Showing posts with label mobile platform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile platform. Show all posts

Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report - Introduction

Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure
Fortune 500 firms recognize the ubiquitous use of mobile devices, integrated sensors and broadband access to the Internet are profoundly impacting user expectations and the demand for real-time wireless information exchanges.  This can be witnessed in the fast changing expectations and shopping behaviors of mobile device empowered consumers all around us today.

Demands for real-time wireless information exchanges, business analytics, media and transactional data are challenging traditional IT infrastructures, business processes and business strategies that were never designed to support a mobile and real-time world.  It is our belief that these demands and the challenges with supporting them will change the competitive landscape in most industries.

Data has a shelf life.  It has a greater economic and competitive value the quicker it can be consumed and utilized. If mobile shoppers can open a mobile app and instantly be presented with a hyper-personalized shopping experience that considers their real-time location, buying history, preferences and other relevant physical and “Code Halos” data (all data available for analysis about a person, object or organization), then there is a greater competitive value represented by increased mobile app use, loyalty, positive brand experience, customer service and sales (see Starbuck's Code Halos and Mobile App Strategies).  If on the other hand, companies have IT architectures, systems and infrastructures unable to support the speed requirements of real-time mobile interactions, then they will find themselves to be at a significant competitive disadvantage.

I surveyed 80 high tech industry and IT professionals involved in enterprise mobility, analyzed numerous industry reports, interviewed many mobile experts and reviewed current and forecasted technology trends to identify challenges and opportunities related to supporting real-time mobile infrastructure.  The following article series titled Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure will detail the survey results and my analysis of the findings.

Business and IT decision makers will be interested in this article series due to the increasingly strategic impact mobile applications are having on businesses.  Customers, prospects, partners and employees’ all are using mobile applications to interact, collaborate, research, shop, transact and engage in innovative new ways with companies, their products and services.  It is our analysis this trend will continue to accelerate and be the key driver for on-going digital transformation in many industries and markets.

As a result of our analysis we believe the quality and performance of mobile applications and the associated user experiences directly impact and influence brand perception, social sentiment, loyalty and sales volumes.

In the new book titled Code Halos the authors, Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig and Benjamin Pring, propose that data is the new competitive arena for businesses.  Winners in this competition are those that can collect, analyze and react in real-time to data in a manner that drives improved customer interactions and engagements.  Today these engagements are often via mobile applications.

In another recent book titled, Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation, author James McQuivey's writes that competition in business is rapidly moving to a “focus on knowledge of and engagement with customers.” Data is being used to shape and personalize real-time interactions and engagements on mobile devices.  Companies are beginning to understand this.  They understand that "Code Halos" (people’s digital footprint, the online data about preferences, history, activities, etc.) has great value.  This data is the key to personalizing user experiences across all formats.

Businesses are interacting with and engaging their markets in a wide range of different formats today including traditional media, websites, mobile apps, call centers and in brick and mortar establishments.  The concept of omni-channel is widely used to mean the ability to interact and engage in real-time with customers and prospects across all of these formats.  The ability to effectively support omni-channel requires a lot of thinking, planning and purposeful design.  An effective design is not always present in today’s enterprise IT environments.  How much of a problem this is will be revealed in the following report.

Businesses today are responding by developing comprehensive data-driven strategies connected to e-commerce portals and mobile applications.  These strategies acknowledge the requirement to better understand the needs, preferences and histories of their prospects and customers, so they can provide personalized and optimized user experiences that lead to more sales and happier and more loyal customers.

In a recent report by CIO Strategic Marketing Services (a survey of 414 executives at midsize and large enterprise organizations from around the world) they reveal enterprise IT and back-office systems typically have on average between 3.6 and 4.8 mobile applications integrated with each of them.  The systems surveyed were: CRM, E-Commerce, ERP, SMS, DMS, Financial and HR.

These findings highlight how critically important back-end business and IT systems are to mobile applications.  Mobile applications, in most cases, are required to query and interact with back-end systems as a core component of their functionality.  The speed at which back-end systems can respond to queries and interact with mobile applications is a critical component in determining how successful the user experience will be.

