Can You Handle the Truth about Enterprise Mobility and Big Data?

Enterprise mobility is not just about extending your office cubicle to the nearby Starbucks.  Nor is it just doing your same job, in the same manner from a remote location.  It is about doing a job in a different and better way.  A way that permits you to be at the point of action, the point of need, and the point where you can have the biggest positive impact on your bottom line without breaking your lines of communication or denying you access to critical information and team members.

Enterprise mobility is a way of keeping you connected to your business systems, aggregating mission critical information and business intelligence from dozens of different back end systems (think SAP ERP), using real-time big data analysis (think SAP Hana), and bringing all of this information together, in mobile applications - purpose built for the mobile user.  The Aberdeen Group refers to this as role-based custom mobile websites for users.

It is about providing real-time business analytics to decision makers, so they can make the best data-driven decisions, no matter their physical location.  By data-driven decisions, I mean decisions that are based on the analysis of large volumes of data that is related to your issue or subject.  How do you measure the value of "good" decisions?  I reported in a previous article that Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, from MIT's Sloan School of Management had discovered that "Data-driven decision making achieved productivity gains that were 5 to 6 percent higher than other factors could explain."  Those are significant gains for multi-billion dollar organizations.


Today I am in Las Vegas where I am attending SAPinsider's Mobile2012 conference, writing this article, responding to email messages, conducting business meetings, discussing writing a new book on enterprise mobility and preparing to lead three sessions on enterprise mobility.  Mobility enables me to be at the point of action where I can meet people and teach sessions without imposing friction on my analyst and consulting business.  What do I mean by friction?  Friction is when your business is slowed down and delayed because you are not accessible or information is not accessible while traveling.  Mobility allows you to "have your cake and eat it to."

In the Enterprise Mobility 2011 survey that I conducted and reported on in October of 2011, only 40% of respondents reported having a strategic enterprise mobility plan, although 80% reported that enterprise mobility was "very important" to "critical" for their companies future success.  This tells me that both the business and the IT organizations need to get together and really understand the possibilities that are available with enterprise mobility and document a strategy.  It doesn't seem like many organizations truly understand it yet.

The truth is that enterprise mobility offers many productivity improvements and efficiency gains, but the real values are in things like removing frictions, enabling better real-time data-driven decision making, having situational awareness, and freeing your people to spend more time at the point of action. 
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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 27, 2012

The 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 Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

The University College London is preforming data collection using an icon-based interface that could intuitively be used by pigmy tribes in Africa affected by logging and poaching in their forest home. The hand-held device can be used to geotag trees, and then fed back to logging companies and policyholders to try and save crucial areas of forest. Read Original Content

Odawa Casino Resort upgraded its GIMS Uniform System inventory software with UHF-RFID technology to automate the inventory tracking and control of thousands of uniforms worn by team members at the property. Read Original Content

The global market for mobile location technologies reached $22.5 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $36.3 billion in 2016, increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 7.6 percent between 2011 and 2016. Read Original Content

Since 1995, Syclo has enabled hundreds of companies in 37 countries and industries supercharge their businesses with mobility.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Syclo. http://www.syclo.com/.

Intermec, Inc. announced the SG20 family of handheld scanners featuring fast 2D imaging technology for omnidirectional scanning. Designed to speed up the bar code scanning process in retail, healthcare and general countertop scanning applications, the SG20 scanner minimizes the time and effort required to read a bar code by providing more than 50 times the motion tolerance of competitive scanners. Read Original Content

XtremeSignPost, Inc. launched their consumer-based advertising system that encompasses a mobile, interactive, art and music sharing network.  In this process, RFID-enabled cell phones such as Samsung's Galaxy Nexus S running on Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich are used to recall and share transmedia art experiences from personalized RFID-tagged items. Read Original Content

Moneyball, Big Data, The Internet of Things and Enterprise Mobility

"In business, economics and other fields decisions will increasingly be based on data and analysis rather than on experience and intuition...we can start being a lot more scientific," predicts Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, from MIT's Sloan School of Management in a New York Times article The Age of Big Data, February 12, 2012.  This is the "Moneyball" approach to business.  Use the data, massive volumes of data, to find the truth, rather than lean on intuition.  In the past this was possible, but the long time frames required to find answers made it impractical for real-time decision making.

