Showing posts with label mobility strategies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobility strategies. Show all posts

Best of Kevin Benedict's Mobile Strategy - June 2012 Edition

This is a top 50 list of the best articles that I have written (absolutely not Shakespeare) over the past couple of years that are focused on mobile strategies.  I have now written over 1,700 articles, so rather than read through all the uninspired, here is the top of the heap. I hope you find this list useful.

The Best of Mobile Strategies - June, 2012:
  1. Infonomics and Enterprise Mobility
  2. M2M, Enterprise Mobility and Healthcare
  3. M2M and Enterprise Mobility - The Convergence
  4. M2M, SAP and Enterprise Mobility
  5. SAP's Mobility Vision - Any Way You Want It
  6. SAP's Sanjay Poonen Discusses Mobile Strategies with Kevin Benedict
  7. Learning about the Real World of Enterprise Mobility in Scotland
  8. Avengers, Enterprise Mobility and Network Centric Warfare
  9. Enterprise Mobility, Mobile Sensors and Data Collection
  10. Mobile Strategies and Consumer Products Companies
  11. Mobile Strategies and Situational Awareness
  12. Guidance on Selecting a Mobile Solution Vendor
  13. Development Models for Enterprise Mobility
  14. The Black Hole of Enterprise Mobility Apps
  15. Can You Handle the Truth about Enterprise Mobility and Big Data?
  16. Money Ball, Big Data, The Internet of Things and Enterprise Mobility
  17. Enterprise Mobility - A Business or IT Strategy?
  18. Mobile Strategies, PIOs, Optimized Intersections and Patterns of Life, Part 1
  19. Mobile Strategies, PIOs, Optimized Intersections and Patterns of Life, Part 2
  20. How Long is too Long for Mobile App Development?
  21. Conjecture, Enterprise Mobility and Mobile Strategies
  22. Enterprise Mobility, Remote Sensors and Nervous Systems
  23. Mobility and 4D Field Services
  24. More on Mobility and 4D Field Services
  25. Enterprise Mobility and Institutional Memory
  26. Mobile Apps the Front End to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence
  27. Velocity in Field Services
  28. Enterprise Mobility is Not for Everyone, Just Most
  29. The Value in a Mobile Enterprise Solution
  30. Enterprise Mobility, PIOs and PIVs
  31. Mobile Apps and the Marriage of My Virtual and Physical Worlds
  32. Thoughts on Enterprise Mobility, Mobile Banking and Global Economies
  33. Research on Enterprise Mobility
  34. Smart Ideas and Enterprise Mobility
  35. Field Services, Enterprise Mobility and Strategies
  36. The Benefit of Custom Mobile Applications
  37. Enterprise Mobility - A Tank Half Full
  38. Enterprise Mobility, Netcentric Operations and Military Mobility
  39. Death by Mobile App
  40. Consumer Smartphones or Industrial Grade Smartphones?
  41. What I am Learning about Enterprise Mobility
  42. More on Change Management and Enterprise Mobility
  43. Social Networking and Enterprise Mobility in Less Developed Regions
  44. Recruitment and Enterprise Mobility
  45. Enterprise Mobility and Manned/Unmanned Systems Integration Capabilities
  46. Where Should Mobile Intelligence Reside?
  47. The Importance of Mobile EAM and M2M
  48. Enterprise Mobility Application Predictions
  49. Managing a Mobile and Network Centric Operation, Part 1
  50. Managing a Mobile and Network Centric Operation, Part 2
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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Mobile Expert Video Series: IDC Research's Nicholas McQuire

In this segment of the Mobile Expert Video Series, I got the opportunity to interview IDC Research's Nicholas McQuire in Rotterdam at the Enterprise Mobility Exchange.  He is one of my favorite speakers and interviewees.  In this video we dig deep into how multinational corporations support a BYOD (bring your own device) strategy.


D0 you know I have recorded hundreds of mobile expert interviews and they are available in my archives?
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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Mobile Expert Interview Series: Verivo's Erik Driehuis and Kurt Monnier

I caught up with Verivo's team in Rotterdam last week and asked them about their new offices and strategies for the European market.  They have an interesting and unique business and pricing model that is explained in this video.



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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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M2M and Enterprise Mobility - The Convergence

It is my opinion that all enterprise mobility vendors need an M2M (machine to machine) strategy.  SAP now sponsors an M2M initiative, and all other mobility vendors are going to need a good story as to how machine data (the Internet of Things) can feed data into back office solutions like SAP through their mobile middleware.  Remember, a lot of M2M data comes in through assets and vehicle GPS tracking systems.  These are mobile objects, automatically sending data back to a server.

