Mobile Expert Interview Series: Smartsoft Mobile's Ed Krufka



Smartsoft Mobile's Ed Krufka

 I want to thank Ed Krufka from Smartsoft Mobile Solutions for scheduling time with us. Smartsoft Mobile is an SAP services partner.  Ed has been working on enterprise mobility applications for over twenty years. He started by developing mobile solutions internally for a large utility company. His insights today have the added bonus of a long term industry perspective.

Note: These are not Ed’s exact words, rather my notes from our interview.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Ed: I use a Windows 7 Phone as my main business and personal phone. I carry an Android for testing and navigation. I can actually use both the Android OS and Windows Mobile 6.5 on the same device. I just need to reboot it. I also carry a laptop.

Kevin: What is your favorite mobile application?
Ed: I use the OneNote application a lot. I can store all of my documents, presentations and notes there and access them from any of my devices.

Kevin: How long have you been involved in enterprise mobility?
Ed: I have been working in enterprise mobility for over 20 years. I started working on mobile solutions in the utility industry. We developed our own mobile solutions internally. They were mobile applications for use on laptops mounted in utility trucks for high volume work orders. In 1995 I joined the vendor side of the business.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Adobe's Matthias Zeller

Adobe's Matthias Zeller

I have known Matthias Zeller for over ten years.  We first met in the fast lanes of the Silicon Valley dot.com days, where we were both focused on e-commerce and B2B systems.  A lot has happened in the past ten years for Matthias, including marriage, children, an SAP Mentorship and work as Group Product Manager, Enterprise Rich Internet Applications, at Adobe Systems.

Please read Matthias's responses with a slight German accent.

Note:  These are not Matthias' exact words, rather my notes from our interview.

Kevin:  What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Matthias:  An iPhone 3G, although I am switching to a new Android that supports Adobe's Flash.  I have a MacBook Pro and an iPad.

Kevin:  Have you purchased products using your mobile device(s)?
Matthias:  Just music and apps - no physical items.

Kevin: What industries do you see adopting mobility today?
Matthias:  Financial services, mobile banking, regular and investment banks, and insurance companies.

Kevin: What business processes do you see companies mobilizing?
Matthias: Processes that involve customer engagements like insurance claim filing, transactions, interactions between businesses and customers.  I also see a lot of field force automation, sales force automation and inventory monitoring while on the road.

Kevin's Field Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 24, 2011

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

Also read Kevin's Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 24, 2011
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly - Week of January 24, 2011
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of January 24, 2011

Apple’s launch of the iPad marked the start of the Tablet revolution. Infinite Research expects that 147.2 million Tablet computers will ship in 2015, up from 16.1 million units in 2010.

http://www.infiniteresearch.net/research/tabletmarketforecast.html

********

South Africa’s healthcare is poised for a major revolution this year. Now, millions of subscribers of MTN, a major communications company in Africa, will be able to access a range of healthcare services on their mobile handsets without the inconvenience of travelling to a healthcare facility.

http://www.itnewsafrica.com/?p=10187

********

Mobile body area network technology has the potential to be a boon to the healthcare system of the future by enabling remote patient monitoring through disposable wireless devices -- meaning fewer doctor visits for everyone and great news for latrophobes.

Weird, Odd and Strange Mobility Series: Lonely Clusters, Bumping Dinner, Fountains and Penguins

iFLY Home Mobile App

You are lucky enough to have stumbled upon the first article in, I am sure, a long running series on strange and weird mobility news, information and other oddities.  Sorry.

Now for the weird, odd and strange:

1. Scientists on Possession Island (1,000 KM off the coast of the Antarctic) have found that Penguins monitored with embedded RFID chips live longer than Penguins with leg bands.  Banded Penguins have a 16 percent lower survival rate, travel slower, have less babies, take longer to feed.
2. Early tanks in WWI used pigeons to communicate their locations, logistics, inventories, status and pizza orders. 
3. Just heard on a ScienceNow podcast - Meet and greet social gatherings don't work for lonely people. Lonely people tend to cluster together, and lonely people that cluster together just make each other lonelier.   Try Facebooking.
4. Heard this quote from a person not licensed to practice medicine this morning, "IT is impotent in the face of mobility." 
5. Read about a new mobile application that let's people share the cost of a restaurant dinner by "Bumping" money from one mobile device to another.
6. SAP co-CEOs advice to politicians, "Business and political leaders should champion and enable further growth of mobile technology...there are 4.6 billion mobile telephones on the planet, and even the poor buy them."
7. Have you read about the bathroom scales that will wirelessly tweet your weight.
8. Forrester Research prediction - 2011 is the Year of the "Dumb" Smartphone User
9. More Forrester Research predictions - Technologies like QR codes and augmented reality will prompt users to hold up their phones to interact with the world around them.
10. Never walk while texting.  Woman falls into Mall fountain while texting.
11. A 68 year old man punched a 15 year old boy on a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Boise, Idaho, in December because the teen wouldn't turn off his cell phone

If you come across weird, odd or strange articles on mobility and mobile applications please submit them to me for inclusion.  My apologies again.

Whitepapers of Note:

• The Business Benefits of Mobile Adoption with SAP Systems
• ClickSoftware Mobility Suite and Sybase Mobility Solution
• Networked Field Services
• Mobile, The Next Big Thing for Business

 ***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group 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 Mobility News Weekly - Week of January 24, 2011

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 data and trends.