Just like in the movie Moneyball, large volumes of data hide truths that are not easily apparent without in-depth analysis.  These truths can lead us to competitive advantages, increased productivity, efficiencies and completely new and different ways of conducting business.  "Data-driven decision making" achieved productivity gains that were 5 to 6 percent higher than other factors could explain reported Brynjolfsson.  Pushing real-time data-driven decision making out to the mobile workforce is a subject that I find very intriguing.

Analyzing huge volumes of data instantly, in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, has enormous potential for those that work in the field.  In an age when mobile workers are wirelessly reporting and sharing data, and thousands of "things" are constantly reporting wireless sensor data that measure vibrations, locations, movements, temperatures, humidity and chemical changes in the air from industrial equipment, shipping crates, vehicles, electrical meters and many other things, it is critical to have real-time assistance from systems that can analyze vast amounts of data instantly.

SAP's Hana is a tool that promises to make this possible.  Here is how SAP promotes Hana, "Analyze massive amounts of data up to 3,600 times faster for instant business insights and transform your organization into a real-time business."  


I remember reading a post-accident report from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.  In the report it said that oil rig supervisors experienced a paralysis in decision making due to the overwhelming amount of seriously dire sensor data coming in.  The raw sensor data was not in a form that provided guidance and direction based upon a real-time analysis of data.  We humans can easily be overwhelmed during a crisis where emotions and adrenalin are peaked and this does not lead to good scientific reasoning.


CEOs and CIOs would be well served to ponder how real-time access to real-time business intelligence could impact global field, fleet and plant operations.  I remember talking to a fleet manager who said he once notified all of his vehicle drivers to fill up with fuel before end of day, because real-time market data suggested a hike in fuel prices would occur before morning.  They reported that they saved millions of dollars by taking this one step.  It was only possible because of real-time analysis and real-time mobile communications.

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly – Week of February 26, 2011

Welcome to Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility in Asia.  Asia is predicted to be the fastest area of growth for enterprise mobility between now and 2016.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

M2M industry executive Derick Tsang will bring his knowledge of M2M and telecommunications to the Asia Pacific region for Telit Wireless Solutions.  The company has created a new “president of the Asia Pacific region” position for Tsang, and he will be responsible for South Korea, China, India, Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Australia.  He will also establish Telit sales outreach in Japan. Read Original Content

Chinese search engine provider Baidu will take advantage of the booming mobile and smartphone market in China and focus on mobile in 2012.  In Q4 2011 China became the largest mobile market in the world. Read Original Content

Apple sales of the iPhone in China are soaring, as are sales of Mac computers.  In 2011, $13 billion in sales for Apple were in China, and sales of Macs increased 100 percent.  Apple is adding support for a number of services in its pursuit of the Chinese market, including search engine provider Baidu and sharing services. Read Original Content

Hong Kong now hosts Asia’s first social media research center with the launch of the new Social Media Laboratory with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.  Professor Tony F. Chan states “With this laboratory, our faculty and researchers are taking an active part in nurturing research and development talents in the blooming new arena of social media, and building Hong Kong as a leading hub of creative media and IT technologies in the region.” Read Original Content

The iPad trademark battle rages on, and tops the tech news in China this week.  Also, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has announced plans to regulate Internet television, including mobile video services, in the country.  Check out China’s five top tech news stories. Read Original Content

M2M News Weekly – Week of February 20, 2012

Welcome to 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.  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.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Social media has seized on the potential of RFID tags to log visitors to certain amusement parks. Once they pass through the gate or pass by an RFID scanner, their presence will be beamed to Facebook or another social media site announcing they were there and what they were doing. Read Original Content

According to ABI Research the compound annual growth rate of global insurance telematics subscribers will grow by 90 percent from 2010 to 2017. That's an increase from 1.85 million telematics users to a whopping figure of 89 million. Read Original Content

ClickSoftware is an SAP mobility partner and the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by ClickSoftware - http://www.clicksoftware.com/.

