SAP's Perfect Plant and Enterprise Mobility

Enterprise mobility is a term often used in the context of remote and traveling workers, but it can also be used for situations inside the four walls of a manufacturing plant.  This article explores the use of enterprise mobility solutions within the four walls of a plant using SAP.

First, let's review what SAP says about their "Perfect Plant" initiative.  SAP is enabling companies to create a framework for the “Perfect Plant” by integrating planning, asset management and execution with real-time visibility.  As a result, manufacturing networks are more agile, responsive and operationally efficient with SAP solutions.  Manufacturers embarking upon the journey towards a “Perfect Plant” gain visibility into all aspects of manufacturing operations, providing the ability to respond faster and minimize impact to the business and bottom line, driving increased yields, asset utilization and order fulfillment. The “Perfect Plant” is the ultimate goal for manufacturers looking to optimize utilization of their manufacturing assets and drive increased production performance in concert with enterprise objectives.

Mobile Retailing and NFC - Near Field Communications

The host of our CIO Council, Chris Albinson of Panorama Capital, today predicted that within one year mobile money will be on everyone's radar.  I asked for more details from several experts over dinner this evening and they predicted that iPhone 5 will have embedded NFC (near field communication) chips.  Google will announce mobile payment strategies, and so will other big players in the mobile money space like PayPal.  NFC are chips that can communicate personal data when they touch POS (point of sale) sensors.

What does this mean for enterprises in the retail space?  Who knows!  All I know is that everything from POS systems, to banking systems, EDI transactions and credit and debit card systems will be impacted.  Your smartphone will likely become your wallet.  The chip in the smartphone will uniquely identify you and provide you with the ability to pay for all kinds of things by just touching your smartphone to a counter top sensor.

Mobile Payments and the Mobile Money Ecosystem

More from last week's CIO Council.  Chris Albinson from Panorama Capital shared his predictions that mobile payments and location-based services are going to be the two hottest areas of enterprise mobility in 2011. 

Others at the event shared that they expect smartphones will soon be available with a specific NFC (near field communications) chip that will enable your phone to be used for mobile money.  The chip will be uniquely tied to you and your bank account in a secure way.

I also heard rumors that Apple may soon launch a mobile money capability through iTunes.  Just rumors now, but I can easily image Steve Jobs transforming banking through iTunes and everything "i".

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly - November 4, 2010

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting information that reflects market numbers and trends.

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AT&T announced Thursday a new practice area and portfolio called AT&T ForHealth, which will develop wireless, networked, and cloud-based solutions for the healthcare industry.

http://vator.tv/news/2010-11-04-at-t-announces-new-health-division

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Gold-Mobile, a leading provider of Mobile Enterprise CRM Solutions, and Howard University unveiled a new mobile student, faculty and alumni engagement platform as a part of Howard’s 2010 Homecoming Celebration.

http://www.prlog.org/11035234-howard-university-launches-advanced-mobile-solution-for-higher-education-with-gold-mobile.html 

Custom Mobile Applications for the Enterprise

When I was managing a mobile applications company a few years ago, our entire market was SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises).  In over half the mobile application development projects that we worked on there was NO existing backend database.  Companies would contact us and say they needed the following:

1. A mobile application for a specific business process, inspection project, or unique business model.
2. They needed a database to store the data they collected in the field.
3. They needed mobile middleware to synchronize the data from the mobile devices to the database
4. Web access to the database so people around the company could easily view the data.
5. Reports on the data collected in the field.

Sometimes it is easy to focus only on the largest companies that use ERPs, but it is important to recognize that the majority of companies in the world do not use big ERPs and these companies are often service companies doing work in the field.  These SMEs do not often have their own mobile middleware. They want as much simplicity as possible. 

iPad Databases, Gartner and Enterprise Mobility

I was given a demo of ClickSoftware's field services application using HTML 5 and running on an iPad earlier this week.  Very cool!  It runs in both offline and online mode and can store the data on the iPad in an offline mode. This is significant because iPad is not set up to store content on the device.

I wonder what HTML 5 will mean to Sybase's mobile database business. Will HTML make developing mobile devices easier?  How will HTML change the opportunities for mobile application developers?

I attended a briefing by Gartner's Michael King this week on enterprise mobility.  Here are some of his comments:

Security and Enterprise Mobility

A VC (venture capital) firm called me yesterday asking my opinion on the importance of security in enterprise mobile applications.  I told him every large enterprise asks about security, but they generally expect the mobile platform to address this issue.  For example, if a large enterprise purchased the Sybase Mobility Platform, they would expect that the platform would include a solid security component.

Is that how you see it, or am I wrong?

The VC was looking at potentially funding a number of mobile security start-ups.  They wanted to know if there was a market for third party mobile security solutions in large enterprises.  I would like your feedback and thoughts on this.  Is security simply a check box on a feature list of a mobile platform, or will large enterprises look for additional third party mobile security solutions?

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Questions about Enterprise Mobility and Recent Industry Developments

I have been contemplating two enterprise mobility subjects today. 

1)  Syclo is known in the industry for having a very good mobility platform.  This has served them well, but may now also be the source of a dilemma.  What are they to do with their mobile platform investment in light of SAP's acquisition of Sybase?  Syclo, as a co-innovation partner of SAP, will want to support SAP and their Sybase Mobility Platform, but they have a decade worth of investment into their own comprehensive mobility platform. 

Here is how Syclo describes their platform, "Syclo's mobile solution framework (Agentry Platform) makes it easy to deploy and manage multiple mobile solutions in all areas of your business.  For over a decade, Syclo has built on its mobile expertise and experience at over 750 organizations worldwide to bring you a family of 80 percent preconfigured mobile products that automate work order management, inventory management, scheduling, rounds and readings, turnaround tracking and more.  "I image Syclo will now want to offer their customers a choice of two very good platforms, 1) Agentry Mobile Platform, or 2) Sybase Mobility Platform.  This will be great for customers, but the challenge for Syclo is developing on and supporting two different platforms and re-engineering their existing mobile applications to run on either.  They are self-funded, and this is not a small or inexpensive task. 

Kevin's M2M News Weekly - November 3, 2010

Welcome to Kevin's M2M News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to M2M (machine to machine) and embedded mobile devices that I read each week. I aggregate the information, include the original links and add a synopsis of each article. I also search for the latest market numbers such as market size, growth and trends in and around the M2M market.

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Remote sensing is helping a new radiotherapy treatment combat prostate cancer. The therapy works by using three tiny transmitters, the size of a rice grain, implanted in the tumor, which give off a constant stream of signals that are picked up by a receiver in X-ray equipment.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Remote-sensing-to-kill-prostate-cancer/articleshow/6814527.cms

Flexible Mobile Solutions - The Great Debate

When I was managing an enterprise mobility company a few years back, nearly all of my customers wanted the flexibility to customize their own mobile applications and develop new ones from scratch using our MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) and SDK (software development kit).  The reality, though, was different.  Our customers seldom wanted to take the time to learn how to develop enterprise quality mobile applications.  They just called us and used our professional services to customize or develop new applications.

Here is the dilemma for mobility vendors:  Do they develop mobile solutions flexible enough, and with SDKs simple enough, for their customers to build their own solutions, or do they lock down templates and mobile applications with only limited configuration and customization capabilities?