Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future: mobile SAP

Showing posts with label mobile SAP. Show all posts

The Transformational Power of Mobile Enterprise Applications, Part 1

In P.W. Singer's New York Bestseller, Wired for War, he writes, "World War I proved to be an odd, tragic mix of outmoded generalship combined with deadly new technologies." The generals were simply not able to comprehend how new technologies were fundamentally changing warfare and the ways battles would be fought and won. They continued to cling to the traditional methods and models passed down over generations. I know there are challenges today with executives and managers struggling to understand how to use new mobile technologies and social networking in their organizations.

Link to Recorded SAP Enterprise Mobility Webinar

http://www.sap.com/community/events/2010_10_12_EMW/index.epx

This is the link to the recorded SAP Enterprise Mobility webinar that was conducted about a week ago.

Here are the promoted contents:

The now and future of enterprise mobility.
Trends - How did we get here?
What are some strategy and organizational considerations to ensure success?
What is the role of a robust mobility platform?
Implementation challenges with enterprise mobility and best practices.
How will the new SAP/Sybase mobility product roadmap help you to implement your enterprise mobility strategy?

Last week I interviewed the COO of Worklight, Kurt Daniels (see interview later this week) and learned about their strategy to become the leading mobile application platform for smartphones, tablets and beyond. What makes them unique? They want to be experts in mobile technologies, Mobile SDKs (software development kits) and platforms, but they don't want to develop mobile applications themselves. They want to support systems integrators and customers that want to develop their own mobile solutions.

SAP's Mobility Partners After SAP’s Acquisition of Sybase, Part 3

The true value in extending business processes to mobile devices is to enable more employees, customers and partners to benefit from the company’s existing IT systems and investments. Mobile applications enable more users to take advantage of the ERP and other IT assets. SAP, in their central role, needed to define how mobile applications could efficiently and effectively connect and integrate with their solutions. The Sybase acquisition and the recently announced mobility roadmap now fulfills that need.

SAP's Mobility Partners After SAP’s Acquisition of Sybase, Part 2

SAP made a safe bet with the Sybase acquisition. Sybase was already the undisputed global leader in enterprise mobility databases, mobile synchronization technologies, mobile security and mobile device management. This is not another new emerging strategy and future solution. It is a mature and proven solution with millions of mobility users worldwide.

Mobile Retailing - Macy's and Bloomingdale's Mobile Applications Strategies

Macy's and sister store Bloomingdale's recently announced that they have both recently revised and improved their e-commerce websites to better support their mobile retailing strategy. When customers use an internet-capable mobile device to visit macys.com and bloomingdales.com, they now see larger and clearer images and click-through buttons so using the sites are faster and easier. Technology detects the type of mobile device a shopper is using and customizes the presentation of macys.com and bloomingdales.com to that customer. They have added the following features to their e-commerce websites:

When consumers access their websites through a mobile device, they can view larger and clearer images and click-through buttons.
The site is faster and easier for mobile devices.
New technology detects the type of mobile device and customizes the website accordingly.

Many of their customers come to the website after receiving email messages from Macy's or Bloomingdale's that they read on their mobile devices. When they click the links they routed to the e-commerce website that is now optimized for their mobile device.

On the mobile retailing application side they have done the following:

Macy's upgraded and relaunched their iPhone application - iShop.
They are testing various marketing scenarios and strategies with shopkick and Foursquare.

Macy's new version of the iShop application for iPhones provides the following features.

Loads faster
Navigates easier
Integrates in real-time with macys.com to provide an improved mobile shopping experience
Browse through merchandise
Place and track orders
Read product reviews
Explore gift guides
Find store locations
Access information on special events and campaigns

Macy's is also testing location based services. Here is an excerpt from their recent press release:

Macy's has begun piloting the use of shopkick -- a new location-based shopping app -- at about 150 stores in the New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago markets. By downloading shopkick free from the iPhone App Store, Macy's customers can earn "kickbucks" reward points by simply walking into a Macy's store with their mobile device. They also will receive offers on products or related to specific departments within Macy's. Kickbucks can be redeemed, at the touch of a button on the iPhone, for Facebook Credits to play games online, song downloads, in-store gift rewards at Macy's and other shopkick partner stores, magazine subscriptions, iPods and charitable donations.