Texas Instruments has released a single-chip passive infrared micro-electro-mechanical system temperature sensor, called the TMP006. The TMP006 could open up new applications for devices that were previously unable to use IR temperature measurement because of size, power, or costs. That means going past industrial applications to include consumer electronics, such as smartphones, tablets, and notebooks. Read Original Content

The U.S. Army has placed its largest order of micro-robots with ReconRobotics, Inc. A contract worth $13.9 million will supply the U.S. Army with 1,100 Recon Scout XT micro-robot kits. The 1.2-pound robot is equipped with a camera that can perform indoor and outdoor surveillance for soldiers in combat. Read Original Content

Antenna Software, HTML5 and Cloud Computing

This morning I interviewed Antenna Software's Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Jim Somer's about their new solution AMPchroma.  AMPchroma (AMP stands for Antenna Mobile Platform) is a cloud-based mobile management solution that is intended to address the full mobile lifecycle, in other words, allowing companies to design, build, deploy and manage a wide range of mobile asset, (including native and hybrid web-apps, mobile websites, and corporate app stores) from a single web-based console.

That is a huge challenge.  I give credit to Antenna for their ambitions.  AMPchroma is cloud-based, and it is the new front end for the Antenna Mobile Platform and all of Antenna's templates, libraries and diverse tools that they have acquired over the years.  I like the the idea of having one "unified" browser based interface for all of their tools and management consoles.  I also like Antenna's mission to help companies to "unify their mobile strategies."  I think that is going to be a big requirement now and in the future.

PSION EP10 

On a side note, I have been working with SAPinsider on a new report that will be published next week titled, Mobile Outlook 2012, and in it I report that 40% of companies are leaving mobile strategy up to the different business units.  That means NO unified strategy.  That is a problem.  It will cause a lot of inefficiencies and redundancies.

Antenna is backing HTML5 in a big way.  In fact I challenged Jim to predict the number of "new" enterprise mobility applications in 2013 that will be based on HTML5.  He went out on a limb and predicted that 75% of enterprise mobility applications will be based on HTML5 in 2013.

Antenna has built its reputation on supporting the blue-collar services sector, but these days they are also focused on B2C (business to consumer) apps.

Antenna is also investing in app stores and tools to create custom app stores.

I finished the interview by asking Jim when they were going to be acquired.  For some reason he was not willing to answer that question :-)

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 20, 2012

The 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 Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly

A new study by Forrester found that business spending on mobile projects is expected to grow by 100 percent by 2015, and spending on mobile apps is predicted to hit $55 billion in 2016.  Read Original Content

According to AT&T, smartphone use has risen to 85 percent of small businesses, up from 80 percent last year. Also, even though the tablet market is not yet two years old, tablet use by small businesses was at 67 percent, up from 57 percent last year.  Read Original Content

In 2016 total global mobile application revenue will reach an estimated $46 billion, according to ABI Research. That figure includes pay-per-download, in-app purchases, subscriptions, and advertising.  Read Original Content

ClickSoftware is an SAP mobility partner and the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by ClickSoftware - http://www.clicksoftware.com/.

Juniper's Mobile Threats Report for 2011 shows malware increased in 2011 by 155 percent. 46.7 percent of all threats analyzed by Juniper in 2011 were Android, ahead of 41 percent for Java ME.  Read Original Content

The total number of Macs sold is 122 million. In 2011 alone, if you tally up all the iOS devices including iPods and iPads, 156 million were sold—more than all Macs ever sold. In one year.  Read Original Content

Mobile Health News Weekly – Week of February 20, 2012

The Mobile Health News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to mobile health that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

A new report by GSMA indicates that mobile tech holds the key to medical advances in mature and emerging markets. It's a market that could be worth $11.5 billion to operators, $6.6 billion to OEMs, $2.6 billion app makers and $2.4 billion to healthcare providers by 2017. Read Original Content

Mobile-health smartphone applications will take off in 2012, reaching $1.3 billion, according to a recent survey by market research and consultancy firm Research2guidance. The group estimates the current market size at $718 million. Read Original Content

A new report by Juniper Research is projecting that by 2016, 3 million patients worldwide will be using remote monitoring devices that use a smartphone as a hub to transmit information. Read Original Content

Webalo technology eliminates the need for traditional mobile application development tools and custom programming to provide in hours, instead of weeks or months, mobile access to the specific enterprise data and functions that smartphone and tablet users rely on to do their jobs.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Webalo, www.webalo.com.