If further evidence to the importance of real-time mobile infrastructure is required, let’s consider that Forrester Research predicts that US online sales will top $400 billion by 2018, and nearly $1 trillion worldwide.  No company wants to miss out on this size of market (Mulpuru, Sucharita “The New Paradigm of Retail? Forrester – July 24, 2014).

Today the trend is quickly moving beyond traditional online e-commerce to mobile commerce.  That makes mobile application performance even more important.  In a recent study of 1,000 mobile shoppers (Contact Solutions, - Mobile Shopping Cliffhanger), 1 of 6 consumers report they struggle with mobile shopping apps more than half of the time.   More than half (55%) of shoppers struggle with mobile shopping apps at least 20% of the time.  When consumers struggle, 71% will abandon their cart or leave the app entirely.  These numbers clearly demonstrate the necessity for an optimized mobile application and user experience.

Our analysis has determined that IT infrastructures for supporting real-time mobile applications are lacking in many companies, and correcting this must be a priority.  Without mobile optimized back-end system, designs, processes and IT infrastructures in place that can support a "real-time" environment, an enterprise’s ability to remain competitive is in jeopardy.

Read Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 1
Read Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 2
Read Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 3




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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

A Walk Through Boston - Talking about Digital Transformation, Code Halos and Mobility

If there are ever awards given out for people that take shaky, corny and unrehearsed videos of themselves talking about digital transformation, Code Halos and enterprise mobility while walking around Boston - I should be considered.  Grab some popcorn!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/w2ZrHnd0L2o?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw




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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile Expert Interviews: Citrix's Brian Dye

What are the mobile security vulnerabilities that enterprises are missing? How is the mobile security industry changing in 2014? How is securing mobile solutions in the cloud different than on-premise? What do you do when you can't patch stupid?  These are a few of the topics I discuss in this interview with Citrix's Group VP, GM of Mobile Platforms group, Brian Dye. Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/cXR21m-ox3E?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw



The cost and time to mobilize enterprise applications can actually meet or exceed the original cost and time to implement those systems. In their new report, “StarMobile Transforms Enterprise Apps into Mobile Apps”, 451 Research details the advantages of StarMobile’s app development tool and how it can drastically reduce the cost and time to mobilize enterprise applications.

Download report here: http://starmobileinc.com/report-451research-starmobile-transforms-mobile-apps-into-enterprise-apps/
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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile Expert Interviews: Oracle's Denis Tyrell

Oracle made several interesting announcements about their new enterprise mobility solutions here at Oracle's Open World 2014 including Oracle's Mobile Cloud Service MBaaS and MADP.  In this interview with Oracle's Senior Director of Product Management we discuss them.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/GqkE8AIx378

Upcoming Webinar: Shift Mobile Testing Left Using Selenium and Eclipse
Date: October 7, 2014, 11am EDT
Description:
Learn how the “shift testing left” dynamic is impacting Developers and Testers. Learn how Perfecto Mobile can facilitate this while supporting your Agile and Continuous Integration effort. The webinar includes a hands-on demonstration of the MobileCloud, including:
  • How to create a new mobile testing project in Eclipse
  • How to run a sample project on multiple devices in parallel
  • How to leverage existing Selenium scripts and extend them to mobile 
  • How to "Shift Left" and decrease mobile app time to market
Registration link: http://bit.ly/1nH42g4

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile Expert Interviews: AnyPresence's Kristian Meier

The enterprise mobility space has been evolving quickly over the past 24 months and the category of solutions called MBaaS (mobile backend as a service) has emerged as one of the winners.  Within this category are many different strategies for supporting enterprise clients, and in this interview with AnyPresence's mobile expert Kristian Meier we learn their approach and strategy.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/W91WaDYZ7Y4?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw


************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile Expert Interview: Motorola Solution's Mark Kirsten

Enterprise mobility is evolving at an incredible rate and it is hard to keep up with all the changes.  Let me try to get us all up to speed on Motorola Solutions.  Motorola Solutions bought Symbol Technologies (the rugged handheld and barcode device manufacturer) in 2007.   Motorola Solutions purchased RhoMobile (enterprise mobile platform developer) in 2011.  Zebra Technologies is now acquiring Motorola Solutions (the non-government side of the business).  Zebra is also making a play at being a player in the Internet of Things space. Did you get all that?