I recently interviewed Dan Homrich, CEO of Smartsoft Mobile Solutions about mobile retailing applications. Many of Smartsoft's largest mobility customers are global retailers. Mobile retailing is a fast growing and emerging mobility market segment that compliments SAP's mobile strategy to touch over 1 billion users by 2014. You accomplish that kind of ambitious goal by placing valuable mobile applications into the hands of consumers, not just enterprise users.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.

What Percent of the U.S. Workforce is Mobile?

"The United States has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce," says the IDC 2009-2013 forecast. "With 72.2 percent of the workforce mobile in 2008. The U.S. will remain the most highly concentrated market for mobile workers with 75.5 percent of the workforce, or 119.7 million workers, being mobile in 2013."

Those numbers represent enormous opportunities for enterprise mobility vendors. The first question that came to my mind when I read that quote was, "What kind of mobile applications are they going to need?" I think the answer is thousands of different kinds.

I assume that others including SAP's co-Innovation partner Syclo also believe that. Sylco has spent the last ten years investing in their Agentry Mobile Platform and Smart Mobile Suite to make them flexible enough to serve a broad market. Here is how they describe themselves, "We offer fully configurable, rapidly deployed mobile applications that run on a variety of devices and support real time wireless and offline computing." They don't know what mobile applications all of their customers will want, so they have invested years worth of effort developing capabilities that will enable it to be useful for a broad audience. That is something I learned as CEO of a mobile application company. The more flexible the platform, the more investment in time and money it took to develop. Simple mobile micro-apps can be developed quickly that just connect point A to point B. However, it you want point A to connect to point C, D, E and X then you have an expoentially larger task.

The point is that MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms) that are flexible enough to handle a broad range of mobile applications are extremely challenging to develop. However, they offer enormous value, and the price is likely going to reflect the investment.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
twitter @krbenedict
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.

SAP AG Announces It has Completed the Acquisition of Sybase

SAP AG announced that it has completed the acquisition of Sybase, Inc. Sybase survives the merger as a wholly-owned subsidiary of SAP America, U.S. operating subsidiary of SAP.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/SAP-Completes-Acquisition-of-prnews-532143970.html?x=0&.v=1

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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

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.

What I Learned about Mobility at Sapphire 2010, Part 3

I expect to see a lot of battles between mobility vendors and Sybase. Although mobility vendors publicly play nice, there is a lot of competition for this fast growing market. Sybase brings a lot of capabilities to the table. They will not be satisfied being a mobile middleware player (see Sybase and Field Services). I expect them to start releasing their own libraries of mobile applications for the largest markets, and use their inside knowledge of SAP sales leads and accounts to aggressively go after them.

Having Sybase develop and sell mobile applications has always been a problem. Sybase OEMs (used as a verb) their middleware to hundreds of software companies, and they have always hesitated to compete with their customers. It will be interesting to see if they can resist this temptation when the entire SAP user base is available to them. My guess is Sybase will not resist. As a result, SAP mobility partners will need to dig deeper into industries and niche markets to defend and grow their positions.

How does the SAP mobility partner trust partnering with Sybase on mobile middleware, when they are also competing on mobile applications? It will be interesting.

I believe Sybase will be swamped with sales leads for custom mobile applications. There is a backlog of demand. The problem, however, is that Sybase has traditionally staffed a very small professional services group that has little industry knowledge. That should mean more work for trained systems integrators. Pay attention SIs!!!

Now that the mobile integration strategy for working in SAP environments is becoming clearer, mobile application vendors need to start developing rapid application development tools specifically for mobilizing SAP. Seriously! You should be able to develop screen layouts for the various mobile OS environments, and drag and drop database fields from SAP into the mobile client. All the coding behind the scenes should be automated. Vendors should have a one year grace period and then no excuses.

I have a lot of experience in the mobile software development tools area and can say with authority that developing RAD (rapid application development tools) is difficult. However, if you already know the data source and the required fields for a business process, then it can be a lot easier. Simplicity is good. I challenged Sybase for years to develop a RAD tool and have yet to see one that a business analyst can use.

