Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's James Naftel, Part 2

This is Part 2 in this interview with Sybase's James Naftel, Staff Product Manager for Afaria.  Read Part 1 here.

Kevin: What are some of the biggest challenges you see in mobility today?
James: The number one goal is not to give us all toys (fun mobile devices), but rather to make us more productive. Companies must look at their business and understand how they can really get productivity gains from implementing enterprise mobility solutions. Does it make sense? How will they scale from tens of users to thousands? It is easy to deploy a handful of devices, but what about thousands. How do you secure all of these devices? There are legal obligations to protect personal and corporate data on devices. If social security numbers are on devices, companies must protect this data. All the data in the company is probably accessible by different mobile devices and applications in the company.

Kevin: How are enterprise mobility implementations different from other typical IT projects?
James: Mobile devices are in unsecured locations (homes, cars, restaurants, hotels, beaches, park benches, bars, etc.). Security is a big concern. These devices are mobile and remote. All of this infrastructure outside the firewall is accessing data inside the firewall. You need to think of all the different risk scenarios. You want your developers to be able to develop mobile apps without worrying about security. It should already be solved by the company.

Kevin: What do companies fail to plan for when implementing mobility?
James: 1) How do I scale from ten to thousands of devices? 2) How do I move data back and forth through corporate security? Security folks were often difficult to work with in the past and caused many long delays in mobility projects. They were uncomfortable with mobile data access. It is better now. More IT security teams understand the mobile security issues and how to solve them.

Kevin: What advice do you have for companies just starting down an enterprise mobility path?
James: Plan and have a good idea of your goals. Pick carefully the first apps to mobilize. Have a reason to mobilize. Is it CRM? Understand your goals so you can plan. Think about how you provision devices? Think about device roll-outs. Think about the impact on the help desk.

Kevin: How important is mobile device management and security? [What a set-up!]
James: Critical. People need to protect private and enterprise data. Device management and security is key to succeeding with a project. If you leak information, you are in big trouble and it jeopardizes your entire mobility initiative. You need MDM to run any enterprise project. You cannot scale unless you have MDM.


Kevin: What should people know about Sybase’s Afaria?
James: We try to support all the new devices. We look to support all the devices and platforms that our enterprise customers request. Five years ago, there was a long sales cycle involved in educating companies on the value of mobile security and MDM. However, today companies recognize the need. We are now a core component, rather than an afterthought. App developers should not have to be concerned with security, Afaria will handle that.

Kevin: Where do you see mobility going in 2011?
James: There are a lot of discussions and strategizing going on around tablets. We see a lot of enterprise customers buying tablets now. Companies want to lock down tablets more than smartphones. If fact, companies might have different security requirements for tablets than smartphones. Tablets may be viewed more as a corporate asset than smartphones and have stricter security requirements.

I want to thank James for sharing his thoughts, views and observations with all of us.

Click here to read more in the Mobile Expert Interview Series.

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

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase’s James Naftel, Part 1

I had the privilege, last week, to interview Sybase’s Staff Product Manager for Afaria, James Naftel.  We are also working together on a mobile device management (MDM) webinar that will be announced later this week.

Note:  As usual, these are not James’ exact words, rather they are my notes from our interview.  The reason I use my notes is that I cannot type fast enough to keep up with most conversations, plus our conversations often digress or become more expansive than readers would like to read.  As a result, I note key phrases, opinions, advice, thoughts and write them up concisely.

Kevin: What are your current roles and responsibilities?
James: Staff Product Manager.  I drive product strategy and partnerships around Afaria.  I am also involved in working with all the different mobile device manufacturers.

Kevin: How long have you been working with Afaria?
James: Twelve years. The first five years were as a developer.

Kevin:  How many times has the company been sold or had a name change during those 12 years?
James: Let’s see, Xcellenet, Sterling Commerce, Afaria, then back to Xcellenet, then iAnywhere/Sybase and finally SAP.

Kevin:  Was Afaria always about MDM (mobile device management)?
James:  We first started out working on a retail product called Remote Ware which was designed to help stores download or upload sales numbers.  It evolved from there.

Kevin: Where is your office located?
James: Alpharetta, Georgia.


Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
James: An Android smartphone, an iPad, in the past a laptop,  but most days now the iPad is what I take home with me. Some days the Samsung 7 inch Galaxy Tab.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device(s)?
James:  Weather, the ESPN app, EverNote, iProcrastinate (task lists).

Kevin: Do you ever use your mobile device to buy things?
James: I use my smartphones mostly for research, not purchasing things. I use my tablets to purchase items.

Kevin: How many computing devices do you have in your home?
James: Six.

