbers of mobile devices (and mobile applications) continue to be deployed outside of the Apple, Android and BlackBerry device markets.

Look at the numbers of industrial grade mobile handheld devices sold each year by Psion Teklogix, Trimble, Motorola, Intermec and others.  These numbers demonstrate that this remains a sizeable market.

This morning I received an email from a mobile software company called Acando, in the Nordic market.  They were excited to share that they had recently closed a deal with over 5,000 users to implement a Windows Mobile based, paperless orders-to-cash process and traceable SLA (service level agreement) compliance solution.  Again, this demonstrates that there are many large opportunities for Microsoft based mobile enterprise applications.

Motorola MC990

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

CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
Phone +1 208-991-4410

Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.