The world is no longer about people driving long distances, pulling out a clipboard and paper, and writing down data in a rain storm.  Small wireless chips do the monitoring for us.  These M2M or embedded wireless devices measure and monitor and message the data to our servers.

Today's assets, facilities, security systems and plant equipment can be configured to use embedded wireless chips to report all kinds of things to us.  This information can automatically trigger service tickets that are dispatched to service technicians and updates are then sent to enterprise asset management systems.

It is predicted that by 2025 there will be 50 billion wireless embedded chips sending our systems messages.  How are we to utilize this data?  How can we use this data to provide "situational awareness?"  These are the questions we all should be pondering.

Here is one example of a vendor working to connect M2M to SAP's solutions.  ILS Technology provides ready-to-use cloud based platforms to implement and manage M2M (machine to machine) and embedded wireless devices that connect to SAP.  ILS Technology simplifies deployments and offers unparalleled security to protect company and customer data and to ensure regulatory compliance.

See related article

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Where is the Mobile Magic Quadrant for the 98 Percent?

Webalo's Peter Price
This article is written by guest blogger Peter Price, the co-founder and CEO of Webalo, a cloud-based SaaS platform that provides an enterprise-to-mobile model.

This past week, I met with a customer who had taken the time to visit us at our Los Angeles headquarters. In our cloud-based world of enterprise mobility, this is pretty rare since face-time with customers is not required for them to get the business benefits of our service. So it was a real pleasure to have an opportunity to talk face-to-face.  The part of the conversation that interested me the most was when they described the IT/User reality of their business.

Their IT reality is a collection of in-house-developed applications (mixed together with some packaged ISV applications) and the challenge of operating and maintaining this primarily legacy environment in the context of today’s real-time, global, business operations.

Their business reality involves mobile users who require access to the enterprise information that IT manages in these applications. BlackBerry devices, iPhones, iPads, and Android phones are their users’ devices of choice and, today, those users demand the ability to do the things they want to do on whatever device they use.  No surprises here because their reality is also that of 98% of businesses.  Enterprises face the challenge of connecting a legacy IT world with today’s BYOD reality, which is different.  It requires a flexible, rapid, scalable way to provide mobile access to enterprise applications and data, and without this, IT will find itself in an ongoing pattern of creating a major IT development project for every mobile app required and that approach is neither scalable nor sustainable.

I recently read Gartner’s new Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms and was struck by how different the requirements are for today's market, tackling our customers BYOD mobile application challenges, rather than those of that old mobile application development paradigm. As Gartner pointed out in its Magic Quadrant report, the programmer toolkits required for the old paradigm fall into three categories; native toolkits, web toolkits, or cross-platform toolkits. All of which are hard-core software development platforms.

Of course, these MADP tools (as Eric Lai of SAP/Sybase recently blogged) require the very best of software developer expertise – experts who typically earn $240,000 or more a year – and they are required for that operational type of mobility application.  These projects need to support field service personnel, logistics, and similar remote business processes (think FedEx delivery drivers), and often merit the very high cost of mobile application development because the business requirements justify the substantial resources needed to utilize traditional, complex, MADPs.

Today, however, the number of mobile-capable employees is expanding exponentially, growing beyond this subset of field employees to encompass more than 80% of the workforce. This new mobile user paradigm needs different types of enterprise interactivity, and there are very different mobile development requirements necessary to deliver them in this all-mobile-all-the-time/BYOD reality. Speed and affordability are not the least of them.  I’d describe these requirements as follows:
  • A great user experience on the device and a simple IT experience in delivering mobile apps to users. 
  • Users will demand the ability to do the things they want to do, so your “app development” model has to scale – it has to enable the high volume production of apps.
  • Given this high volume requirement, speed and cost become paramount, so “same-day” response rates and app costs at pennies per app are also prerequisites. 
  • Apps that support existing business processes found in existing enterprise applications. 
  • In large corporations, this all has to be enabled at the departmental level – IT cannot be burdened with all the responsibility because their to-do list is already full. This means the model cannot require $240,000 a year specialists; instead, departmental IT administrators, and perhaps even “citizen developers”, need to be able to use their skills to meet their departments’ enterprise-to-mobile app requirements. 
  • In mid-size and small businesses, this new approach is the only valid one because the MADP world is just, well, mad and a cost-prohibitive, IT skills-intensive, non-starter for all SMBs. 
  • Secure, robust, scalable, and available goes without saying but provided in a way that utilizes the cloud for multi-tenant accessibility while also supporting behind the firewall deployment if security requirements demand it.
When 98% of businesses need to satisfy the vast range of mobile application requirements of their entire, all-mobile-all-the-time workforce, MADness doesn’t do it. So Gartner, where’s the Magic Quadrant for the 98% of businesses facing today’s BYOD reality, like the company that visited us last week?   We’re looking forward to reading it. 