Kevin: How long have you been involved in enterprise mobility?
James: Twelve years.  I started working on Afaria right out of college. First, we focused on supporting mobile laptops for companies that had mobile sales force, like pharmaceutical companies.

Kevin: What is different today, than when you started working with enterprise mobility?
James: The devices. Laptops were the primary platforms when I started, now smartphones and tablets.

Kevin: What industries do you see adopting enterprise mobility today?
James: Everybody. Two years ago it was industries like utilities, energy and cable companies with large field service organizations. Now everybody is implementing enterprise mobility.

Kevin: What were some the most surprising trends you saw in mobility during 2010?
James:  This year (2011) it is Nokia partnering with Microsoft. I really thought Nokia would back Android. However, during last year (2010), it was Android’s success. I have 30-40 devices on my desk today, and many of them are Android devices.  Another surprise, companies allowing the use of personal devices at work. Sybase lets employees use personal devices, but now many others do as well.  We had to refocus more attention to issues related to securing personal devices with corporate data.

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

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.

Skanska Optimizes Mobile Workforce Management

I read this week that Skanska, a leading global construction company, is implementing optimized scheduling, location based services and mobility to run on the Apple iOS Platform.  It seems that Skanska UK’s Utilities Operating Unit will run ClickSoftware’s Mobile Enterprise Application on Apple smartphones and tablets running iOS.  Skanska provides telecommunications, gas, power and water companies with infrastructure and asset management services.  Their goal is to drive efficiency, improve customer service, enhance workforce productivity and reduce the impact on the environment.

Of critical importance to Skanska’s clients and prospects is the ability to drive productivity without compromising customer service by quickly blending in ‘real time’ planned and reactive emergency work. To achieve this, Skanska is working to optimize the deployment and control of hundreds of engineers in the field.

Of particular importance to Skanska is the ability to operate on Apple iOS-based devices such as iPhone and iPad.  ClickSoftware, an SAP partner, will provide the ClickMobile solution to steer field engineers through relevant information capture and service processes via their iPhone and iPad mobile devices. This will include site schematic diagrams, safety procedures, project plans and customer and asset historical information.  It also provides a two-way conduit allowing engineers to record important service level information in the field on their Apple devices to be fed back to the enterprise, and where appropriate the end client.

The optimal scheduling of crews will enable Skanska to offer very competitive Service Level commitments to clients. They will now automatically consider engineers’ skills, location, inventory, capital equipment and current workload and then balance these factors to deploy Skanska’s engineering crews in the most efficient manner. It will also continuously re-optimize the schedule in real-time to manage the work that will be reactive – continuously reshuffling the planned work with flexible time windows.

ClickLocate will monitor the engineers’ GPS location, providing the dispatch team with clear, real-time visibility of field operations, and allowing real time optimization based on actual engineer location.

ClickAnalyze will continually receive operational field data and provide intelligence on SLA compliance, engineers’ performance and areas of skills shortage. This can then be used to proactively improve future services and operations.

ClickSoftware has many utility and telecom customers, in fact, utility customers account for 40 percent of revenue.  Their customers include Thames Water and Scottish Water in the UK, and PG&E, Southern California Edison and Sempra Energy in the United States. Telecom customers, account for 35 percent of revenue and customers include Bell Canada, Deutsche Telekom and Telstra.

Challenges in Enterprise Mobility Today

I recorded and uploaded a new 11 minute Video Comment on what I have learned recently about the challenges in enterprise mobility.  The information in this discussion came from the several dozen mobile experts that I have recently interviewed. So get out the popcorn and soda and pretend to enjoy it!

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Kevin Benedict,Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
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 February 14, 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 Money News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s M2M News Monthly

Mobile operators could be set to reach ‘End of Profit’ in a little over two years, as the costs of building and running their networks exceed the revenues that they are generating, according to a recent forecast.

http://www.telecoms.com/24392/tellabs-death-clock-predicts-end-of-profit-for-mnos/

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Worldwide mobile data traffic is due to increase 26-fold to 75 exabytes annually, says networking giant Cisco.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mobile_data_explosion_75_exabytes_by_2015.php

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Morgan Stanley recently surveyed 50 enterprise CIOs about current and future tablet deployments and came back with some pretty astonishing findings:  21 percent of them are already purchasing tablets for employees and 51 percent expect to begin doing so in the coming year.

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20110215/tk-4/

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Enterprise mobility is the biggest single trend across tech industry investment and innovation, even outpacing the cloud-computing trend, states a recent Forrester report.

