Infonomics and Enterprise Mobility

Do you value and manage your enterprise information like it is a strategic asset?  In an insightful article by Gartner Inc.'s Douglas Laney, titled Infonomics: The Practice of Information Economics, the value of company information is explored.  I read this article with great interest and interpreted it in the context of enterprise mobility.

Here is Laney's description of Infonomics, "When considering how to put information to work for your organization, it’s important to go beyond thinking and talking about information as an asset, to actually valuing and treating it as one. This is the basis of the new theory and emerging discipline of Infonomics which provides organizations a foundation and methods for quantifying information asset value and formal information asset management practices."

In my mobile strategy workshops, I spend time with my clients exploring the value of "real-time" information to a company and the role enterprise mobility plays in it.  Laney's article takes it to the next level by treating it as a discipline. 

Here is another excerpt from Laney, "Infonomics posits that information should be considered a new asset class in that it has measurable economic value and other properties that qualify it to be accounted for and administered as any other recognized type of asset—and that there are significant strategic, operational and financial reasons for doing so."

Let me add some context, if you have a mobile workforce in the field and you know the following real-time information:

• Location
• Job status
• Skills and qualifications
• Inventory
• Equipment
• Costs (hourly wage)

Then you can make some important decisions as to how you can optimally schedule and utilize your workforce.  In contrast, if you don't have real-time knowledge of the six points listed above, you cannot.  There are significant competitive values to this real-time information.  Laney's article explores how you can measure that value.

Once you have placed a value on real-time information, then you can determine an ROI for developing and implementing a system that supports the use of real-time information.  I see this a lot when discussing mobile workforce scheduling solutions.  Many organizations simply do not have the IT systems in place that can support real-time scheduling based on real-time information (location, job status, etc.).  This is a limitation.  This prevents them from transforming their company into a real-time enterprise and effectively competing with companies that are.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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 and M2M News Weekly – Week of May 27, 2012

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

The new Cyber Navi GPS system uses an augmented reality heads-up display attached to a vehicle’s sun visor and displays the map and directions right in front of the driver.  Read Original Content

 A barcode app that assists users in reading what is written in barcodes reached 1 million downloads in 2011.  The “Bar-Code” app, created by a self-employed developer, provides a method to use the scanned barcodes in other software.  Read Original Content

The rugged “Presto” tablet used by E La Carte allows diners to view and order from a digital menu, and pay using the in-built card reader and is now used in 600 restaurants in the U.S. and worldwide.  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/.

Nielsen has released figures illustrating how consumers use their smartphones when shopping – comparing prices, scanning barcodes and redeeming coupons.  Read Original Content

Major Software as a Service benefits to mobile workforce management include:  Fast deployment, improved reliability and paper reduction.  A whitepaper, “Mobile Workforce Management Gets SaaSy”, is now available from TOA Technologies.  Read Original Content

The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina has found that the iSynergy and iScan electronic content management solution saves time and money, allowing patrol officers with in-car computers to access important information immediately from the field.  Read Original Content

Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly – Week of May 27, 2012

Welcome to the 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 and 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

New research from site monitoring firm Pingdom reveals that mobile web traffic in Asia grew over 192 percent from 2010 to May of 2012, from 6.1 percent to 17.8 percent.  Read Original Content

Vodaphone India has launched a “Customer Experience Center” for business customers, enabling them to explore communication solutions.  Read Original Content

According to executives at PayPal, mobile commerce in Singapore is predicted to grow ten-fold, to $2.4 billion, over the next three years. It has already grown 660 percent, from $33 million in 2010 to $259 million by the end of 2011.  Read Original Content

Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten is leading a $100 million investment in image-based social network Pinterest.  With 25 percent of all Rakuten sales in Japan on a mobile device, the company would like to see more development in mobile commerce.  Read Original Content

Antenna Software provides a complete cloud-based enterprise mobility suite that enables both IT pros and business executives alike to create and manage mobile apps, websites and content across the entire business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Antenna Software www.antennasoftware.com

According to Microsoft’s Greater China COO, the Windows Phone has edged out the iPhone claiming seven percent of the Chinese market.  Read Original Content

With the condition that Android for mobile devices remains free for at least five years, Chinese authorities have approved Google’s plan to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.  Read Original Content and Read More Original Content

M2M, SAP and Enterprise Mobility

I had an interesting call with the team at DSI Online this week.  They are a veteran enterprise mobility company, that integrates with Oracle and SAP, and they are also big into M2M (machine to machine) communication.  Any company involved in plant maintenance, enterprise asset management and utilities would benefit from being able to remotely communicate with machines in distant locations and monitor their operations for maintenance and repair requirements.