In this Mobile Expert Interview segment, I have the pleasure of interviewing Motorola Solutions' Mark Kirsten about their evolving enterprise mobility platform strategies and developments.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/JfAVgm5HXz0?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Editor
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile Expert Interview: Cognizant's Bibhakar Pandey

In the world of mobile security solutions there are cloud-based, on-premise, off-the-shelf apps and bespoke (custom for North Americans) solutions that can be tailored to an enterprise's unique requirements.  In this segment of our Mobile Expert Interview series I interview mobility expert Bibhakar Pandey on how his TruMobi venture at Cognizant approaches mobility.  Bibhakar proposes that mobility should be approached holistically and with the enterprise's mobile strategy in mind rather than by analyst created categories. Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/8mBdEKTKbhw?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw



Watch more Mobile Expert Interviews here -  http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/mobile-expert-videos.html.
************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Editor
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile App Design Is Irrelevant - Latest Research

Your mobile app design is irrelevant if your back-end systems can't support the real-time requirements of the user. 

A recent report* by CIO Strategic Marketing Services states that most customer and employee mobility applications are integrated with back-end systems.  Although that is not necessarily a surprise, it is useful to see the average number of apps that are connected to different back-end systems.  Here are the numbers from the survey.

Question: How many of your company's mobile apps for both customers and employees integrate with the following back-end systems? (average number of apps)
  • 4.8 apps per survey participant connect to a CRM systems (including sales, customer service and marketing)
  • 4.8 apps per survey participant connect to an Ecommerce system
  • 4.6 apps per survey participant connect to an ERP (including project management system)
  • 4.4 apps per survey participant connect to a supply chain, logistics or operations system
  • 4.0 apps per survey participant connect to a document management system
  • 3.7 apps per survey participant connect to an accounting and/or financial system
  • 3.6 apps per survey participant connect to an HR (human resource) system
In my recent survey, Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure, eighty participants identified that back-end systems were causing real headaches for mobile app developers.  Here are a few of the questions and their results from the survey:

Question 1: Do you (or your clients') have IT systems that are too slow or incapable of supporting real-time mobile app requirements?  83.9% answered YES.

Question 2: Will your (or your clients') IT environment and back-end systems prevent you from delivering an optimized mobile application experience?  43.2% answered YES.

Question 3: Are your (or your clients') mobile strategies and plans inhibited or limited because of the current IT environment, infrastructure and/or design?  77.7% answered YES.

Question 4: Which components of an end-to-end mobile solution cause the most performance problems (involving mobile apps)?  Here are the top three answers in order of how problematic they are:
  1. Back-end systems 
  2. Internet connectivity
  3. APIs and integration design and performance
Question 5: How important will having optimized mobile applications and user experiences be to the future success of your business? 72% answered "very important" to "critical."

What is the bottom line?  Although it is often more fun and interesting to talk about innovative user experiences and app designs, the foundation for supporting real-time mobile applications must be in place first.  Without back-end system and IT infrastructures that can support a "real-time" environment, you are just putting lipstick on a pig, as we say in Boise, Idaho.

These are the kind of challenges and topics I cover during my Analyst Briefings and Mobile and Digital Strategy workshops.  If your company would benefit from a workshop contact me here to discuss.

*Survey of 414 executives at midsize and large enterprise organizations worldwide
************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Editor
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile Expert Interview: AnyPresence's Founder Rich Mendis

In this segment, I had the privilege of interviewing the founder of AnyPresence, Rich Mendis on his views of the enterprise mobility market, mobile strategies and his predictions for the future.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/GvvGl652Q9k?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw



************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Editor
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

HTML5 and the Future of PhoneGap and WebView+

By Peter Rogers, Principal Architect, Mobility, Cognizant

HTML5 is still one of the most discussed topics amongst us technical types.  The key challenge, however, has remained unanswered for a long time. How do you effectively wrap HTML5 for use in native mobile applications? Unfortunately I do not have a universal answer, but I do have a solution for Android.

