Kevin Benedict's What's New in HTML5 - Week of September 23, 2012

Here are the comments, opinions and actions taken by both supporters and opponents of HTML5 that I have found this week.  It is never a dull discussion.

Native apps tend to have a smoother look and feel, more polish, and are able to leverage elements of their native operating system to feel more deeply integrated into the device.  However, building for multiple platforms and devices is expensive while web apps, built in standards-based technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3, will work on devices across a range of sizes by being adaptive and responsive.  Read Original Content

Brendan Eich, the chief technology officer at Mozilla, admits that HTML5 still faces standardization issues, and by continuing to lead development of essential HTML5 standards, Mozilla will actually make developers' lives easier.  Read Original Content

The much-publicized quote from Mark Zuckerberg, stating that the biggest mistake Facebook made was betting too much on HTML5 doesn’t tell the entire story.  The full quote, on Facebook software engineer Tobie Langel’s blog is:  “When I’m introspective about the last few years I think the biggest mistake that we made, as a company, is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native… because it just wasn’t there. And it’s not that HTML5 is bad. I’m actually, on long-term, really excited about it. One of the things that’s interesting is we actually have more people on a daily basis using mobile Web Facebook than we have using our iOS or Android apps combined. So mobile Web is a big thing for us.”  Read Original Content

While stating that the company believes HTML5 has been “very over-hyped”, Intel software executive Renee James goes on to say that Intel is “committed to making sure HTML5 remains open, cross-platform, and has the right performance”.  Read Original Content

Adobe has made an effort to have its tools work on multiple platforms - PCs, tablets, and smartphones - using HTML5 and dynamic layout reformatting tailored to each device type.  The company is now promoting free “Create the Web” events to show off new tools and services for HTML5, CSS3, motion graphics, web development and more.  Read Original Content

appMobi has announced the launch privateStack, an HTML5-based, app development and cloud services platform that will enable businesses to develop their own cloud stack for mobile apps for business operations.  Read Original Content

Donald MacCormick in BI Dashboards provides a video of an HTML5 dashboard prototype in action.  Read Original Content

Facebook software engineer Tobie Langel outlines the HTML5 flaws that Facebook encountered including a lack of tooling in mobile browsers, scrolling performance problems, and technical problems such as stuttering and GPU buffer exhaustion.  Read OriginalContent

Xamarin CEO Nat Freidman believes the mobile industry is moving too fast for HTML5 and Web standards-based development to keep up, and he feels a lot more developers will start to build natively.  An IDC analyst states “We are now in a bit of a disillusionment phase for HTML5 as early adopters push the boundaries of the capabilities and sometimes fail”.  ReadOriginal Content

This article from HTML5 Goodies explores the changes with HTML5 Semantics – HTML5 tags that have been removed and new HTML5 elements.  Read Original Content

Jadu will offer its mobile app publishing platform Weejot.com free to every school, college and university in the U.K. to enable students to improve their programming skills using HTML5 and JavaScript.  Read Original Content

Serdar Yegulalp writes in Information Week’s Byte newsletter that although he “can’t stand” programming in HTML5, he sees it thriving in the long run, because it’s the most widely-recognized starting point. HTML5 “doesn't give the most powerful base to build on, but it provides the lowest barrier to entry, and one of the fastest ways to get something into people's hands”.  Read Original Content

A collection of 10 useful infographics about HTML5 is provided in this article by Jacob Gube in Six Revisions.  Read Original Content

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

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

The Theory of Everything (Sort of) and Mobile Technologies

Sometime back I read an article in the New York Times titled, The Theory of Everything (Sort of) by Thomas L. Friedman.  Here is an excerpt, "Thanks to cloud computing, robotics, 3G (4G now) wireless connectivity, Skype, Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Twitter, the iPad and cheap Internet enabled smartphones the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected...  This is the single most important trend in the world today.  And it is a critical reason why, to get into the middle class now, you have to study harder, work smarter and adapt quicker than ever before.  All this globalization is eliminating more and more "routine" work- the sort of work that once sustained a lot of middle-class lifestyles."

I suggest the same is true for the enterprise.  The enterprise must study harder, work smarter and adapt quicker that ever before.  The world is changing and mobile technologies are going to revolutionize the way companies work.

In the last several enterprise mobility survey polls that I have reviewed, more and more companies plan to use mobile technologies as a driver for change.  Here are the results from my latest report, Mid-Year Enterprise Mobility 2012 report:

Question: Is your company planning to change or re-engineer business processes to take advantage of mobile technologies?