Do you agree or disagree with Peter?  I would like to hear your thoughts.
Join me on this webinar, Wednesday May 30th!
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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: Velocity in Field Services

Last week I was speaking and teaching sessions on mobile strategy in Barcelona.  I took the opportunity before the conference started to record a video comment on the concept of "Field Service Velocity."  I hope you find this useful.



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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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SAP's Sanjay Poonen on Mobile Strategies

I interviewed SAP's Sanjay Poonen yesterday and he referred me to this video on SAP's mobile strategies for additional information.  Enjoy!



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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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SAP Acquires Syclo – A Second Cup of Coffee and 25 Comments

This is the second article in this series on SAP's announced intent to acquire Syclo.  You can read Part 1 here.

I am now on my second cup of coffee, a different day, but still pondering SAP's announced acquisition of Syclo.  On the Linkedin group,  SAP Enterprise Mobility (you should all join!), I conducted a poll.  The question was, “Do you think SAP's announced intention to acquire mobility vendor Syclo is a good move?"  Here are the poll results and comments as of this afternoon (105 respondents):

72% - YES
17% - NO
10%   - I don’t know

It seems the overwhelming opinion is that it will be a good thing, however, many of the comments seemed to reflect more frustration from the SAP ecosystem than the poll numbers reflected.  IT departments and systems integrators are obviously having a challenge keeping up with this rapidly evolving field and SAP's moves.

Comments:
  1. I think this will add more confusion for customers and partners who I am sure are scratching their head and trying to figure out which way to go now.
  2. I think SAP will benefit from this acquisition, especially in the utilities sector.
  3. Syclo already supports SUP, so it makes sense to add it to SAPs mobile portfolio.
  4. The only logical conclusion I can draw is that they [SAP] probably wanted to keep Oracle away.
  5. SAP has been selling SUP licenses by millions so it would be interesting to see how those customers will react now.
  6. Syclo has a suite of well-respected vertical mobile applications, which already run on the SUP platform. 

By blending the two I see a flexible, broad-brush, technical platform with industry focused market messaging and improved ability to execute/deliver. 
I therefore see this as a good thing for SAP and for customers who wish to get into mobility.
  7. This will upset partner companies like ClickSoftware who are heavily investing in SAP and the SUP platform.
  8. I think [success] will depend on how well SAP is able to integrate Syclo Agentry platform and Syclo SMART suite with SUP, as they all have very distinct and desirable features.
  9. In my eyes SAP has not done a good job at offering a simple mobility roadmap.  It is confusing.
  10. I definitely think that the acquisition of Syclo will be beneficial for both Syclo and SAP.
  11. SAP customers favor standards and stability!!! 
With SUP the mobility platform already became very complex with too many possibilities and no clear direction. 
Partners are already hesitating to invest, as they don’t know how the whole thing is evolving.
  12. What’s the message to customers who just bought some SUP licenses and just started an EAM project?! What do they say to partners which invested in SUP Apps?! What do all the account executives at SAP tell their customers after preaching that Sybase is the answer to all mobility questions for a year now?
  13. SAP is just losing its credibility with customers and partners.
  14. This move is throwing the whole mobility efforts back by at least 12 months.
  15. 