Firstly, I recommend looking into the use of Vellamo in order to benchmark the performance of HTML5 on Android (http://www.quicinc.com/vellamo/).  Vellamo is designed to be an accurate, easy to use suite of system-level benchmarks for devices based on Android 2.3 forward. Vellamo began as a mobile web benchmarking tool that today has expanded to include two primary chapters: the HTML5 chapter evaluates mobile web browser performance; and the Metal Chapter measures the CPU subsystem performance of mobile processors.

I have my own custom architecture that extends RESS (Responsive Design + Server Side Components) called P-RESS (Performance RESS). The idea is to include performance based information inside the device family configurations. This means that an HTML5 based mobile client can query the RESS server to ask about the performance characteristics of its device family. This can be used to downgrade the graphical experience, for example removing a parallax scrolling background.

The big problem up until recently was that wrapping HTML5 into a WebView on Android meant that you had to use the default web browser, which unfortunately was not Chrome. Instead you ended up with the Android Stock Browser, which was a long way from Chrome. With Android 4.4 (KitKat) we now have the ability to use the Chrome browser through the WebView by default and this is very much welcome (https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/webview/overview#what_version_of_chrome_is_it_based_on).

There are two downsides to this effort though:
  1. It only works on Android 4.4
  2. The WebView shipped does not have full feature parity with Chrome for Android (it is based on Chrome 30 as opposed to Chrome 33)
This means that the following features are not available:
  • WebGL (3D canvas)
  • WebRTC
  • WebAudio
  • Fullscreen API
  • Form validation
There have been a number of open source efforts to deliver a Chrome WebView that works across Android 4 and now it appears two companies have started to offer their own versions: Famo.us (http://www.infoworld.com/t/mobile-development/famous-were-building-better-phonegap-236267); and Ludei (http://support.ludei.com/hc/en-us/articles/201952993).

There is a subtle difference in marketing though: Famo.us claim to be building a better PhoneGap; whereas Ludei claim to be building something that is PhoneGap compatible. Both systems bundle the latest edition of the Blink engine (Chrome 33) with the App using a Cloud based build system. The two companies also have cool demos of WebGL running through a WebView on various Android 4 devices. This also means that when Chrome 34 arrives then it is presumed that could be bundled instead – depending on backward compatibility with earlier versions of Android 4.

Famo.us actually answer one of the key questions. Does each app have its own separately bundled edition of Chrome? Each time a Famo.us app needs a particular version of Chrome, that version is installed in such a way that other apps that need it can also use it – think shared libraries. At the moment the footprint for Chrome 33 is around 15-20MB but they predict the size will come down to 10MB. They can also have it not be part of the initial download of the app, but rather as an app upgrade.

It is unclear if Ludei will offer a similar shared library system at this time. One thing Ludei do mention is the increased portability and performance that WebView+ (as they call it) brings to the web environment. Ludei used to only offer support for games but just recently they added application support as well and this is when I really took notice of CocoonJS.

With one consistent HTML5 environment then it means the developers know the feature set to code towards. It becomes a sort of HTML5 Reference Implementation for Android. The minor downside is this only covers Android 4 and above. The major downside is this only covers Android. There is no way of bundling the latest version of Safari with an App on iOS and Windows 8 is even more problematic.

The other thing that Ludei and indeed Intel XDK offer is technology that cross-compiles HTML5 Canvas into OpenGL(ES) for Android or iOS. That means that if you are wrapping an HTML5 Canvas into a Native App then it makes far more sense to cross-compile it into Android or iOS native code. Ludei claims to have the fastest accelerated HTML5 Canvas, but Intel acquired similar technology from AppMobi.  When Web Components become more widely supported then it would appear to be the next candidate technology to be cross-compiled into native code.

Oracle offers ADF Mobile which combines a Java VM with an HTML5 presentation tier, the benefit being totally portable plug-in extensions. Unfortunately when I looked into the solution there was no backward compatibility with existing PhoneGap plug-ins. Ludei has been clever here and made sure that PhoneGap plug-ins are explicitly supported and I am sure Famo.us will follow.

