Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Willie Jow, Part 2

This is Part 2 of my interview with Sybase's Willie Jow, vice president of mobility product marketing with Sybase.

Kevin:  Tell me about the announced mobile SDK.  Where will the SAP/Sybase SDK stop and the native development environments start?

Willie:  That is still being finalized even as we speak. The target date for release is Sapphire 2011.

It is important to note that there are two different kinds of applications, 1) native applications like the CRM and field service apps, and 2) the container approach. The container is on the device, and we populate it with data. Our workflow app is a container application.  However, our mobile CRM is a native app. Both will exist and be supported in the SDK.

Kevin: What do you mean by “container?”

Willie: Think of it like an application sitting on your mobile device using native features and code.  However, it has no business logic, or data elements.  We push data to the container.  It is for simple queries and data collection. Our SAP workflow apps fit this model, like travel approvals or discount approval.  We push the data to the mobile container application.  We see HTML 5 also in this area and are evaluating.

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly - November 11, 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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Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive, said 200 million people now access Facebook through its mobile application, a threefold increase since last year.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/11/facebook-opens-up-about-mobile-strategy-unveils-new-deals-program.html

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Kicking a boot into RIM's side, Dell announced all 25,000 employees will be given Dell Venue Pros running WP7 in exchange for their BlackBerrys, but they're also offering a new service to their clients for help switching from BlackBerry.

http://m.gizmodo.com/5682309/dell-were-kicking-[blackberry]-out

Update on Sybase Reorganization, Revised Edition

I have been corrected by SAP on several points since I published this article earlier today.  This is the revised and corrected edition.

This is my understanding of how the SAP/Sybase mobility business unit is now organized.  The Mobile Business unit will be under John Chen and it has three main groups:

1. Mobile Platform – led by Billy Ho
2. Mobile Apps – led by Bob Stutz
3. Mobile Services – led by Marty Beard

Terry Stepien, will also report to John Chen and lead the Mobile Business unit's managed mobility efforts through the various MNOs (mobile network operators) and ODMs.  Willie Jow will be responsible for supporting sales.

I understand that eventually Kevin Nix's team will also move to Bob Stutz's group.

If I have any of this wrong, please correct me.

Thanks,
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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.

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.