It’s unclear at the moment how the Agentry platform fits, but I can see SAP merging functionality into the SUP MBO/Integration components to further improve the integration capability of the platform.
  16. SAP has already more choices to mobilize their workforce than they can explain to clients. Why invest in one more absolutely different solution with a new server, a new landscape, new licensing and even worse, no real 4GL?
  17. Clients already dealing with Sybase, now need to communicate with SAP, but these guys have no idea on how to get more licenses. Ask 10 sales people and get 20 different answers....
  18. Before investing into a new product, SAP should do their homework and solve the main 
issues they have - the lack of a clear and fair license strategy to their clients that is communicated through all channels.
  19. I have seen Syclo and ClickSoftware’s scheduler integrated and deployed at a utilities.  It was an EAM implementation. It was not initially a happy marriage but nevertheless provided a good ability to extend SAP to Ruggedized devices with good capability to integrate with GIS thrown in.
  20. My guess is that SAP bought Syclo for the following reasons; Syclo customers, Syclo employees and their expertise within field services and asset management.
  21. What is the road map for Syclo's Agentry framework?
  22. This will result in confusion on the part of many customers who were looking at the SAP EAM Mobile solution.
  23. Once the dust settles, I think this will turn out to be a long-term winner.
  24. SAP customers and partners now face a daunting task of updating their own SAP mobility strategy - for the 9th time?
  25. From the point of view of a customer still trying to work out its mobile strategy this constant change is simply making me wait. I'm not about to make a major investment in skills and technology for a mobile platform that might become obsolete with SAP's next purchase. SAP need to let things stabilize now. Please...

Change is always difficult, and rapid change is even more difficult.  I worked with the folks at SAPinsider on an analyst paper a couple of months back and we found that developing a mobile strategy was one of the biggest challenges.  This intended acquisition is likely to make developing a mobile strategy even more of a challenge in the short term.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Next week, on Thursday, April 19th, I will be participating with Syclo on a webinar organized by ASUG. I will be talking about the role of mobile enterprise application platforms now and in the future.   I hope you can join us, register here.

Read Part 1 of this series here.
Read Part 3 of this series here.


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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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SAP Acquires Syclo - A First Analysis Over Coffee

WARNING!  These are my (Kevin Benedict's) personal thoughts and opinions pondered over a cup of my favorite coffee shop's bowl of soul, on the outdoor patio, in the warm spring sunshine of Boise, Idaho.

My first thought when I received the news today that SAP is acquiring Syclo, was, "Smart move SAP!" I respect the fact that SAP is willing to double down on enterprise mobility.  I also respect the fact that SAP is willing to brave the inevitable criticism for having bought the same solution twice.   SAP has smart leaders.  They have made an aggressive and brave decision with this acquisition.  I think they recognized an unmet need, estimated the impact, valued the market and fixed it.  I am sure this was not an easy decision.  It will raise many questions, but I am sure it will make Sapphire 2012 even more interesting (perhaps even more than Van Halen in concert).

SAP has doubled down on enterprise mobility, while Oracle is still not even in the game.  I find it fascinating that the SAP leadership has a vision and is charging ahead while Oracle is on the sidelines.  How curious.
Oracles on the Sidelines

SAP thought they were getting all of the features that Syclo offers (MEAP, SDK, production ready mobile apps, experience, talent, etc.) when they bought Sybase in 2010. However, once they had critically examined Sybase post-acquisition, they realized there were gaps.  Mainly, they spent $5.8 billion, in large part to gain a mobile solution, but then realized there were no batteries included (i.e. mobile apps).

Syclo, on the other hand, offers not only a mobile middleware platform (some say it is better than SUP), but has many industry proven, in production, mobile applications.  These are real mobile apps.  Apps that can transform companies.  These are mobile apps that husky, uniform wearing men and women, with five o'clock shadows use to build national electrical grids and other mud covered systems and objects.

Not only does Syclo offer a library of "real" mobile applications that are in production, but they bring desperately needed enterprise mobility skills, real customers and a passion for mobility to the SAP family.

Let's get back to the subject of mobile enterprise application platforms (MEAPs).  When SAP announced the acquisition of Sybase in 2010, I detected mostly unspoken frustration in the eyes of the Syclo management team when I interviewed them about the acquisition.  I believe they felt their MEAP was better than Sybase's.  It will now be interesting to see which MEAP wins out in the long term.  Yes, I know that Syclo has announced that their solutions will now run on SUP, but I think they agreed to this mostly under duress.

Syclo's SDK is designed to produce "real" production ready mobile apps, not just partial code for programmers.  I know of many large deployments of production mobile apps from Syclo.  Syclo has earned their stripes, and now SAP and SAP customers will benefit from this.

The biggest complaint about SAP mobility has now been addressed - the lack of production quality, real mobile applications being used by happy customers.  It will now be very interesting to see how the SAP mobility stack, stacks up.

The inventory and options for developing mobile solutions has now jumped up another notch.  It was already a challenge to figure out the best way to design, develop, integrate, deploy and support a mobile solution.  Now, instead of having hundreds of different ways to build a mobile solution in the SAP world, there will be more.  It will be interesting to watch how SAP works to simplify their message given so many possible ways mobile apps can be implemented.

