Mobile Expert Video Series: Graham Robinson

I always love catching up with SAP Mentor and Founder of Yelcho Systems Consulting, Graham Robinson.  This time I catch him in Brisbane, Australia at the Mastering Enterprise Mobility with SAP event where I am speaking on mobile strategies.  In this interview he shares his thoughts and advice on mobile application development.

Video Link: http://youtu.be/vHfin3FlBxU

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

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 Expert Video Series: Ingo Piroth

This is a particularly interesting discussion with SAP's VP of Mobility Serivces, North America, Ingo Piroth. We discuss mobile strategies, the latest trends, and the impact of social, analytics and cloud all working together.

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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 Middleware Strategies

Andre Guillemin and I just completed a 30 plus page whitepaper on mobile middleware strategies, and I will be discussing this on a webinar on Thursday, March 29th at 1 PM EDT.  The whitepaper title is Making Sense of Mobile Middleware Strategies.  Choosing mobile middleware was listed as the third biggest challenge on insiderResearch's recent Mobile Outlook 2012 report (get the report free here).

Webinar attendees will also receive a free copy of my whitepaper.

I invite you to attend!

Webinar Details:
Making Sense of Mobile Middleware Strategies
Thursday, March 29, 1PM EDT
Learn More
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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, 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.

Mobile Expert Podcast Series: Apacheta's Don Grust, Part 2

This is the second part of an interview I conducted last week with mobility expert and Apacheta's CEO Don Grust on issues related to cloud computing, Sybase Unwired Platform, ruggedized handhelds, field services and enterprise mobility. Don Grust has more than 28 years of experience in the high-tech industry, including 17 years in wireless and mobile computing. If you missed it, you can listen to Part 1 here.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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.

Video Comments: Kevin Benedict on Buying vs. Building Mobile Apps

In this segment of Video Comments I share some thoughts on buying vs. building enterprise mobility apps.  I also say nice things about Sybase's Unwired Platform.  You can watch Part 2 of this series here.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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.

More on Change Management and Enterprise Mobility

I had the opportunity to spend time with teams from two large utilities last evening at the ClickConnect APAC 2011 conference in Australia.  I was impressed by three specific discussion points:

1. Change management challenges
2. M2M
3. Network connectivity issues

First, both utilities said the human factor in change management is a big problem for them.  Both organizations have an aging workforce that does not like change.  They shared that this workforce often has many inefficient and bad habits that they are not interested in changing.  When new apprentices are added to a team, it takes only six months for the old timers to teach the new apprentices the same bad habits.  What is to be done?

The positive note is that the young apprentices don't fear technology.  They have grown up with mobile phones, text messaging, email and social networking.  They are willing to embrace the use of these technologies in the workplace.  There is hope!

M2M (machine to machine) communications is being used extensively by the gas distribution company I met last night.  They have a broad range of different remote M2M sensors on their pipelines that wirelessly send data back to a central server.  Although these M2M devices are widely deployed, the challenge is still around how best to use the data from these remote sensors.  There is still a lot of work to be done that will turn this data into actionable intelligence.

It takes only one minute of discussion with a utility company in Australia to understand how necessary it is to have mobile applications that can run offline and online.  It only takes a short drive away from a main road to lose mobile phone connectivity in the outback.  Satellite phones and specialized radios are normal equipment for these IT organizations.  The IT assumption is that there will always be limited connectivity.  All mission critical mobile applications must work with this assumption.

Last week in Europe, I heard the same kind of requirements for offline and online mobile applications.  Several of the companies I was meeting with had a significant presence in Africa and South America.  Mobile application connectivity cannot be assumed.

I think back to a discussion I had with a member of the Sybase team in the UK earlier this year.  He shared that there were three locations between his office and his home where he could not get connectivity on his mobile phone.  I think we all need to remember these issues and not assume global connectivity when we are thinking through mission critical mobile application designs and architectures.

