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Showing posts with the label mobile enterprise

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

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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 do

Competitive Decision Making and Enterprise Mobility

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The late US Air Force Colonel, and great military strategist John Boyd talked a lot in his workshops about "competitive decision-making."  He taught that individuals that could think better and faster than their opponents had a great advantage.  I agree with Boyd, and believe that implementing mobile solutions in the enterprise can facilitate this advantage. Last year's report by the Aberdeen Group titled Mobility in ERP 2011 also touched on this point with three specific statements: Getting the right information, to the right people, so they can make the right decisions is the driving force behind mobilizing the workforce.  Why is there a need for mobility?  Much of it is related to volatility.  The need to be able to react as quickly as possible to issues without being tethered to a desktop. Mobile solutions should provide workers with information to make good and timely decisions. Aberdeen Group describes the value of mobile solutions as - it helps you make &

Mobile Expert Video Series: Latecia Mills

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I must confessed to rarely having a female mobility expert included in my Mobile Expert Video Series , so today I am particularly happy to publish a video interview that I conducted a couple of weeks ago with a 20-year veteran of enterprise mobility Latecia Mills, VP of Global Services and Support with DSI . DSI has been in business for over 30 years, and they have been implementing mobile solutions for over 20 years.  It is not every day that I get to interview someone with that much real-world experience.  DSI grew out of the heavy duty warehouse management and manufacturing industries, and this year they made it onto Gartner's Magic Quadrant for MADPs (mobile application development platforms). ************************************************************* 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 Enter

Mobile Expert Video Series: Moshe BenBassat (Mobile AI and Context Aware Apps)

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Did you have a chance to watch Dr. Moshe BenBassat's video last week where he discussed his background working with NASA, ballistic missile defense, the Army and Air Force logistics, and how he uses that experience today to develop mobile applications?  It was very interesting! In this video, which can be considered a Part 2 to last week's, he discusses the use of artificial intelligence, contextual aware and predictive applications for the services industry.  Again, a very intriguing notion. ************************************************************* 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: I am a mobility analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles. These are my personal opin

Mobile Apps for Almost Everything

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On Monday, August 27, 2012,  The Wall Street Journal published  The Technology Journal Report dedicated to mobile apps.  The report included some very interesting numbers that I want to share: The average smartphone user will download 37 mobile apps this year 36 billion mobile apps will be downloaded in 2012 136 billion mobile apps are predicted to be downloaded in 2017 The average smartphone user in the USA spends 94 minutes per day using mobile apps The average smartphone user in the USA spends 72 minutes per day using browsers There are 650,000 apps available in the Apple App Store There are 600,000 apps available in Google Play In addition to these numbers the article identified many different categories of mobile apps: Find Shopping Deals Remember Everything Find a Restaurant Get Fit and Stay Fit Go to the Movies Take a Trip Parenting Educating Your Preschooler Find a House Manage Your Money How a Remote Meeting Teach Math and Science to Kids Prepare a M

Mission Critical - Mobile Device Management and Control

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Have you ever thought about how a company should manage battery life on a smartphone when they support a BYOD IT environment?  Think about it, a person brings their own smartphone to work that only has 10% battery charge, they drive 40 miles out to a job site and their battery dies. They have a dead device when they should be updating work orders, inventory levels, schedules, job status and new product sales. I am personally impatiently waiting for the release of iPhone 5, because my iPhone does not hold its charge any longer.  By about 1 PM, my battery is getting low.  I am lucky I don't need to use it to take product orders and scan bar codes throughout the rest of the afternoon.  If this impacted my productivity, and I had an employer, I wonder if they would ask me to go out and buy a new personal device? Click to Download In many industries and businesses it is not enough to simply hope your workforce manages their personal mobile devices efficiently and reliably, as th

Mobilized Objects, M2M and Mobile Strategies

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A good friend of mine is a civil engineer.  He works on many tidal flat and water way projects.  He was telling me about driving 2 hours north of Seattle to collect data from one water level sensor.  The data collection took one minute.  He then drove 2 hours back to Seattle.  For this one data collection activity, the cost was a 4 hours of time from a senior engineer, fuel and lost opportunity costs. I shared with my engineering friend that there are M2M communication systems that utilize embedded wireless chips that could simply message him the data from the water level sensor using wireless technology.  He thought that would have been a brilliant idea!  Although a brilliant idea, it would have costs far more to set-up (mobilize the object) with a M2M system than it cost him to drive there and collect it for one sensor.  However, if he had 1,000 sensors that needed monitoring, the costs savings could have been enormous.   M2M systems need volume to generate a good ROI, but if there

Kevin Benedict's What's New in HTML5 - Week of August 19, 2012

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Every week as I read articles, press releases and news about HTML5 developments, I am struck by how divergent the views are about the role of HTML5 in the enterprise.  I really think your views depend on your background.  If you are a consumer oriented mobile app developer, native is the only way to go.  If you are an enterprise oriented developer, then HTML5 is great.  What do you think? Now for the news... Microsoft has announced that the Pulse news app is now available on the Web and built entirely from HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3.   The new Web app shows that “future-Web technologies are rapidly approaching a state where they can easily re-create native app experiences in the browser”.   Read Original Content To ensure as many visitors as possible can access their website, the Consortium of Foundation Libraries has developed an HTML5 mobile site in addition to their Flash-based website.   (See http://m.sophiaguevara.wix.com/html_cfl for a preview of the site.)   Read Ori

What Do Mobility Consultants Really Think?

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Earlier this week I wrote an article titled, " What Do Mobile Technology Vendors Really Think? ", which covered technology vendors' responses to my "2012 Mid-Year Enterprise Mobility Survey."  This article is reviewing the answers from enterprise mobility consultants and comparing and contrasting them with the mobile software vendors' answers. Q: What are your biggest challenges to implementing enterprise mobility today? A: #1 answer - Developing an enterprise-wide mobile strategy, #2 - Determining anticipated ROIs, and #3 - Finding qualified mobility experts to assist with implementations. The first two rankings were the same between mobile technology vendors and mobile consultants, but finding qualified mobility experts was a bigger problem for mobility consultants. Q: Where do you expect to find the biggest ROIs as a result of implementing mobile solutions? A: #1 answer - Increased productivity of mobile workers, #2 - Real-time data collection and

Mobile Expert Podcast: Unvired's Srinivasan Subramanian

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In this 18 minute audio podcast, Srinivasan Subramanian from Unvired and I discuss all kinds of issues related to enterprise mobility, mobile strategies and cloud mobility.  The audio is not perfect, but the content is good.  Grab some popcorn, or jump on the treadmill and I hope you enjoy! Here is the link in case the audio player does not appear in your browser:   https://www.box.com/shared/aa55e7e5adf5c521504c ************************************************************* 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.

What do Mobile Technology Vendors Really Think?

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I am writing an analyst report based upon the survey data from last month's 2 012 Mid-Year Enterprise Mobility Survey .  Thanks again for everyone that took it!  I filtered the data to learn the opinions of those that identified themselves as mobility vendors.  I find these answers very interesting because mobility vendors talk to a lot of people, as a result, their opinions are often a reflection of what they hear in the market. Q: What are your biggest challenges to implementing enterprise mobility today? A: The number 1 answer was, "Developing an enterprise-wide mobile strategy."  There was a tie for the next 2 between, "Determining anticipated ROIs" and, "Educating stakeholders on the potential impact of enterprise mobility on the business." Q: Where do you expect to find the biggest ROIs as a result of implementing mobile solutions? A: The number 1 answer was, "Increased productivity of mobile workers."  The number 2 answer was, &q

30 ROI Ideas for Mobilizing Field Services

I was reviewing my notes from past mobile strategies workshops I have conducted for field services organizations and thought some of my notes might be useful. First, what are service companies trying to achieve with mobility?  Here is a summary: Increasing productivity – more average service calls per service technician in a day. Improving management visibility into work done in the field Efficiencies in communicating information between the office and the remote service technician or job site. Efficiencies in planning and scheduling work based upon qualifications, location, parts and experience. Reducing fuel costs. Reducing travel times. Reducing overtime Using least cost employees and contractors Increasing productivity – more average service calls per service technician in a day. Increasing onsite product and service sales. Increasing collections with mobile invoicing, mobile printing of invoices and onsite collections. Improving inventory control and management -

MDM is Not Dead - Ask the Right Questions

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In my former career as the CEO of a mobile application company, I remember my professional services team coming into my office one day and asking me to buy licenses of an MDM (mobile device management) solution from a vendor called Soti . My team wanted to be able to troubleshoot new mobile applications on a large variety of different mobile devices.  They wanted remote access to both the device and the apps so they could understand bugs and issues that were reported from the field.  This is still a very useful feature. Today, however, few of the MDM/MAM vendors adequately support this feature.  In my experience, the ability to have remote access and remote control of a mobile device is very useful.  I recently interviewed a CEO who shared how it had taken several years and many rounds of change management classes to get his field services technicians comfortable and using mobile technology.  In these kinds of work environments, the team deploying the mobile technology is often str