No Changes - 5%
Few Changes - 27%
Many Changes - 48%
Revolutionize the business - 20%

Companies cannot simply watch from the sidelines as others improve their competitive positions by implementing mobile solutions.  Enterprise mobility is not a passing fancy, but a technology revolution that will be here for the rest of your career.

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

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Interesting Infograph on Enterprise Mobility

 I found this image at http://www.industryweek.com/digital-tools/bringing-mobility-enterprise.

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

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

The Changing ROI of Enterprise Mobility

I remember just a few years ago companies would buy a ruggedized mobile handheld computer and then load just one software application on it.  The entire justification and projected ROI for purchasing the $3,000 ruggedized device was derived from just one app.

Times have changed!  Now you can purchase a $299 smartphone and load dozens of apps on it.  Let's think about this for a minute.  What if you had the following mobile apps on your smartphone:

• CRM
• Mobile BI
• Work Order Management
• Scheduling
• Enterprise Asset Management
• Enterprise Content Management
• Time Sheets
• HR
• Turn-by-Turn Navigation
• Knowledge Management
• Collaboration (Yammer, Jive, Chatter, etc)
• Product Catalogs, and Marketing Information
• Sales Orders and Credit Card Processing
• Etc

How would you write an ROI justification?  It is not an efficiency and productivity story alone, rather it is a whole new way of conducting business isn't it?  The ROI is on the business model, not just individual apps and devices.

The debate in boardrooms today should be on the merits of the new "mobile" business model, not only on the ROI of each individual app alone.  The ROI must also consider the opportunity costs of not doing it.  What if your competitors are embracing the new "mobile" business models and you are not.  There is an economic cost to that decision, or lack of a decision as well.

Where does your company stand?  Less than half of enterprises surveyed in the past few months have an enterprise-wide mobility strategy.  If a company is going to embrace mobility, and it has the potential of revolutionizing their business model, then I believe companies should be placing a higher priority on this effort.

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

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Mobile Expert Video Series: Gary Delancy

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of sitting down and talking with a 20-year enterprise mobility veteran, Gary Delancy, VP of Product Development at DSI.  Twenty years ago mobility was mostly relegated to warehouse management.  Since then DSI has become a power house enterprise mobility company in many different industries, including a strong presence in manufacturing environments.  This year, for the first time, Gartner has included them in their Magic Quadrant for MADP (mobile application development platforms).  They also have a long history of integrating enterprise mobility with M2M (machine to-machine) environments.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst and Mobile Strategy Consultant

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Mobile Expert Video Series: DSI's Scott Lutz

Have you ever seen an office designed around Apple TV, iPhones and iPads?  Have you ever seen an enterprise mobile software company that runs their customer business center entirely on mobile technologies?  This is DSI's first year on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for MADP (mobile application development platform), but they have been around for over 30 years, experts in manufacturing and many other areas, and they have offices all around the world.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst and Mobile Strategy Consultant

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Changing Times for Enterprise Mobility

As I was running this morning in the Boise foothills, OK walking at a brisk pace, I was pondering how fast enterprise mobility is evolving.  Today, HTML5 and Android security are critical check box items for any company considering standardizing on a mobile application development platform and a mobile application management platforms.

The MAM (mobile application management) and MDM (mobile device management) vendors have all been working hard to bring order out of chaos in the Android space as demonstrated by this recent announcement, "SOTI Inc., an Enterprise Mobility Device Management (MDM) vendor, has unveiled new technology that enables corporations to consistently manage security policies across Android devices from all manufacturers."  It has been a challenge for most vendors to provide enterprise quality security for Android devices due to the many different versions of the Android OS that manufactures use.  Most vendors would only support or secure a limited subset early on.  It seems vendors are becoming more confident in their abilities these days, as measured by the number of recent announcements around securing Android devices that I read about.

On the topic of HTML5, most vendors now have an HTML5 hybrid solution and strategies that enables them to add proprietary features to a container that supports HTML5.  This container enables them to solve problems and address challenges that may not yet have been addressed in the HTML5 standard.

I would advise that you regularly get briefing from your mobile vendors of choice about developments in these two areas as they are fast moving.  I would also recommend against purchasing from a mobile vendor that does not have HTML5 or HTML5 hybrid solution or strategy, and have answers to how you can secure Android devices.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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