I had a chat with the W3C recently and asked if there was likely to be any standardisation in the following spaces:
  1. Control over hardware acceleration
  2. Mixing native code and HTML5
  3. Pure HTML5 deployable Apps
The answer was that only the latter is being standardised and they are not seeing much uptake outside of Firefox OS. The manifest specification is being thoroughly updated through and this will see improvements to both HTML5 Cache Manifest and its future replacement called ServiceWorkers – all to be discussed in my next Blog (‘The future of HTML5’).  They also told me that the Windows 8 App Store allows you to host pure HTML5 applications.

This means that outside of standardisation, we are going to need to be looking at a new gold standard for HTML5 based Hybrid Apps as follows:
  • A Chrome 33/34 WebView for advanced performance, feature set and portability
  • An HTML5 Canvas to OpenGL(ES) conversion for Native Apps
  • PhoneGap backwardly compatible for existing plug-ins
These are Peter Roger's personal observations and opinions and don't necessarily represent his employers.  You can contact Peter Rogers directly at Peter-2.Rogers-2@cognizant.com.

*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

The Latest on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8.1 for Enterprise Mobility and IoT

By Guest Blogger and Cognizant Mobile Expert Peter Rogers

A lot of attention lately has been given to Android and iOS, but let's not forget developments from Microsoft. Microsoft made some exciting announcements at Build 2014 that we should consider.

The Windows 8.1 update was given an imminent release date (April 8th) and Windows Phone 8.1 Dev Preview Program is just starting. There was a nice quote reflecting their intentions with Windows Phone 8.1, “We believe Windows Phone is the world's most personal smartphone”.  Microsoft is bringing Windows Phone 8.1 to all Lumia devices running WP8  and the next generation of Lumia devices were shown with ridiculously good cameras and a Snapdragon 400/800 chip inside (1.2/2.2 GHz).

Cortana is Microsoft’s version of Siri (with a husky voice), that is powered by Bing, and has been fully integrated into the phone experience. Windows Phone 8.1 also comes with an enterprise VPN and Internet Explorer 11. The desktop version of Internet Explorer now has an enterprise mode for improved compatibility (white listing of sites) and finally supports WebGL (3D).

The first announcements that was of keen interest to me was the new Universal Apps. These are based on the Windows runtime environment and are portable across the following: PCs; tablets and even Xbox. There is an update to Visual Studio 2013 that allows you to build such Universal Apps. A demo showed the same App running on both Xbox and Windows Phone; and there was also a demo showing the improvements in DirectX 12.

The second thing of interest for me was that ‘The Internet of Things’ got a lot of air time and Microsoft were very keen to talk about Intel and their new Quark chip. It's the smallest SoC the company has ever built, with processor cores one-fifth the size of Atom's, and is built upon an open architecture. Quark is positioned to put Intel in wearables and they even showed off a prototype smartwatch platform Intel constructed to help drive wearable development. Intel President Renee James pointed out that Quark's designed for use in integrated systems, so we'll be seeing Quark in healthcare too. The link for Microsoft was of course their Azure Cloud platform and the shock announcement that Windows will be available for free for Internet of Things-type devices - and indeed for phones and tablets with screens smaller than 9 inches.

The third thing that sparked my interest was from one of the questions in the Q&A, “What's the vision for Microsoft? The vision twenty some-odd years ago was ‘a computer on every desk’. But that's basically been achieved.”  Microsoft's answer, “Mobile First, Cloud First, and a world based on concepts like machine learning.”

I like “Mobile First, Cloud First” as a concept because it stresses the important relationship between the two. Microsoft may not see the success they desire with Windows 8.1 (even when the start menu returns) but it is clear that they are still a force to be reckoned with, and Windows 9 will have all the necessary learning in place to succeed.


*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Mobile Expert Interview: Moshe BenBassat CEO of ClickSoftware

I surprised Moshe BenBassat at the Mobile World Congress 2014 with an ambush interview, but we have known each other for many years so he agreed to it.  In this interview we talk about artificial intelligence, ClickSoftware's latest acquisition and developments in the enterprise mobility market.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN43jSvK1ao&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw&feature=share


ATTENTION!  Cognizant is hosting a lunch and learn in Santa Clara, CA on February 27th from 12-2 PM on the subject of Beyond Digital Asset Management: An IT Roadmap for Next Generation Digital Marketing.  Forrester Analyst Anjali Yakkundi will be sharing from her research there as well. If you would like to attend, here are more details - http://app.certain.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKWebId=0x5873675f2e.