SAP Enterprise Mobility in the Cloud

Some kinds of solutions just seem naturally suited for being in a cloud centric network. For example, why do companies buy and deploy their own in-house EDI solution and create unique data maps to every supplier or business trading partner in order to exchange EDI data?  This is about as inefficient as possible.  This should be a cloud-based, network centric service, which is why SAP added the SAP Information Interchange (SII) last Spring.  Now all SAP customers can connect their EDI processes once to the SII and have access to all of the other companies that are on the network.

This same kind of scenario is now playing out in enterprise mobility.  Mark Beccue, an analyst with IT market research company ABI Research, says that soon, "Cloud computing will bring unprecedented sophistication to mobile applications."  What does he mean?  Cloud-based mobile applications do not suffer from limits in mobile device battery life, storage capacity or processing abilities. Instead, they have all the power of a server-based computing infrastructure behind them.

If you have all the processing power you can ever want in the cloud, there is less reason (assuming you always have access to the internet) to build native mobile applications that are feature rich.  Just access the power of the cloud and use the mobile device as the UI (user interface) to the cloud.

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of February 16, 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.

Also read Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s M2M News Monthly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly

Consumers are increasingly becoming more comfortable with mobile banking, payment and shopping to the point where the value of global transactions on the go will jump from $162 billion in 2010 to nearly a $1 trillion by 2014, according to research firm Yankee Group.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/mobile-transactions-ready-to-ramp-says-report/44791

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Less than a month after rolling out its mobile payment technology across the United States, coffee giant Starbucks says its customers have made 1 million payments via the app-based system -- which stores a virtual Starbucks Card on a mobile phone, for scanning at the register.

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/02/starbucks-a-million-mobile-payments.html

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A microfinance pilot project pioneered in Africa turned into one of the world's most successful mobile banking systems thanks to one woman's bus fare getting stolen. Now the service could make its way to the United Kingdom.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Mobile X's Hannes Heckner

In this interview I continue my recent focus on learning from mobile experts and thought leaders in Europe.  Hannes Heckner is the CEO of MobileX AG which is headquartered in Munich, Germany.  They have been in business for over 10 years and have about 30 employees.  They have 30 customers with over 6,000 mobile users in the field.  They are now preparing to move to a new office to accommodate significant growth.  They are an SAP partner and over 80 percent of their customers are SAP users.

Note:  This interview consists of a combination of written responses to questions and my notes from our Skype conversations.  I use a similar set of questions with many of my interviews for the purpose of research and analysis.  It is useful to analyze many answers to the same question in order to gain insight into market trends and behaviors.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Hannes: Laptop, iPhone.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device?
Hannes: E-Mail, Contacts and Social Media apps.

Kevin: Do you ever use your mobile device to buy things?
Hannes: No.

Kevin: How many computing devices do you have in your home?
Hannes: Three.

Kevin: How long have you been involved in enterprise mobility?
Hannes: Over 14 years.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Zenware's Jody Sedrick

I had the good fortune of tracking down mobility expert Jody Sedrick last week and scheduling an interview with him. Jody Sedrick is the CEO of Zenware, a twelve person company that designs, develops and deploys both custom and packaged intelligent mobile applications for SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises). He is responsible for driving business and helping companies understand how mobility can revolutionize their businesses.

Mobility is important to all size companies, and I wanted to interview Jody to learn what he is hearing and learning in the SME mobility markets.

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

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Jody: An iPhone, MacBook Pro and an iPad.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device?
Jody: Pandora, TweetDeck, Linkedin, Google Maps, EverNote.

Kevin: Do you use your mobile device to buy things?
Jody: No, but I do a lot of product research on them.

Starbucks Drives Mobile Technology with One Million Mobile Payments in a Month

Starbucks Card Mobile Payment

Starbucks is reporting that between January 19 and February 15 of 2011 over one million payments were made at Starbucks locations using the new Starbucks Card Mobile Payment application.  This mobile app provides the following features:

• Lets you pay for drinks and food by having your mobile phone screen scanned at the counter
• Lets you view your balance
• Lets you check your Stars in the My Starbucks Rewards program
• Lets you reload your card
• Find the nearest store

With mobile payment accepted at more than 6,800 company-operated Starbucks stores and over 1,000 Target locations, there are many locations to use this mobile app.

The Starbucks experience is all about routine, consistency and comfort.  Having 7,800 locations accept and support this same mobile application is a powerful change agent.  I predict that this move by Starbucks will be seen as the launching point for mobile payments among us in the masses.

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On another note, Smartsoft Mobile Solutions, an SAP services partner, is currently working with some of the largest retailers in the world on mobile retailing projects.  These are B2C (business-to-consumer) mobile retailing applications.  Mobile retailing is not all they do, but they have some very interesting wins in this market.

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