SAP will now have the Sybase Unwired Platform, Agentry 6.0 and Smart Mobile Suite from Syclo, Sybase 365, NetWeaver Gateway and all of the other SAP ecosystem partners.  Things will get interesting!

I know the management team at Syclo and value their passion, expertise, perseverance and talent.  They have not always been the flashiest company, some even drive Smart cars, but they have demonstrated their value by quietly deploying thousands and thousands of real mobile applications around the world in production environments and making customers happy.

Now comes other challenges for SAP.  How do they merge and consolidate so many good mobile solutions that may not always be compatible with each other?  Will these solutions be adequate for B2C (business to consumer) apps, or is that a unique category that requires a different acquisition or internal development effort?  I know Syclo has been evangelizing their B2C apps for the past few months.  This is a recent push and it will be interesting to see how it holds up under more scrutiny.

How will SAP manage relationships with important partners like ClickSoftware which also has a powerful and competing enterprise mobility solutions called ClickMobile. SAP private labels a ClickSoftware solution called, SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization by ClickSoftware.  It has its own mobile client.  Again, this will be interesting to watch.

Does the Syclo acquisition enhance mobility in the cloud?  I am not sure.

I love enterprise mobility, and its a good thing because now my coffee is cold.

Read Part 2 in this series here.
Read Part 3 in this series here. 
Read Part 4 in this series here.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Kevin Benedict Speaking about Mobile Strategies in Atlanta on April 26th

Motorola Solutions and ClickSoftware are organizing an enterprise mobility lunch event in Atlanta, GA on April 26th from 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM (see details).  I have the honor of being asked to speak at this event.  If you are in the area I would love to meet up and discuss enterprise mobility with you!

I will be speaking on the topics of mobile strategies for the enterprise, mobile trends, analyst views and managing the real-time enterprise.

In addition to my presentation, you will also be learning about:
  • Advances in mobile technology, wireless bandwidth, and web services making NOW the perfect time to plan and execute on your company’s mobile vision.
  • Creating a competitive advantage through collaboration between peers and across departments.
  • Using mobility as the catalyst and enabler for aligning the entire enterprise service policies.
  • Defining pre-requisites for tomorrow’s mobile platform to support and connect all mobile employees.
  • Selecting a device that meets the needs of the business as well as the demands of the users.
This will be an intimate lunch event and seats are limited so register soon!
*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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ASUG Webinar - Enterprise Mobility 2012


I am going to be sharing my latest research on enterprise mobility and mobile strategies on an upcoming April 19th ASUG webinar.  I invite you to join!  Here are the details:

Join ASUG Gold Affiliate member Syclo for its webcast featuring Kevin Benedict, an independent mobility analyst and mobile strategies consultant.  Kevin will be speaking on Enterprise Mobility in 2012 scheduled for Thursday, April 19, 2012.  Register Here!  One challenge, it appears you need to email the contact if you want to attend the webinar, but are not an ASUG member.

Description: The demand for enterprise mobile applications is exploding right now and driving many organizations to make tough choices about their business and technology mobile strategies. Join the presenters of this webcast as they examine the 2012 enterprise mobility market, including its challenges, trends, and fragmented operating systems.

The second half of the webinar will be presented by ASUG Gold Affiliate member Syclo, who will be sharing how to efficiently develop and support multiple mobile applications on multiple mobile devices and operating systems.


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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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What's New in HTML5 - Week of April 1, 2012

Thanks for reading "What's New in HTML5!"  This is a series of articles that I publish each week to keep track of developments around HTML5 for the enterprise mobility market.

I speak to enterprise mobility vendors, developers and consultants daily, and many of them advocate native apps over HTML5, but I am not convinced.  I spent time working in an IT department of a large electronics company early in my career, and I know many apps simply need to provide mission critical data, updates, alerts and data collection at the point of need.  These apps don't have to rock your world.  It is the data that is necessary.  This category of apps could easily and cost effectively be HTML5 apps and run on many different device types efficiently.  What do you think?