HealthSpot, creator of "Care4 Station" telemedicine kiosks, has signed a technology integration deal with wireless communications giant Sprint. Telemedicine kiosks will enable video conferences, patient vital sign data and other health information to be transmitted from patients in HealthSpot's kiosks to doctors working remotely in their own offices, according to a statement from the two companies. Read Original Content

As mobile gadgets become more commonplace and doctors become more comfortable making simple diagnoses over the phone or Internet, the field of tele-medicine is expanding rapidly. Doctor-to-patient interactions are a small-but-growing slice of the $3.9 billion global tele-medicine market, which includes remote X-ray reading, apps for smartphones and in-home devices that monitor weight, blood pressure or glucose levels. Read Original Content

What's New in HTML5 - Week of February 20, 2012

HTML5 is gaining momentum in the war for multimedia dominance, but Flash still wins, according to gaming source One More Level.  Read original content

For better performance with HTML5 web content Microsoft recommends Internet Explorer 10 over other platforms.  Read original content

GamesMadeMe Founder and CEO Juha Paananen states “The browser will become the dominant platform on desktop and mobile and people will start to expect that they can play the same game and be part of the same experience on all devices…most games of the future will be designed so that you can access them from anywhere.  Read original content

Sencha has launched a new program to assist Adobe Flex developers to become more productive migrating to HTML5.  Read original content

Microsoft is bypassing HTML5 and launching native mobile apps for its customer relationship management (CRM) software, stating they’re watching HTML5 closely, but the focus “is to provide the best possible experience on native devices today."  Read original content

Despite some limitations, gaming platform Zynga is embracing HTML5 for its cross-platform aspect and other numerous advantages says  Zynga's CTO Paul Bakaus.  Read original content

The HTML5 accessibility website (http://www.html5accessibility.com/) has scored Mozilla’s Firefox way ahead of other Windows browsers for HTML5 accessibility support.  Read original content

According to Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, the mobile web will edge out mobile apps in the long term, as technologies like HTML5 improve.  Read original content

Microsoft highlights HTML5 in a Valentine’s Day browser demo.  Called “Love is in the Air” (http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/performance/loveisintheair/), the demo experience “brings together hardware-accelerated HTML5 canvas, SVG, CSS transforms & transitions, WOFF, audio, and more”, according to IE group program manager Rob Mauceri.  Read original content

AppMobi has made its playMobi HTML5-based game development SDK available for beta testing.  The SDK will provide tools for development of games in iOS, Android and Facebook platforms.

Read original content

The beta version of Google’s Chrome 18 browser is now available, and it includes GPU-accelerated rendering to allow games and animations built using the HTML5 Canvas tag to run faster and smoother.  Read original content

How does HTML5 fit into your mobile strategy?  Wilter du Toit, CEO of Virtual Mobile Technologies, weighs pros and cons in an opinion piece in IT News Africa.  Read original content

HTML5 doesn’t work in IE, won’t be ready until 2022, and isn’t “ready for prime time”.  These are three of the ten myths a Microsoft developer says is holding HTML5 back.  Read original content

Websites to explore that help you learn more about HTML5.  Read original content

StackMob, the cloud-based platform for mobile developers, has announced the launch of their hosted HTML5 service for desktop, tablet and mobile.  Developers can also use the new service to host HTML5 running in native apps.  “Eventually, HTML5 is going to win because of this network-connected device world.”  Read original content

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility, Old Age and UX

I must confess the older I get, the more I like my iPad.  Why?  It is easier to read and you can see more information on one screen.  This has got me thinking about mobile UX.  Am I the only one who thinks as technologically sophisticated baby-boomers get older they will gravitate toward tablets?

When SAP launched their first few mobile apps they all looked different.  They each used different icons, colors and styles.  However, the next year SAP changed them to all fit the same design style, color schemes, icons and menu systems.  They wanted all the apps to work in a similar manner.  They standardized to improve the UX and address change management issues.

This is a lesson for us all.  Most large companies, anticipate supporting many different mobile applications, but few have thought through UX design and how they should leverage design and UX standards across as many apps as possible.

Next week, I will be participating in a webinar titled, The Role of User Experience (UX) in a Mobility Landscape along side mobility expert Tom Parish and Endeavour's design manager Hitesh Ruwala.  If you would like to participate please register here.  The topics that will be covered are:

• UX & its Importance 
• Myths & Facts about UX in Mobility
• The Mobile UX Approach
• Do’s & Don’ts for good UX
• Trends in UX

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.