Also read Kevin's Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly

Forty-four percent of 250 IT managers surveyed plan to roll out five to 19 mobile apps for enterprise users this year. One in five have their sights on 20 or more. The main driver behind the mobile expansion is cost savings: 63 percent of the sample picked cost savings as one of the influences in choosing new apps.

http://www.cio.com/article/654467/Survey_Finds_Big_2011_Surge_in_Enterprise_Mobile_Apps?source=CIONLE_nlt_enterprise_2011-01-19

********

A study found that in November 2010, the number of visitors to web-based email sites declined six percent compared to the previous year, while email engagement declined at an even greater rate. During the same time period, the number of users accessing email via their mobile devices grew by 36 percent.

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/1/Web-based_Email_Shows_Signs_of_Decline_in_the_U.S._While_Mobile_Email_Usage_on_the_Rise

********

China's wireless subscriber base swelled to 841.94 million in December, the country's top three operators reported.

http://wirelessweek.com/News/2011/01/Carriers-Subs-Reach-842M-China-Mobile/

********

In 2009 the market for mobile medical apps was worth about $41 million, or about 1.5 percent of the total mobile app market. Research firm Kalorama estimates that sales from mobile medical apps in 2010 total about $84.1 million.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Webalo's Peter Price

Webalo Co-Founder Peter Price

I had the privelege this week to interview mobility expert and co-Founder/CEO of Webalo, Peter Price.  You know it is going to be an interesting conversation when four of the six people on the management team have PhDs or are working on PhDs.  Webalo formed in 2000 and has since written over 600,000 lines of code to power their solutions. 

Note:  These are not Peter's exact words, rather my notes from the interview.

Kevin:  What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Peter:  BlackBerry Bold, iPad and MacBook.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications?
Peter: I must say our own Webalo application.  I practically run the business from my BlackBerry.  Any kind of travel related applications.  My family really likes the HeyTell mobile application.  It turns your smartphone into a walkie talkie, push to talk kind of device.

Kevin:  Do you use mobile devices to purchase things?
Peter:  Absolutely.  My iPad is my ordering device.  I buy all kinds of things online using mobile devices - tickets, books, reservations of all kinds.  I think the iPad will really drive online purchases because it is so convenient.

Special Report: Advice from Mobile Experts

Mobility Experts

This report consists of the answers that seven enterprise mobility experts recently provided me in response to the question, "What advice do you have for companies considering implementing enterprise mobility solutions?"

• Make sure the users get to provide feedback and direction.  Make sure the mobile users will use it.  Make sure the mobile application actually supports the work and the way the work is done in the field.

• Think bigger.  Mobility is not a nice to have or a fad.  It is here to stay.  It will be here for the rest of your career.  It is now a core component of your IT environment.

• Plan on supporting your employees' personal devices.  Have a strategy for supporting personal mobile devices, and develop policies for managing and supporting them.

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of January 24, 2011

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

********

IMPORTANT!  In the January 27 webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned, Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies.  If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

********

More PayPal customers are using its payment service from their mobile phones. eBay’s payments unit in 2010 nearly tripled its eBay Mobile gross merchandise volume to $2 billion from the previous year, driven by strong holiday shopping.

http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/176_14/paypal-mobile-payments-1031590-1.html

********

AT&T aims to drive awareness of mobile bar codes and the services it provides to companies that want to use them within marketing collateral via a business to business campaign that combines sight, sound and motion on Apple's iAd platform.

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/8879.html

********

Apple plans to introduce services that would let customers use its iPhone and iPad computer to make purchases using NFC, said Richard Doherty, director of consulting firm Envisioneering Group.

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly – Week of January 24, 2011

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile retailing applications and mobile marketing applications that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

IMPORTANT! In the January 27 webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned, Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

********

When Google releases year-end and fourth quarter earnings this week, it will report a 20.2 percent lift in search ad revenue to $25.4 billion compared with the prior year. Revenue from display advertising will rise by an estimated 61 percent for the year.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=143255

********

The number of mobile phone ad impressions in the United Arab Emirates has surged by more than 50 percent, as the devices become the medium of choice for consumers accessing the Internet. The Nielsen Global Online Survey has found that 43 percent of Middle East consumers plan to use a mobile phone to access the Internet over the coming year.

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/mideast-mobile-phone-advertising-surges-by-more-than-50--375308.html

********

Facebook is on track to generate more than $2 billion in ad revenues in 2010, far surpassing earlier estimates of $1 billion, and will likely skyrocket past that figure in 2011, as more marketers shift budgets from TV, radio, and print to the social realm.

Wireless M2M Growth Projections

M2M Industry Segments

Analysts project significant growth numbers for the M2M market.  M2M or machine-to-machine is the market for wireless embedded chips that can send data to a central server.  By the year 2020 there are projected to be billions of connected devices. At the end of 2010 roughly 80 million subscribers were using of M2M technology. That number is set to rise to 300 million subscribers by 2015 according to research done by Berg Insight. Europe and North America currently dominate the number of connected M2M devices and are expected to continue through 2020.

Looking even further ahead the projected growth of M2M will hit 2.1 billion by 2020, and about 1 billion will come from utility companies, says Tracy Ford with RCR Wireless News. Utility companies are jumping on the concept of M2M technology to efficiently monitor and regulate services to clients.

“With many leading wireless service providers and utility companies looking to profit from the M2M opportunity and the growing support from US federal and state governments, M2M applications in smart grids have tremendous potential for growth. The smart grid is expected to provide a major boost to the M2M industry in the next few years.” GlobalData