What does a mobile application that can run offline or online look like?  It will have the capability to store data in the mobile application on the mobile device that can be synchronized, at a later time when there is connectivity, to a back office database.  This kind of application requires a comprehensive mobile middleware solution that includes synchronization technology, on device data storage and backend integration capabilities.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

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.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Newelo's Kimmo Jarvensivu

Newelo's Kimmo Jarvensivu

One of the things that has been missing from my Mobile Expert Interview Series is the European view on enterprise mobility, so this week you will see a number of interviews from mobile experts from that side of the pond.

Today, we are interviewing Kimmo Jarvensivu who is the VP of Sales and Business Development for mobile platform vendor Newelo which is located in Finland. Newelo is a spin-off from Nokia currently with ten direct employees and part of the R&D is subcontracted. He is also a big fan of anything Finnish including Angry Birds!

First, some background on Kimmo.  He worked as a GIS consultant in the 90s, and in 1996 moved to Nokia Networks for Operation Support Systems.  Later, he moved into Nokia's Managed Services area which was responsible for GSM network operations and Field Force Management around the world. 

Note:  I interviewed Kimmo using Skype.  He also sent me written responses to many of my questions.  I combined my notes with his answers for this article.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?

Kimmo: Currently I have with me Nokia N900, N8 and E72. N900 is my personal phone, others are for testing purposes. On my desk, I have iPhone and Android ZTE Blade and Archos 7o Internet tablet. It is good to compare different mobile devices and gain end-user experience. In our business area, the most important factors are end-user experience and integration to backoffice system, so it is good to have "hands-on" experience on those applications and devices.

Mobile Solution Models, Part 1

It appears there are at least six unique mobile solution models.  This is a dynamic list, a work in progress, so please help me understand other models that need to be added.

1. Mobile middleware - often includes a mobile database, a server database, synchronization, and basic database integration tools and general guidelines for using the middleware with your software development projects.  Typically, you develop in the programming environment of your choice (e.g. .NET, PowerBuilder, C++, Visual Basic) and integrate, the mobile middleware into your applications.
2. Mobile browser applications - these are light weight browser based applications that often provide a mobile view into a back office business application or database.  They do not provide access to the data collection tools and functionality available on many devices.
3. SEAP Infrastructure (I made this up) - smartphone enterprise application platforms - supports the testing, deployment, integration, and operations of mobile micro-applications often in cloud computing environments (although on premises versions are also available).  Mobile micro-applications may be developed for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry devices, etc., and downloaded from online application stores, but integrated to back-end ERPs via the SEAP Infrastructure.
4. SEAP Infrastructure Plus - see number 2 and then add an SDK for rapidly developing mobile micro-applications that work with the SEAP infrastructure.
5. MBA - mobilized business applications (made it up again) - shrink wrapped or off-the-shelf mobile clients for existing business applications.  The MBA can often be configured to match the basic customization of the integrated back-end business applications, but it is not designed for general purpose mobile applications.
6. MEAPs - mobile enterprise application platforms - this is an enterprise class mobility platform used to support multiple mobile applications, disparate databases, different business processes, a wide range of mobile devices and operating systems, includes a comprehensive SDK for developing mobile applications and mobile device management.  It should be able to support mobile micro-applications and thick client mobile architectures.

There is a lot of noise around enterprise mobility today.  It is important to understand that a typical enterprise could realize solid ROIs by mobilizing dozens of different business processes.  IT departments may be receiving requests for mobile applications from the sales department today, but tomorrow it will be a dozen other departments all with different mobile device preferences and priority business processes.  The IT department needs to aggressively formulate a support and management plan that is flexible enough to satisfy a wide range of requests, requirements, and mobile devices before chaos reigns.

Many companies will be followers and simply want a "me too" mobile application that mobilizes common business processes, but others seek competitive advantages through mobile technologies.  These will seek to utilize mobile technologies in unique ways where shrink wrap applications do not exist.  These aggressive inventors and early adaptors want to control their own destinies and be able to develop mobilized business processes only they have conceived.  These inventors don't want to be reinventing the wheel. They want to spend their time developing visionary applications with massive ROIs.  They want a powerful MEAP to take care of all the mobile middleware infrastructure, integration, synchronization, security, and development infrastructure, but they want an SDK included that enables them to design, develop, test, deploy, and support a wide range of customized mobile applications and business processes.