*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at 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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mindset - Strategic Enterprise Mobility and Code Halos

Mindset  - a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by groups of people that is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools. ~ Wikipedia

More photos are being taken than ever before, but Kodak went bankrupt.  More movies are being watched than ever before but Blockbuster went bankrupt.  More books are being purchased than ever before, but Borders went bankrupt.  Why is Pandora and Spotify so popular?  Why are Google Search Advertising, LinkedIn and Facebook making so much money on advertising when the traditional media and publishing companies struggle?

Kodak had the opportunity to compete in digital photography, digital photo apps and Instagram type social networking sites - but they didn't.  Why?  It's a mindset thing.

Blockbuster had the opportunity to compete in video rentals online, streaming movies/TV shows and setting up social sharing sites like Vimeo, Vine, YouTube, etc. - but they didn't.  Why?  It's a mindset thing.

Blackberry couldn't imagine that users would prefer a larger screen to a physical keyboard.  They thought mobile devices should be reserved for work.  They couldn't imagine a mobile device as a computer or as an entertainment center.  They couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that people would want to browse the Internet using a mobile device.  Why?  It's a mindset thing.

The term Code Halos refers to another mindset.  Here is a definition from my colleagues at The Center for the Future of Work, "Today’s outliers in revenue growth and value creation are winning with a new set of rules. They are dominating by managing the information that surrounds people, organizations, processes and products — what we call Code Halos™."  Did you catch that?  They are dominating by "managing the information that surrounds people, organizations, processes and products."  This is the revenge of the data scientists!

Let's talk about Google.  Google has a very simple UI (user interface), but behind the scenes they are geniuses when it comes to managing the information that surrounds people, organizations, processes and products.  Pandora gives us great music, that we want to listen to, based on information that surrounds us.  Amazon recommends books and movies based upon information that surrounds us and products we have chosen in the past.  They give us an amazingly simple one-click purchasing processes and free shipping based on membership and account information about us.  This experience is addicting.

Google also treats by blog articles differently.  A person new to blogging could copy a blog article of mine and post it on their site.  It would not, however, be treated the same by Google.  Google knows I started blogging in 2006, have over 2,700 articles published mostly on the topics of enterprise mobility and digital transformation and close to 4 million page views in the past 5 years.  They give me a higher "Author Ranking" than a new blogger.  They use all of their collected information to build algorithms to find meaning-making through all the noise on the Internet.  They want to provide the best search results possible for their users.

I get treated differently by Delta, Hertz and Marriott based upon my loyalty, frequent use and past business with them.  I am spoiled and will do silly things to maintain this treatment.  They treat me different, not because of me, but because of the information about me.

In today's world, successful companies will use mobile apps, websites, big data analysis, the Internet of Things and other kinds of GPS tracking solutions, videos, photos, historic preferences and social networking information as sensors to collect information, analyze and find meaning.  Meaning-making is how companies learn how to attract you, keep you and treat you right.

I read an article yesterday, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/when-you-fall-in-love-this-is-what-facebook-sees/283865/, that describes how Facebook can recognize relationship patterns of people falling in love and entering a serious relationship.  It was an article capitalizing on Valentine's Day sensitivities.  They can then target particular ads that align with these patterns.  That might seem a big creepy, but when companies do this in the right manner, it just seems thoughtful.  For example, when I land at a connecting airport and turn my iPhone on, I appreciate the Delta app telling me the terminal and gate location of my next flight.  It understands I am traveling, my location, my scheduled flights and gives me context aware information.  It uses the sensors (GPS), my activities, my schedule and my reservation to assist me.  That is a winning formula.

Is your company adopting a "Code Halo" mindset?