The bottom line - SAP mobility partners can stop focusing on mobile middleware (leave it to SAP/Sybase) and focus more on becoming industry and business process experts. Increasingly, the value they offer will be in developing mobile applications with deep industry and process expertise. They should be looking at all the various business processes and SAP industry business units (around 28 the last I checked) and identify the verticals where there are the most opportunities and where deep industry knowledge can help them develop defensible market positions.

Here are a few examples:

Hazardous waste and chemical management
CPG food/meat processing inspections
Mobile animal lifecycle tracking applications (beef, dairy, chicken, hog, etc)
Mobile insurance claims
Mobile healthcare applications
Mobile eldercare applications
Mobile chronic disease management applications
Mobile oil and gas pipeline inspections
Mobile disaster relief applications
Mobile damage assessment applications
Mobile facility and security management applications
Mobile applications for customers of SAP customers and their markets (retail apps, marketing apps, etc.)
etc.

I am throwing around a lot of opinions here, so please share your comments and views as well! We can figure this all out together.

* What I Learned About Mobility at Sapphire 2010, Part 1
* What I Learned About Mobility at Sapphire 2010, Part 2

*Read the latest news and market numbers on enterprise mobility at Mobility News Weekly.

*Join the Linkedin Group, SAP Enterprise Mobility, it has over 750 members now.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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What I Learned about Mobility at Sapphire 2010, Part 2

At Sapphire 2010, not only did SAP discuss their intent to acquire Sybase, but they also announced Project Gateway. Project Gateway is an API layer (gateway) that is designed for simple mobile applications and M2M (machine to machine) integrations with SAP. The intent as I understand it is for SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform) to be the integration layer for complex mobile applications (rich/thick clients) that require advanced synchronization technologies, and Project Gateway for lightweight iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and other micro applications.

SAP was quick to add that mobility partners can develop and use their own integration methodologies as well. They espoused the virtues of choice. As a result, I see the following integration options:

SAP's strategy for integrating advanced rich or thick client mobile applications will be SUP.
SAP's strategy for integrating lightweight mobile applications will be Project Gateway.
SAP also certifies a variety of integration strategies specific to various mobility partners.
Customized integrations.

SAP mobility partners that have invested heavily into their own integration and mobile middleware technologies must now consider supporting multiple integration strategies - their own and SAP's. This may increase their development and support costs but flexibility nearly always does.

Mobile enterprise application vendors often support many ERPs and business applications. Their current inventory of mobile middleware and integration tools may continue to be needed in these non-SAP environments. It seems it will be up to the end customer to choose their favorite flavor of integration and middleware. This will be an important decision for the end customer that will impact TCO (total cost of ownership).

Some of the SAP mobility partners have already decided to consolidate all of their middleware needs on the SUP. They don't want the expense of developing and supporting two different integration and middleware technology platforms and like the idea of leaving middleware issues to someone else. If more vendors follow this move, Sybase will generate more sales and profits as a result of this trend. SAP has said they intend to operate Sybase as an independent business unit and I believe SAP can generate "new money" as a result of influencing vendors to adopt SUP.

* What I Learned About Mobility at Sapphire 2010, Part 1

*YouTube - Kevin's Video Comments

*Read the latest news and market numbers on enterprise mobility at Mobility News Weekly.

*Join the Linkedin Group, SAP Enterprise Mobility, it has over 750 members now.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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New Research Shows the Importance of Mobility to SAP Customers

I received an email today from a firm that just completed face to face meetings with over 100 SAP customers. In these meetings the SAP customers identified the SAP solutions they would like to learn more about and then prioritized them. The fifth hottest topic among these SAP customers was SAP enterprise mobility. NICE!

SAP, systems integrators and enterprise mobility vendors should all take note of this research. SAP's customers are wanting to learn more about enterprise mobility. SAP's SDN site, this blog, the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin, and Kevin's Mobility News Weekly are all sites dedicated to sharing information on enterprise mobility.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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ClickSoftware and Rugged Working Environments

It is easy to forget about the world beyond the pocket, but it remains out there. There is a large market for mobile devices that must survive the rigors of rain, sand, mud and daily impacts. In the field service automation space, these working environments are the norm. SAP mobility partner ClickSoftware focuses on this area of enterprise mobility, and this means they add features to their mobility suite that others don't.