Mobile "me-too" applications help you maintain the status quo.  Putting the power of a comprehensive MEAP in the hands of your brightest minds can be game changers. 

One of the key reasons SAP is following a partnership strategy for mobile applications, I believe, is that they realize they cannot develop all of the mobile applications that are being requested fast enough.  A partnership strategy enables dozens of SAP partners to fulfill the demand and enables the SAP ecosystem to compete with each other to make the most powerful and innovative mobile solutions possible.  However, just as SAP realizes they cannot solve all the mobility needs of the market themselves, neither can the mobility vendors. 

Mobility vendors must target the largest and most common business processes for mobilizing, as this is where the quickest and easiest sales revenue is located.  As a result, niche mobility applications that may provide a particular company with an enormous competitive advantage will be necessarily ignored.  The only way a company will realize the value of that competitive advantage is to implement it themselves.  That introduces another discussion which we will continue in Part 2.

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Kevin Benedict
SAP Mentor, Mobile Industry Analyst, Founder/CEO Netcentric Strategies LLC
Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant and Web 2.0 Marketing Services
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: 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. ***************************************************

Interesting SAP Mobility Discussion Highlight

In the comment section of the article SAP Mobility Challenge, Part 4 there is an interesting discussion that I wanted to highlight for those that may have missed it.

***Comment 1

Kevin,

I agree about the small custom mobile solutions for small number of users. Usually such projects have high ROIs based on the urgent business needs. However, this is what happened in the past 10 years in the absence of a successful SAP mobility strategy and solutions.

Currently, companies look for company wide mobility strategy which covers most of the departments, or at least covers the main mobility requirements of the main business areas, which need it and prove to deliver high ROI. Based on different market researches and my own daily experiences, the trend is MEAP-based mobility solutions for mid and large size companies. Small companies still have the choice to continue using non-MEAP solutions like Sky Technologies.

Based on the definition of MEAP, vendors like Sky technologies don't deliver that category of mobility platform. MEAP requires middleware for many obvious reasons such as composition, data orchestration, performance... Instead, Sky delivers "innerware", which can be installed inside SAP, based solutions for SAP.

I admire Sky products for small companies. However, to get rid of the big troubles we had and still have on business mobility market, such companies will either have to merge with MEAP vendors or focus on small businesses, which are usually not the main group of SAP customers.

Best Regards,
Ahmed

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Ahmed,

You make some interesting points with regards to MEAP vendors, and I'd like to take the opportunity to discuss a little the Sky Technologies "inside SAP" approach to this. Although the Sky Technologies solution is delivered and implemented “inside SAP” this does not mean that the functions of the MEAP vendor middleware platforms has been ignored.

Using the “inside SAP” approach the Sky Technologies technology enables all of the key functions you describe (composition, data orchestration, performance, etc) to deliver SAP mobile solutions to global enterprises. This has been proven out over and over by the large number of global mobility deployments and customer references currently using Sky Technologies.

These large enterprise implementations understand that being “inside SAP”, the deployment, implementation cycles, ongoing maintenance and support are greatly simplified and lead directly to lower cost of ownership and greater return on investment.

I’d also like to take a moment to talk about “the middleware” requirements of the other major SAP mobility vendors. If we were honest the word “middleware” should be used in a plural form. These vendors require a highly complex landscape of middleware-upon-middleware in order to function. Not only do you have to implement the vendor middleware platforms, but this then has to be integrated with SAP via the SAP DOE Middleware platform. This leaves the mobile user many steps removed from the SAP process being mobilized.

By definition these other vendors mobilize their own middleware, with all of the associated duplication of business processes and rules in the middleware layer, and then attempt to integrate with SAP. In effect there are now at least two versions of the truth in respect of the business processes being mobilized. Sky Technologies maintains a single version of the truth - SAP, and truly mobilizes SAP.