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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at 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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview: Mayank Mehta

I had the good fortune of interviewing Capriza's VP of Products, Mayank Mehta yesterday on a Google+ Hangout OnAir.  I asked him about enterprise mobility trends, mobile platforms, mobile strategies, app development and more.  I hope you find this informative and useful!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MsNsPSE0cw&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at 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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interviews: Feedhenry's CEO Cathal McGloin

I had the privilege of interviewing Feedhenry's CEO, Cathal McGloin on enterprise mobility, mobile strategies, mobility trends and how he is positioning Feedhenry to address them.  I also had the chance to ask him to share advice on what companies should consider when developing their enterprise mobility strategy and roadmap.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5M96IbOUu8&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

Learn about mobile strategies in the retail, travel & hospitality industries with @Cognizant & @Moovweb on 2/6, 10am PST http://www.moovweb.com/webinars/cognizantrth/

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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at 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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Bracing for Change with Enterprise Mobility

I spent last week working with four brilliant technology analysts in Chicago.  It was -40 degrees Fahrenheit with the windchill. Who would schedule a meeting in Chicago mid-winter?  Even in the conference room it was cold, and we were all wearing coats and scarves! It made for a great adventure and after a brief 36 hour delay in my flight, I am back in the home office.

What did I learn last week?  For starters, more words to add to my vocabulary.  I learned how to use words like gravitas and nascent.  Two words rarely used in Boise, Idaho.  "That potato farmer has both expertise and gravitas, and he is always looking for nascent varieties of spuds."  Sorry, can't say I have ever heard that said.  I did, however, learn a great deal about how real analysts work and organize their research projects.  They taught me much about where technology is today, and where it is rapidly going over the next two years.

Three of my colleagues at Cognizant have just finished a book that will be in all the bookstores in a few weeks.  I had the chance to read much of it, and it provides brilliant insight into digital transformation across industries and markets and explains how to transform business models and IT infrastructures to be successful.
As a result of everything I learned last week, I am impressed that IT infrastructures must  be rapidly upgraded to support "real-time everything."  Mobile computing, the IoT (internet of things) and the advent of broadband Internet have transformed how we think, work, play, communicate and engage in commerce.  If we are going to host our memory, analytics, turn-by-turn navigation, business processes and business solutions in the cloud and access them through mobile devices, we have major work to do in backend infrastructures.  I believe the companies that will be successful in the next five years are those that can guide their organizations best through this age of digital transformation.

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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at 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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Using Mobility to Build an Empire

In this short video I explain the 15 ways mobility helped the Roman Empire, and how enterprise mobility can help your business today.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hxt2yOkAaY&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw&feature=share


The True Cost of Mobility - Companies are under tremendous pressure to develop and deploy mobile apps for their business systems, yet the traditional approach to mobile app development typically costs $250K+ and takes 6+ months for a single app. Today IT professionals are exploring platforms that radically reduce costs and time-to-market for their mobile initiatives, especially around complex applications such as SAP, Oracle, or custom applications. Download the whitepaper - https://www.capriza.com/resources/whitepapers/?resource=true-cost-of-enterprise-mobility&adgroup=MES

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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at 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 digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Selling and Buying Enterprise Mobility

One of my first jobs after I graduated from Portland State University was to work at Dale Carnegie and Associates.  I helped sell and teach all kinds of professional development classes on public speaking, management and sales.  I still remember one of the rules we taught in the Human Relations Approach to Sales class, "Customers don't want to buy your product or service, they want the results of your product or service."  I believe that rule applies equally well today to enterprise mobility platforms, mobile security and development tools.

What do you think are the results of enterprise mobility platforms that customers want to buy?  I will start the list and you can finish it:
  • Increased speed or tempo of operations to gain a competitive advantage
  • Efficient data collection so better and faster business decisions can be made
  • Quicker reporting of events and KPIs to a wider audience to provide full situational awareness and promote good decision making and issue resolution
  • Improved workforce productivity due to real-time data collection, artificial intelligence and reporting
  • Reduced expenses and waste due to inefficient resource allocation
  • Improved visibility to remote operations and projects so better data driven decisions can be made
  • More collaboration, faster and with more remote workers contributing to good decision making
  • Higher profits due to efficiency gains
  • etc.
It is useful to understand that if these results could be achieved without purchasing mobile platforms and tools they would be.  No one wants to purchase, develop, test, maintain and support these mobile solutions.   They are a lot of work and distract from your core business.  The reality is though in today's world, mobile platforms, mobile app development tools, app stores and mobile security solutions are a necessity.