I had the opportunity to interview Gil Bouhnick from ClickSoftware a few months ago, and he shared that one of their recent projects included building union regulations and rules into the mobile application. Before certain tasks could be requested or started the union rules were considered in the mobile application. How many iPhone and BlackBerry applications have these requirements?

Because ClickSoftware focuses on rugged environments where the field service technician, lineman, or inspector may be working in solitary and remote locations, features have been added to their solutions that would alert the office in case of an emergency. Again, not many BlackBerry or iPhone applications have that requirement.

I have worked on many mobile forms projects in my time, so I appreciate that ClickSoftware has the solution ClickMobile Forms Editor. Mobile forms may seem like a rather simple applications these days, but they can be of enormous value. Let me explain. Mobile forms applications can have branching workflows in them. If an inspection reveals a measurement is XYZ, then it automatically jumps to mobile form page 16 where additional questions are asked. If the measurement was ABC, then it automatically continues to form page 2. These types of automated mobile forms and their workflows can direct the mobile workforce to complete the field data collection task completely and accurately the first time. Enterprise asset management, field services and inspection services all require extensive field inspection work that can benefit from mobile forms that wireless synchronize with the office.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP's VP of Enterprise Mobility, Prashant Chatterjee

I was lucky enough to be able to sit down with SAP's VP of Enterprise Mobility, Prashant Chatterjee at Sapphire this year and record an interview. In this interview Prashant describes how enterprise mobility is key to SAP reaching 1 billion users by 2014.

For more videos in this Mobile Expert Video series click here.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Mobile Expert Video Series: Smartsoft Mobile's CEO Dan Homrich

Dan Homrich, Smartsoft Mobile Solution's CEO likes to talk about mobile B2E (business-to-everyone) solutions for smartphones. These are mobile applications that companies provide to their customers, partners and service providers.

Mobile B2E solutions are intended to address large markets. Insurance companies can provide mobile solutions to their customer bases. Banks and retail companies can provide mobile applications to their hundreds of thousands of customers. This is a very interesting target market. Watch the video interview that I recorded with Dan Homrich at Sapphire and learn about his strategies.

Related videos:

The video interviews listed below can all be found here :

Mobile Expert Video Series: Open Text's VP SAP Solutions Group Patrick Barnert
Mobile Expert Video Series: Leapfactor's Luis Cabrera
Mobile Expert Video Series: Sky Technologies President Bruce Johnson
Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP's VP of EcoHub, Usman Sheikh
Mobile Expert Video Series: Infologix's Senior VP Brian Thorn
Mobile Expert Video Series: Syclo's Founder Rich Padula
Mobile Expert Video Series: Vivido Labs' Founder Greg Tomb
Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP Senior VP of Enterprise Mobility, Kevin Nix
Mobile Expert Video Series: PriceWaterhouseCooper's Director of Mobility, Dr. Ahmend El Adl
Mobile Expert Video Series: DSI's VP of Sales, Mark Goode
Mobile Expert Video Series: Sky Technologies' CTO Steve Ware
Mobile Expert Video Series: Mellmo's Santiago Becerra

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Mobile Middleware for Instant Value or Mobile Micro-Apps

Mobile middleware is more than synchronizing databases and providing basic application integration. It needs to include support for business process extensions, and it must provide a set of features and functions that support lightweight, "Instant Value" or "Mobile Micro-Apps" smartphone applications.

There are many features and functions that are needed by mobile workers that are not easily supported by smartphone operating systems like iPhone or BlackBerry. Often the data set is large and the software application is an ERP. The mobile user does not need access to the full ERP or the full data set, just a subset. In these cases it would be useful to have a mobile middleware layer that recognizes the needs of the mobile user and provides an optimized mobile application with functionality that supports either browser based or mobile micro-apps.

It seems there is a need for a new middleware layer that is designed to support a wide range of requirements to address the limitations of lightweight and browser based smartphone apps.

Within the SAP ecosystem I am hearing a lot about this concept from the likes of Vivido Labs and Leapfactor.

Leapfactor says their mobile middleware layer forwards and broadcasts staged digital content collected at a location and delivers it to any designated consignees, on any smartphone, and always with high availability based on a secure and scalable platform. They state that their solution relies on four fundamental technologies:

LeapApps - mobile micro apps for smartphones
LeapShell - an SDK that accelerates development and portability to any mobile OS
Leap Central - a secure cloud-based service-processing component
LeapAgent - securely connects and authenticates LeapCentral with an enterprise

I spent a lot of time working on mobility projects that utilized Sybases' SUP (mobile middleware). The mobile applications were "thick" clients with mobile databases on smartphones to hold data and synchronize data with the back office database application. Our mobile applications often had complex business processes and business rules built into the mobile applications to ensure field work was done correctly. These rules were stored in the mobile database in the thick client.

Where are all of these business rules and business processes stored for "Instant Value" and "mobile micro-apps" for smartphones? Do these lightweight mobile applications simply ignore business rules and business processes, or is this functionality provided in a smartphone middleware layer in the cloud? These are the things I ponder on a Wednesday morning.

Do you see a need for a mobile middleware layer that is specifically designed to support business rules and business processes for mobile micro-apps?

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Kevin Benedict, CEO Netcentric Strategies LLC
SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles. ***************************************************

Mobile Expert Video Series: Leapfactor's Luis Cabrera

At Sapphire 2010 last week I heard Leapfactor mentioned in keynotes and many other presentations by SAP mobility experts. I saw one SAP VP demonstrating a very powerful iPad application that SAP has in a proof-of-concept that was developed by Leapfactor. I also saw that the SAP iPhone application "SAP EcoHub" (free and available on iTunes) was developed by Leapfactor.

I was lucky enough to track down Luis Cabrera from Leapfactor last week and I interviewed him on camera about Leapfactor's focus and solutions including:

Business Indicator - A powerful dashboard for business analytics on iPhones and iPads
Business Alerts and Notifications - Send alerts to mobile devices based on parameters set up in your SAP system
Business Approvals - Enable mobile managers to approve or reject various issues in SAP workflows

The interview: http://www.youtube.com/sapmentors#p/u/9/Y5l6N2nsrpA

Mobile Expert Video Series: Santiago Becerra of Mellmo

I attended a session at Sapphire last week with Mellmo founder Santiago Becerra! Here is how they describe their solution, "Use Roambi to transform your existing reports and data — from a variety of sources — into interactive visualizations and dashboards for the iPhone or iPad. Explore and analyze your data with the ease of playing a video game and the power of an enterprise reporting tool."

One of the most interesting things Santiago said was that he favors hiring gamers - developers that have experience developing video games and flashy UIs. He believes they think more creatively and that they will be better capable of developing the next generation of enterprise mobility applications.

Here is the video interview: http://www.youtube.com/sapmentors#p/u/6/01SLH5n5mgI

Related videos:

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Kevin Benedict SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, CEO Netcentric Strategies LLC
Mobile Industry Analyst, Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant and Web 2.0 Marketing Services
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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M2M Market Opportunities - An Introduction

Now that SAP has enterprise mobility all figured out, it is time to explore opportunities in the M2M marketplace. M2M is a vision of connecting physical things through a network that will let them take an active part in exchanging information about themselves and their surroundings over the Internet. This will give immediate access to information about the physical world and the objects in it - leading to innovative services and gains in efficiency and productivity.

There are many ways to describe M2M - the Internet of objects, the Internet of things or embedded mobile devices. M2M is a world filled with remote asset management monitors, wireless sensors, telematics, telemetry, smart grids, and eReaders. The military describes this world as Network-Centric Operations.

I wrote an article last year called Network-Centric Mobile Field Force Automation. Here is an excerpt: "Network-Centric operations, is a military doctrine pioneered by the US Department of Defence. It seeks to translate an information advantage, enabled in part by information technologies into a competitive warfighting advantage through the robust networking of well informed geographically dispersed forces. This networking, combined with changes in technology, organization, processes, and people enable organizations to behave and respond in ways never before possible." Specifically, this theory contains the following four tenets in its hypotheses:

A robustly networked force improves information sharing.
Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness.
Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and self-synchronization and enhances sustainability and speed of command.
These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness.

Juniper Research predicts that the number of M2M (machine-to-machine) and embedded mobile devices will rise to approximately 412 million globally by 2014. ABI Research uses a more conservative set of numbers and says that there were approximately 71 million cumulative M2M connections in 2009 and this will rise to about 225 million by 2014. With either set of figures you get a big number.

ABI's M2M research practice director Sam Lucero encourages MNOs (mobile network operators) to "come up" with M2M connectivity platforms - robust connected device platforms. These are applications and services that connect all of these embedded mobile devices together into a central management application that turns data into actionable intelligence.

Some of the key markets for M2M are:

Utilities/Smart Grids
Equipment Monitoring
Connected Homes/Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS)
Healthcare - Remote patient and health monitoring, medical equipment monitoring
Vending/POS
Remote Asset Management Monitoring
ATMs
Fleet Management/Automotive Systems
Consumer Electronics (eReaders, Wireless Printers, Appliances, Security Systems, etc.)

Think of it like this - all of these embedded mobile devices are capable of sending data to you. What can you do with it? Where can this data provide value? In addition to sending data, many M2M devices can receive instructions and take action as well.

Mobility is more than just people-to-people talking on handsets. Wireless M2M is an entirely new way of thinking. I wonder which one of the mobility vendors in the SAP ecosystem is going to add M2M and M2M connectivity platforms to their product list. I believe this can ultimately be a massive market. I recently read about a GSMA prediction that M2M connected devices could ultimately reach 50 billion. A dollar a device per month would suit me just fine.

Have you ever worked on an M2M project? I would like to hear about it!

Here is a related video I recorded on M2M.

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Kevin Benedict SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor,CEO Netcentric Strategies LLC
Mobile Industry Analyst, Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant and Web 2.0 Marketing Services
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Mobile Expert Video Series: Bruce Johnson of Sky Technologies

I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing (with a digital video camera) Bruce Johnson, President of Sky Technologies, America, about his thoughts on SAP and enterprise mobility. Sky Technologies describes themselves this way, "Sky Technologies specializes in Enterprise Mobility for SAP®. With a strong focus on innovation, Sky Technologies has developed SkyMobile, a SAP Certified Mobile Enterprise Appliaction Platform (MEAP), which enables any SAP process to be mobilized on any type of smartphone device."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw0tRoEYFiI

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Kevin Benedict SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor,CEO Netcentric Strategies LLC
Mobile Industry Analyst, Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant and Web 2.0 Marketing Services
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Thoughts on SAP Mobility - Reporting from Sapphire

I have learned a huge amount at Sapphire 2010. I have spoken to, and filmed interviews with, just about every mobility vendor at Sapphire. Here are the first few:

Tuesday night thoughts

I believe the saying, “content is king!” Although I would add that “content and business processes are king!” Applications that add unique functionality and value to the SAP ecosystem will have longevity. Companies that are only providing interesting views of existing SAP data are subject to being quickly replaced by the next teenager with a cooler UI.

Mobile applications developers must add deep value to be able to gain mindshare and then defend their positions in the longterm. They need to demonstrate unique innovation, deep expertise, and extend value in manners that are defensible.

The term "mash-up" is used often at Sapphire to refer to aggregating data from multiple sources. This is a very interesting concept. Pulling data from many different sources to add unique value on mobile applications that are geospatially aware. This is interesting.

I have seen some absolutely fantastic mobile applications at Sapphire that help companies make collaborative decisions and harvest enterprise's institutional knowledge. These are mobile knowledge and decision management applications. This is a very interesting area to me. It is new value. Not mobilized versions of existing SAP systems.

I have heard and witnessed a lot of chest thumping at Sapphire. The bottom line is how many SAP customers does a vendor have in production.

Mobile micro-applications are being labeled as "instant value" applications at Sapphire. I like this description. It is good marketing.

Inspections, assessments, asset management and field services are still very interesting areas as there is yet a lot of new value that can be created and provided on mobile devices.

Sybase is not known for their mobile applications. They are a great mobile middleware company. It will be interesting to see if they can compete with the incredibile mobile applications that I have witnessed here at Sapphire from ecosystem partners.

There is a persistent rumor that HP may try to outbid SAP for Sybase. Crazy times!

More later...
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Kevin Benedict SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor,CEO Netcentric Strategies LLC
Mobile Industry Analyst, Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant and Web 2.0 Marketing Services
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future