Zipline CEO Todd Hooper feels that HTML5 is great for corporate apps, but not yet ready for more than simple games.  Read original content

Nokia’s chief technology officer states, "Once HTML5 browsers and fully capable Web runtimes are in place on the common Kindle through iPhone, the Web app will begin replacing native apps".  Read original content

John Mueller of Google has changed his tune about HTML5, and now states that there’s no “bonus” for using HTML5, but that it has no downside.  Read original content

Telerik has expanded Kendo UI with a new release to provide developers with tools for JavaScript and HTML5 development for websites and apps.  Read original content

How to build an HTML5 video player – from a presentation at the recent HTML5 Video Summit in Los Angeles.  Read original content

BlackBerry sales are falling in Canada, and RIM sees HTML5 app development as a possible solution.
Read original content  More on this subject here.

As of March 25, 2012, the Tizen 1 and BlackBerry 10 browsers are at the top of the development/beta list of the HTML5 browser compatibility test.  Opera Mobile 12 and Firefox Mobile 10 are at the top of the “current” list.  Read original content

Adobe’s CSS Regions proposal seeks to remedy the weaknesses of HTML5 in written content presentation.  The proposal “defines a system for creating magazine-style text layouts in Web content”.
Read original content

Do-it-Yourself website builder Wix has announced its new HTML5-builder, which requires “zero knowledge of HTML coding or any other technical understanding”.  Read original content

Telenav has announced its new free Scout for Apps service which allows developers to access an HTML5-based mapping system and incorporate the functionality into existing websites.  Read original content

DevCon5, an HTML5 Mobile App and Developers Conference, will be held April 25-26, 2012 in Santa Clara, California.  Read original content

Mozilla has announced a new multi-player online game that shows off the capabilities of HTML5.  BrowserQuest is a “free open-source HTML5 mini-MMO” that runs in a single web page.
Read original content and more

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Mobile Strategies and Consumer Products Companies


Click to Enlarge
In February I worked with insiderResearch on an enterprise mobility survey.  We surveyed 602 companies.  I wrote a report (available for free here) on the general results of this survey.  I am now going to be digging deeper and reviewing the results by industry.  So stay tuned!  In this article I will review one set of results from the consumer products industry.

First a little background, 44 of the 602 companies were in the consumer products industry.  Seventy-five percent of these had annual revenues of more than $500 million.

Survey question:  How would you describe the mobile strategy at your organization?
  • 36% (32% for all respondents) - Enterprise wide - governing all applications and devices
  • 24% (28% for all respondents) - we have NO mobile strategy
  • 24% (24% for all respondents) - experimental, each business unit and group does it's own thing with little or no oversight
  • 17% (16% for all respondents) - distributed, each line of business or location sets it's own strategy
These findings are revealing to me.  Sixty-five percent of these consumer products companies don't have a corporate wide enterprise mobility strategy.  This opens the doors to silo strategies, redundant efforts and costs, waste and inefficient IT environments.  It also makes it very hard to standardize on mobile security, support and mobile application management.

Let's now analyze the results from the consumer products industry, and compare it to all of the 602 responses.  Thirty-six percentage of consumer products companies have an enterprise wide mobile strategy that governs all applications and devices, but only 32% of the entire list does.  That suggests there is a slightly higher level of enterprise mobility maturity in this industry, than the average.  However, the rest of the results are nearly the same.

The fact that 75% of these companies have annual revenues of over $500 million, and 65% still don't have a corporate wide enterprise mobility strategy, bodes well for a mobile strategy consultant like me, but not for the potential chaos that is coming to the IT organization if corporate wide standards, frameworks and platforms are not implemented fast.

***I also conducted an enterprise mobility survey of 118 companies in Q4 2011 with different survey questions.  You can get the results of that survey for free here.

*************************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Development Models for Enterprise Mobility

My friend and collaborator Andre Guillemin and I have been pondering different development considerations and models for enterprise mobility.  Here are a few of the models we have been discussing:

Model #1 - one mobile application for use on one mobile device
Model #2 - one mobile application for use on multiple mobile devices using the same operating system
Model #3 - one mobile application for use on multiple mobile devices and multiple operating systems
Model #4 - multiple mobile applications for use on one mobile device
Model #5 - multiple mobile applications for use on multiple mobile devices using the same operating system
Model #6 - multiple mobile applications, multiple mobile devices, multiple operating systems and multiple versions of operating systems

I most often see Models #1 and #2 in environments with purpose built and ruggedized devices that utilize RFID or bar code scanners.
Model #2 is often found when the same application needs to run on two or more different ruggedized mobile handheld computers, but all on the same version of the same operating system.

Model #3 is often seen in line of business apps.  You have a specific ERP or business app, and a specific business process that is extended out to mobile devices. The mobile app is only intended to be an extension of the one process, but used on different mobile devices and operating systems.

Model #4 is often used when the company has invested heavily into one kind of mobile device.  This is often found when a company has a large inventory of industrial grade mobile handhelds.  Once the mobile device investment is made, the company wants to maximize the ROI, so they look for ways to mobilize additional business processes that they can deploy to the device to maximize their return.

Model #5 is a often found in companies that have all Blackberry, Android or all Windows Mobile devices.  This model is rarer these days.  The advantage is lower development, training and support costs when all users and developers are trained and familiar with the one OS.

Model #6 is the predominant model of mobile apps intended for use on smartphones today, but it is also the most complex to manage.  If you have 5 mobile applications, supported on 4 different operating systems (12 different operating system versions), and running on 25 different mobile devices, then you have the potential for several hundred different combinations that must be maintained.

Since model #6 is the model of today and the near future - mobile platforms, frameworks, IDEs (integrated development environments) and MAM (mobile application management) tools are essential for successful enterprise mobility deployments.

Did I miss any models?  Correct me if I did!
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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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The Black Hole of Enterprise Mobility Apps


I was eating my fried chicken cobb salad at an airport restaurant in Chicago yesterday and overheard a table full of businessmen next to me talking about mobile apps.  One of them bragged about how easy it is to develop mobile apps.  He used as evidence the fact that even his brother-n-law had developed one. 

I don't doubt it was a major accomplishment for the brother-n-law, but I do doubt the mobile app in question was actually enterprise ready.  There is much more involved with developing mobile apps than just putting your favorite spreadsheet into an iOS app and getting it approved by Apple.  There are things like deployment, maintenance, integration, app management, single sign-on and security that must be considered.

Unless there is a strategic reason to develop your own mobile apps, you should really look for off-the-shelf mobile apps first from quality mobile app vendors before succumbing to the temptation to develop your own.  I recently spoke about this subject on a webinar that is now available on-demand.  Developing a mobile app is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of cost, time and resources required to maintain it long term. 


When I was the CEO of a mobile app company, I remember how hard it was simply trying to organize and maintain all the different versions and code bases of the many custom apps we had developed for our customers.  It was crazy!  We had enough customers so it was justified for us to invest in tools to help manage this challenge, but it was still a cost and chore.

I will say it again, "Mobile apps have a beginning, but they don't have an end."  They will be here for the rest of your career so you need a plan.  Pick carefully the mobile apps that you want to design, develop, deploy, document, archive, support and maintain forever.  It can easily become a black hole with no escape if you don't.

I am also a big fan of cloud based mobile off-the-shelf apps when these are available.  I believe that most enterprises will have several different buckets of mobile apps.  Some buckets require custom developed mobile apps because of their unique features and the competitive advantages they provide, others however, can be off-the-shelf because they are simply providing efficiencies for standard ERP processes. 

Some mobile apps may be mission critical, but are only used by 10 people.  There are no economies of scale.  It may not pay to train a whole team to develop, document and support a mobile app for just 10 people.  Contract an expert team to jump in and develop it, if it is that important and worthwhile.  However, find out if someone else can support it in the cloud.

If your organization is like most I work with, you have very limited resources and budgets.  Pick carefully the kinds of mobile apps you are willing to develop and support yourself.  Don't waste your best talent developing mobile apps that can be purchased off-the-shelf and in the cloud.  Look for opportunities to develop unique mobile apps that provide the biggest strategic value and competitive advantages.  Then development them using a standard IDE (integrated development environment) connected to a MEAP.  Also, if you outsource the development work, make sure they use your standard IDE and MEAP.  Don't let them mess up your standards!

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Mobile Expert Video Series: The Sybase 365 Team

I have said it before, and I will say it again, I believe the Sybase 365 platform is one of Sybase's most interesting mobile platforms and one of their best kept secrets.  It is huge in m-Commerce and in mobile banking.  It is also widely used around the world for mobile commerce.  In this interview, I talk about Sybase 365 with Sybase's Allen Lau and Gabe Thendean.

An interesting side note - The Sybase 365 platform is integrated in some of SAP's mobile competitors' solutions.  Some of these competitors are actually using the power and capabilities of Sybase 365 to give them competitive advantages over SAP and SUP.  I think SAP should pay more attention to Sybase 365 as it can be the engine to power much of the new wave of mobile banking and m-Commerce globally.