Any discussion with a mobility platform and tool vendor should, at a minimum, start with identifying the business results your company wants.  Any feature or function the mobility vendor shares and demonstrates should be tied back to a business result on your list.  Don't let a mobility vendor discuss features that aren't tied back to a business result.  Although painful for the mobility vendor's sales team, holding the vendor to this exercise makes the presentation far more entertaining and valuable for you!

Last week I wrote an article titled Enterprise Mobility, Business Executives and Mobility Vendors.  In that article I reported that more CIOs and CEOs are getting involved in decisions about enterprise mobility.  Why?  I believe executives are seeing enterprise mobility as a catalyst for digital transformation.  It is one step, although a very important step, to transforming their companies to meet the demands of a digital market place.  A market place where the competitive differentiators are digital competencies.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile
Learn about mobile strategies at 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.

Mobility and Real-Time Capability Projection

This weekend I was clever.  That is newsworthy because it doesn't happen very often.  Our son is stationed at a military base that did not receive TV coverage of the Boise State football game on Saturday night.  It must have been the government shut-down.  I can't think of any other reason they wouldn't have shown it.  The solution was a three hour Google+ Hangout whereby mom and dad got to talk to our officer son while the laptop camera "inadvertently" captured and streamed the Broncos game showing on our big screen TV.  It was a nice Hangout - they won!  We tried Skype first, but the picture was blurry.  Google+ Hangout, however, was picture perfect.

Our son is stationed a great distance away, however, using real-time communication and video we can communicate and share what is going on in our lives.  This same kind of technology can be used in the context of "capability projection" for companies.  Here is my definition of capability projection, "The ability of a business to apply all or some of its capabilities such as marketing, sales, distribution, etc, over great distances to respond to and take advantage of new market opportunities."
What does it take to project your capabilities over great distances?  The ability to in real-time collect data, analyze data, and distribute the results in order to make good decisions.  It takes the ability to view information and operations at a distance and have the ability to act instantaneously from afar.  Without this capability, you cannot implement good business tactics.  Tactics are the art and science of positioning resources for optimal use and maneuvering them to keep them as such.

The bottom line, you can't expand your operations and business over great distances and/or remote markets unless you are implementing a good real-time SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) strategy.  A good SMAC strategy provides the technical platforms that enable distributed organizations to effectively collaborate, design and execute plans.

The Internet, mobile devices and collaboration platforms have greatly empowered organizations to be able to expand beyond historic geographic barriers.  This capability opens the door to expanding your influence and business efficiently and cost effectively across the globe.
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile
Learn about mobile strategies at 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.

State of Enterprise Mobility 2013 Survey Results, Part 1

I am working on the "State of Enterprise Mobility 2013" survey report this week and wanted to share some of the interesting results.  Here is the first question, "How important is B2E (business-to-employee) mobility to your company's success?"  Here are the answers:

  • End users - 30% stated it has a large to critical impact
  • Analysts -  69% stated it has a large to critical impact
  • Consultants - 40% stated is has a large to critical impact
  • Mobility Vendors - 51% stated it has a large to critical impact
  • Software/ERP Vendors - 46% stated is has a large to critical impact

Here is the second question, "How important is B2C (business-to-consumer) mobile apps to your company's success?"  Here are the answers:

  • End users - 40% stated it has a large to critical impact
  • Analysts - 23% stated it has a large to critical impact
  • Consultants - 33% stated it has a large to critical impact
  • Mobility Vendors - 35% stated it has a large to critical impact
  • Software/ERP Vendors - 29% stated it has a large to critical impact

It is very interesting that "end-users" value B2E less than the rest of the market, but value B2C more than the rest of the market participants.

It is also interesting that "analysts" place a much higher value on B2E mobility than the rest of the market participants, but value B2C less than the rest.

What are your interpretations of this data?

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant
View Linkedin Profile
Learn about mobile strategies at 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.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict