Open Text and Their Evolving Mobile Strategies

Many of you know Open Text.  They are an important SAP Partner and leader in the enterprise content management space.  Did you know they are also developing mobile applications and acquiring mobile technology companies to expand their mobility capabilities?  In March 2011 they announced their acquisition of UK based WeComm.  Here is WeComm's description, "WeComm offers a cross-platform development platform, called Wave, for creating mobile applications that can run on iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian or Java-based smartphones."

Even before this acquisition, Open Text had their own internally developed mobility solution called Open Text Everywhere.  Here is its description, "Our mobile solutions provide your workforce with the ability to access and manage business content, keep workflow processes moving, and stay up-to-date with colleagues by using social collaboration capabilities within a single native application designed specifically for your Enterprise Content Management (ECM) deployments."

I had the opportunity last week to spend some time with Oliver Surrock and Micah Kalen with Open Text and to discuss their mobile strategies.  In September of 2010, I had the privilege of interviewing Micah Kalen about Open Text Everywhere.  You can read the interview here.

One of the reasons that Open Text purchased WeComm is to get WeComm's mobile application development platform called Wave.  They will be using the Wave Platform to develop future versions of Open Text Everywhere (OTE) and many new mobile applications.  Wave gives OTE the ability to support hundreds of mobile devices.

Wave also enables Open Text to develop and support mobile applications that have not even been imagined yet.  This is important in the dynamic and fast growing enterprise mobility market.  Here is their currently stated value proposition, "By marrying your enterprise content management and mobility strategies, you can realize a higher return on investment (ROI) through increased user adoption of your content management systems that results from your workforce having meaningful mobile access to your enterprise. Furthermore, content chaos can be avoided by keeping content consistent across Web, desktop, and mobile environments."

I asked how the Wave Platform compares with Sybase's Unwired Platform (SUP).  They described it this way, "SUP is primarily focused on "structured" mobile data, while the Wave Platform is largely focused on managing "unstructured" mobile content such as documents, photos, videos, etc.  Yes, there is some overlap, but that is true with any mobility vendor in the SAP ecosystem.  I dug a little deeper with questions about how Open Text and SAP were going to work together around mobile applications.  Their responses were that SAP is a very important partner and there are many discussions.

Oliver shared that Open Text hopes systems integrators will find the Open Text Mobile Wave Platform to be an attractive development environment.

I love the concept of mobile enterprise content management.  Until I interviewed Micah last year I had not even considered a mobile version of enterprise content management, but there certainly is a value and need.

I want to thank Oliver and Micah for sharing their time and thoughts with us.

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group

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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.

SAP ECM Partner Open Text Adds Mobility

Did anyone else miss this recent press release from SAP ECM (enterprise content management) partner Open Text?  They are investing in mobility, even though they are a company primarily focused on ECM.  I tried my very best to meet up with Patrick Barnert at Open Text but we kept missing each other at SAPPHIRENOW 2011.

Here are some of their current mobility solutions:

• OpenText Everywhere Mobile Applications Platform
• Wireless DMS for eDOCS
• OpenText Social Workplace - Mobile

Open Text focuses on on ECM.  Content is needed on mobile devices.  They also have document management systems.  Documents need to be accessed by mobile devices.  They are the developers of the SAP Vendor Invoice Management solution.  This is basically a transactional content management system.  A solution for monitoring and tracking the progress of a transaction or document.  It works with the SAP workflow and workflows need approvals, alerts and notifications.

You can see from the above information that mobility and mobile solutions will impact just about every aspect of the enterprise and enterprise solutions.

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

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly

Read The Field Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Open Text's Micah Kalen

For those of you unfamiliar with Open Text, they are an SAP Co-Innovation Partner (like Syclo and RIM).  They are an enterprise software company and leader in ECM (enterprise content management).  Open Text brings two decades of expertise and supports millions of users in 114 countries. They are focused on helping organizations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance and improve competitiveness.  With that said, they are also developing a mobile enterprise software application called Open Text Everywhere.

Completing Field Force Automation - Extending Intelligent Mobility

I recently wrote an article for The Enterprise Mobility Foundation, The Next Step in Business Process Optimization: Mobility.  In this article I describe the enormous amount of work that has gone into designing and automating business processes and ERPs like SAP.  The conclusion of the article is that as sophisticated as ERPs are today, there remains significant feature gaps, especially in extending business processes out to the mobile workforce.

In this article, I want to highlight some areas where there is still much work to be done in field services.  In field services, a number of SAP mobility partners like Clicksoftware and Syclo have comprehensive field services and enterprise asset management solutions with mobile clients for use on smartphones and ruggedized handhelds.  However, there are still feature gaps in the integration of real time data, M2M integration, geotags, business intelligence, augmented reality and multi-media support.

Let me give you a not so futuristic field services scenario to consider.  A field services technician arrives at a customer's location.  Recognizing the location (based on geospatial data and scheduling data), the service tech's smartphone begins to both display and read, using an audio feed, the customer highlights including recent support issues, account status, warranties, contracts and possible upsell sales opportunities.  As the service technician unloads his/her tools and walks toward the worksite, they are getting educated on all the most recent events through their ear piece.

As the service technician passes near various pieces of equipment with a maintenance and repair history the information is both displayed and an audible voice reviews the history.  As the service technician enters a building, the blueprint of the building and a map of  the location of all equipment under service contracts appears on their screen.

Now let's pretend we are movie directors and insert a flashback - before the service technician was scheduled and dispatched, the field service automation system queried the maintenance and support status of all equipment on the customer's campus.  Equipment needing repair or maintenance was identified, parts required were pulled from inventory or ordered for delivery.  Required tools and equipment were pre-loaded into the service technician's vehicle and time was allocated to complete all the necessary work on the premises.  Consolidating all the work possible during a visit reduces fuel, travel and labor costs.

As the service technician arrives at each piece of equipment, he immediately snaps a digital picture of it.  A diagram, with step by step instructions overlays the digital photo and instructs the service technician on how to complete the service most efficiently.  The service technician speaks to the mobile application confirming each step until it is completed.  This audio file is immediately translated, interpreted and the work order is closed.

If any step in the process takes longer than expected, the mobile application will ask if a digital video file demonstrating the necessary steps would be useful.  If the service technician affirms, then the file automatically plays.

If advice from another expert is required, the service technician can request it and the mobile application can initiate a knowledge management process (see solutions from SAP mobility partner's Leapfactor, Open Text's Open Text Everywhere, or SAP's Streamworks) that queries experts and connects with them automatically.  If a connected expert requests a live video feed of the equipment or the work, the service technician simply aims the smartphone digital video camera at the equipment or activates the hat mounted video camera.

Before each peice of equipment is reached, an automatic M2M (machine-to-machine) communication is sent from the office asking the equipment to perform diagnostics on itself.  The diagnostic is completed and wirelessly sent to the service technician's smartphone.

All of the technology in the scenario above exists today.  It just has not been integrated all together into specific use cases like the one above.  Perhaps SAP partners are waiting for customers to request it or for SAP to document it or for you to suggest it.

*Read the Mobility News Weekly at http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/kevins-mobility-news-weekly.html.

*Read the M2M News Weekly at http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/m2m.html.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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http://www.clicksoftware.com/e86e075b-4fca-44c9-bfeb-4efcc978f416/knowledge-center-white-papers-delivery.htm

Mobile Expert Video Series: Open Text's VP SAP Solutions Group Patrick Barnert

I am a big believer in the saying "content is king!"  So when I read recently that Open Text announced they were going to mobilize their enterprise content management products with a solution called Open Text Everywhere, I was intrigued but skeptical.  Open Text provides powerful enterprise content management solutions, the SAP Invoice Management solution, and collaboration and social networking tools for the enterprise, but now mobile solutions as well?  At Sapphire I was able to schedule a video interview with Open Text's VP SAP Solutions Group, Patrick Barnert.  One of the first questions I asked Patrick was, "Are you serious or just playing around with mobility?"  You can watch and hear his response here.

I appreciate mobile applications that add value in unique and powerful ways.  The accounts payable processes in large enterprises is a very important area.  Companies can save millions by processing invoices quickly and capturing early payment discounts from suppliers.  The ability of a manager to approve an invoice while traveling so the company can capture these discounts can provide millions of dollars in savings with the push of a button on a mobile smartphone application.  I like mobile applications with that kind of ROI!  Open Text is developing that mobility solution now for SAP Invoice Management.

The video interviews listed below can all be found here :

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

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

I was surprised to read today that SAP's ECM (enterprise content management) partner Open Text Corp. now has a mobile applications strategy.  "This move is part of a strategy designed to help organizations harness the power of today’s mobile workforce in an effort to increase productivity."

The solution is called Open Text Everywhere and it is designed to make the entire Open Text ECM Suite available through mobile devices.  This move by Open Text highlights an interesting evolution in the mobile ecosystem around SAP.  A number of SAP's partners are producing mobile applications that only work if you buy their products.  There is nothing wrong with that strategy, but it does add confusion to companies interested in general SAP enterprise mobility.  Now there are at least four categories of mobile applications for SAP customers:

1. MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms) - Enables the user to develop, customize and support many different mobile applications and mobile devices on one platform (e.g. Sybase, Sky Technologies, etc.).
2. Mobile micro-applications - Lightweight mobile applications typically available from App stores that are specific to particular limited business processes in SAP (e.g. Vivido Labs, Leapfactor, etc.).
3. Mobile solutions that are designed to work primarily with a specific vendor product (e.g. ClickSoftware, Syclo, Open Text, etc.).
4. Out of the box mobile applications (email, calendars, etc.).

There may be more mobile application categories, so let me know which ones I missed.

I wonder how committed companies like Open Text are to mobility?  Are they serious, or are they just trying to excite an exciteable analyst?  Initially Open Text is only going to support BlackBerrys, but claims a long term commitment to supporting other mobile devices.  They plan to release applications that provide a comprehensive view of business processes, content and workplace social collaboration (as long as it involves their product).  Here is the list of mobile applications they are planning to develop:

• Manage everywhere for documents and content.
• Engage everywhere focusing on process workflows.
• Collaboration everywhere using social media.

Although the product descriptions sound general, I expect they will only function with Open Text products.  That means SAP users who want these functions, that are not Open Text customers, will need to search for other mobile application vendors.

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Kevin Benedict
Author of the report Enterprise Mobile Data Solutions, 2009
Mobile Strategy Consultant, Mobile Industry Analyst and Web 2.0 Marketing Expert
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
twitter: http://twitter.com/krbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/

***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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