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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP's Greg Chase

I had the privilege of recently attending SAP's DKOM conference.  This is the SAP's developer's kick-off meeting (for SAP internal developers only).  They invited me to speak on enterprise mobility and its impact on managing the "real-time" enterprise.  While there I was able to spend time with SAP Mentors including SAP Mentor Greg Chase.

In this interview I ask Greg, who works in the Cloud Computing area of SAP, about cloud computing, enterprise mobility, business intelligence and how it all works together.



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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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What's New in HTML5 - Week of March 26, 2012


HTML5 based ads are gaining on Flash.  For ads that will be seen on mobile devices, developers are focusing on HTML5.  Read original content

Systems management and monitoring firm DN2K is turning to HTML5.  It announced that HTML5 is now, “one of its core technologies in its business and industrial application platform”.  Read original content

ChronoZoom is a new HTML5-based web application developed by Microsoft Research, Russia's Moscow State University, and UC Berkeley.  The site uses mixed media to let visitors visualize the universe.  Read original content

A free HTML5 video converter service has been launched to provide a method to convert video files to HTML5 compatible formats.  http://www.html5-converter.com/  Read original content

I found a series on using HTML5 and CSS3 to transform a website into a mobile site.  Read original content 

Mozilla updated HTML5 video controls in the latest version of Firefox version 12, which was just released in beta.  Read original content

With all major browsers now supporting the HTML5 Geolocation API, it would be interesting to understand what can be done with it.  In this linked article, Danwei Tran Luciani for The Code Project  explores the possibilities.  Read original content

Opinion piece - Native apps will be around for some time to come, but the push for HTML5 standardization from powerful groups like Facebook and others are starting to push apps from native to web.   Read original content

The HTML5 Canvas element and Google Maps were used by Vizzuality to create an interactive map that provides visualization of the intensity and location of deforestation.  Read original content

WSX, a new feature from VMware, uses the HTML5 Canvas element and Web Sockets to let users access virtualized desktops remotely through a web browser.  WSX is compatible with Firefox, Chrome, and Safari on the desktop and Safari on iPads.  Read original content

MoSync has announced its new mobile development SDK, MoSync AB, which will allow developers to use HTML5 technology to, “Create hybrid apps or native apps with native features and UI experience for Android, iOS and Windows Phone and submit them to multiple app stores within hours instead of weeks.”  Read original content

Seventy-nine percent of mobile developers report they will integrate HTML5 in their apps this year, according to a survey conducted by IDC and Appcelerator.  The survey responses indicated that developers are planning to develop HTML5 and “hybrid” apps.  Read original content

A new Internet Explorer 9 website for The Hunger Games film shows off the possibilities for HTML5-based sites.  The website (http://thecapitoltour.pn/) was launched by Microsoft and Lionsgate.  Read original content


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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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QRCs, T-Shirts, Pick-Up Lines and Smartphones

QRC 
This week I walked into a Walgreens store with my wife and saw that all of the employees were wearing T-Shirts with QRCs (quick response codes) on their sleeves.  The clerk did not know what they were.  Being me, I walked up to the clerk and asked if I could scan his sleeve.

I used the Redlaser app on my iPhone to scan the QRC.  It launched a website about an upcoming walk the company was sponsoring to raise funds to fight some disease.  I thought the whole incident was humorous.

Employees are walking around with coded messages on their clothes with messages they do not know.  However, it did get me thinking, which is not always useful.

What if people that are hanging out at pubs all started wearing QRCs on their clothes?  If you are interested in a person, you can simply walk up to them and scan their QRC, which would launch a website with their details.  Seems like an efficient way to learn about a person without actually having to talk to them.

First impressions would be of out-stretched hands with a smartphone pointing at them.  You would need to pay particular attention to the way your hand and smartphone looked.  You would need to think about the impression your particular smartphone would give your victim.  Is it a feminine phone, or a male phone?  Is it large, rugged and industrial, or small and shiny?

I imagine this could launch a whole new breed of "pick-up lines."

PSION EP10


"Do you often get scanned in here?"

Perhaps people would start wearing multiple QRCs on their clothes, each with a different message.  When a person approaches with their out-stretched hand preparing to scan you, you can quickly decide which QRC to expose.

QRCs can evolve into a whole new pub language.  Perhaps you can have different QRCs all over your clothes.   Complete conversations could be conducted simply by exposing different QRCs.  

I am going to stop thinking now.


Join me this week for a webinar called, Making Sense of Mobile Middleware!  I just completed writing a full whitepaper on this subject and will be sharing the details on this webinar.  I hope to see you there.

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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.
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