Richard Ling, VP Technology, Sky Technologies
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Please add your thoughts and comments to this thread.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobile Strategy Consultant, Mobile Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert
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www.netcentric-strategies.com
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: 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 Enterprise Application Platforms, SAP and Marketing

Yesterday I was reading Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms. It was interesting to me that one of the points Gartner considers before including a MEAP vendor in their report is marketing. They consider the following:

1. Success at marketing (I am guessing it is measured by sales?)
2. Market awareness (name recognition within a target market)
3. Marketing strategy (if Gartner is convinced you have a good strategy)
4. Your ability to recruit a good partner ecosystem and support it through marketing

Think about it. You invest millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man/woman hours into your products, middleware, synchronization technologies, SAP integration methodologies, databases, device management dashboards, rapid application development environments and multi-channel support for dozens of mobile devices, but that is not enough. Gartner is going to evaluate your marketing before including you in their report.

Gartner understands what many smart engineers have not yet learned. A better mouse trap does not sell itself or pay the expenses - sales do. Unless a comprehensive marketing plan is designed, developed and successfully implemented you will not gain sufficient mind share and market share quick enough to remain viable in this fast changing market.

It almost seems like SAP is holding a marketing Olympics for their mobility partners. They have chosen to partner with a handful of companies like Sky Technologies, Syclo, Sybase, RIM and ClickSoftware. Many of these companies have overlapping mobility solutions, but SAP seems to want to invite their partners to compete on the marketing field and see which one comes out on top.

I enjoy a good game of strategy. Although, I can feel the pain that passionate software engineers must feel. They have dedicated their life to developing a progammer's MEAP masterpiece, but the winner is determined by the folks in the marketing department with the expense accounts and travel budgets.


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Author Kevin Benedict
Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert

http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

***Full Disclosure: I am a mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert and as such I work with, and have worked with, some of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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Advice to Mobile Start-ups: Focus on Mobile Content, Mobile Business Processes, Integration and Workflow

The mobile and wireless industries have changed dramatically in the past year and this has significantly changed the market for mobile application start-ups. Many of the missing application development tools and features that forced programmers to develop their own proprietary mobile middleware, have been filled by the mobile OS (operating system) developers over the past 12 months. This is both good and bad news for mobile start-ups.

The good news is that mobile application developers can focus more on providing business value, rather than coding clever mobile client and mobile middleware features. This is good for the entrepreneurs that have started with an existing back-office business application in mind and simply wants to support it with a mobile client.

The bad news is that many mobile application companies have already invested heavily into their own mobile client technology, mobile application development tools and mobile middleware platforms. Why is this bad? Because most enterprise buyers won't appreciate the investment.

Enterprise buyers own smartphones. They download mobile applications over the weekend for $1.99. Their expectations have changed. In the past, mobile applications were a novelty surrounded by mystery and complexity. Mystery and complexity made it easy to charge $500 or more per mobile user. Now mobile applications are only a finger stroke and a password a way on their favorite mobile app store.

The mobile application itself is not where the biggest value can be found. The biggest value is in the following:

• Mobile client integration with enterprise business applications and data
• Support for enterprise business processes
• Support for ERP (enterprise resource planning) workflows
• Support for ERP data requirements
• Integration with high value data sources (web services)
• Support for complex and niche business processes
• Support for high value data collection hardware (survey equipment, RFID, Barcode, GPS etc.)

The value of mobile business applications, no matter what the original investment was, will be attributed to the above capabilities not the mobile client itself. ROIs need to be achieved by supporting core business functions in mobile environments. It is the efficient support for a business process, not the mobile client where the real value can be found.

As a mobile software vendor, having the best of breed enterprise mobile applications will not be good enough. Companies will continually seek to simplify their IT environments and reduce the number of applications they are required to support. They will look to find mobile solutions that are hosted in a SaaS (software as a service) business model in a cloud computing environment, and that are most closely aligned with their primary ERP or key business software solution either through ownership, endorsement or partnership.

Early adopters will experiment with best of breed and leading edge technologies, but the masses want simplicity and security.

Do you agree? I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobility Consultant, Wireless Industry Analyst and Marketing Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: @krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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