Kevin's M2M News Weekly - November 10, 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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M2M represents both a new set of uses for mobile technology and a new source of revenue for mobile operators, and Sprint is aggressively investing in this area.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/208875/sprint_pursues_mobile_m2m_craze.html

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The emergence of mobile health - or mHealth - presents a new opportunity to enhance disease prevention and management by allowing health related data collection beyond the traditional bounds of the clinic or hospital.

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/46273.php

Report from Last Week's ClickConnect North America 2010 on Enterprise Mobility

I had the opportunity to attend ClickSoftware's user conference for a couple of days last week in Scottsdale, Arizona.  It was at the Royal Palm, a beautiful resort located in an orange grove.  I was able to meet with many large utility customers and large field services organizations and spend some quality time with Shawn McEwan from Sybase and interview many of the executives from ClickSoftware.

Sybase an SAP company, was attending in support of their recently announced partnership with ClickSoftware who is utilizing the Sybase Mobility Platform in their solutions.  Terry Stepien, president, Sybase iAnywhere attended and spoke at the conference.  Here are some of his comments on the partnership, “By implementing ClickSoftware’s mobile applications on components of the Sybase mobility platform, the service industry benefits from an integrated offering from two industry leaders; proven mobility infrastructure from Sybase and proven mobile applications from ClickSoftware.  This partnership will transform ClickSoftware’s customers through highly productive enterprise mobility solutions. We look forward to growing this partnership into 2011 and beyond.”

Salesforce.com's Chatter, Mobile Knowledge Management and Collaboration

I spent time at the CIO Council last week with Kris Muller in product marketing with Salesforce.com.  He was at the CIO conference speaking about Salesforce.com's new solution called Chatter.  Here is the official description of Chatter from Salesforce.com:

Chatter is a brand-new way to collaborate with people at work. Where the status of important projects and deals are automatically pushed to you — so you're always in the loop.

• Share securely and collaborate instantly
• Stay on top of what matters most
• Gain insight and make smarter decisions

I am a big fan of mobile knowledge management and collaboration tools and this fits right in.  It is a secure way for all members of a sales team (account reps, pre-sales, product marketing, product management, sales management, etc.) to closely follow developments on a specific account.  The team can quickly and securely share information, deal documents, collateral and discussions.

JiWire, Mobile Check-In and Mobile Retailing Applications

I was a guest speaker at the CIO Council 2010 sponsored by Panorama Capital in Las Vegas last week.  I was able to spend a couple of days with a number of high tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and a leading edge group of industry CIOs.  The main focus of the conference this year was enterprise mobility.

One of the most interesting discussion tracks at the conference was the increasing role that WiFi may have as MNOs (mobile network operators) increasingly have bandwidth problems.  There are more companies looking to add hotspots, expand coverage and other related services.  One of these companies is JiWire.

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.