This week I also learned a new M2M related acronym, MBAN (mobile body area networks).  This is the acronym for wireless sensors that can remotely report on the health of the patient wearing them.  In a presentation by SAP's Mobility team in Rotterdam that I attended this week, they showed a slide that said Health Monitoring is going to be one of their mobile priorities.  Can you see the trend toward convergence of M2M and enterprise mobility?

According to recent studies by the FCC as reported by The Wall Street Journal in an article titled Medical Devices in Hospitals to Go Wireless published on May 24, 2012, an unmonitored patient has a 6% chance of surviving a cardiac arrest, compared with a 48% chance for a monitored (M2M connected) patient.  That sounds like a good ROI to me!

SAP certified partner ILS Technology has documented some good reasons for connecting M2M solutions to ERPs like SAP.  In an article, Case Study: Emerson Network Power, ILS Technology describes the requirement for M2M Monitoring.  Emerson Network Power manufactures the Liebert brand of precision cooling and power management solutions for data centers. The company provides cooling units, uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) systems, batteries, and other components that help keep data centers from overheating, and ensure that back-up power kicks in if there is any type of electrical interruption.


Large data centers are complex facilities to manage. The heat generated by the racks of servers has to be dissipated using special cooling equipment, and each device requires specialized back-up power equipment to ensure up time. Emerson manages data centers for large companies that can’t afford any type of power failure. The back-up systems Emerson provides are critical, because they can keep the equipment powered in case of a system failure or power outage, until the emergency generators can kick in. If the cooling and power systems fail, a data center could potentially lose capacity or even go offline.

The ramifications of an outage for any Fortune 1,000 company can be phenomenally costly. If a regional bank loses its ATM network, it can cost upwards of $50,000 per minute. Because of the high cost of downtime, Emerson’s customers rely on ILS Technology (an M2M solution provider) to ensure downtime doesn’t occur.

PSION's EP10

The equipment documented above can all be connected to and monitored by M2M wireless chips that can report back to EAM (enterprise asset management) systems and in turn can automatically issue service tickets to field services organizations.  See the connection between M2M, SAP and enterprise mobility?  The enterprise mobility solutions tie backend EAM, dispatch, scheduling and work order management solutions to mobile service technicians using devices like Psion's EP10.


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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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.

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

Rotterdam at the
Enterprise Mobility
Exchange 2012

This week I was the Chairman of the Enterprise Mobility Exchange in Rotterdam.  During this event HTML5 was a popular topic.  Most of the CIOs and other mobility thought leaders were predicting HTML5 is and will play a big role in their enterprises.  I also spoke to Gil Bouhnick, Mobility Product Manager for ClickSoftware in Spain 2 weeks ago and he was telling me about several large field services implementations they had recently deployed using HTML5.  He also says there are still some unique security issues that need to be addressed by vendors using HTML5. I see progress.

As I am writing this article, I am noticing a trend.  There are several media and advertising companies announcing the use of HTML5 apps and platforms.  Interesting!

Now for the news...

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs predicts that more than 2 billion mobile devices will sport fully compliant HTML5 browsers by 2016, and states that HTML5 “will usher in an explosion of innovation”.  Read Original Content

According to IDC Research, 79 percent of mobile app developers surveyed plan to integrate HTML5 in the apps they will launch in 2012; there will be more than 1 billion HTML5 mobile browsers in the market in 2013; and over 80 percent of all mobile apps will be wholly or in part based upon HTML5 by 2015.  Read Original Content

When it comes to streaming video, HTML5 wins out over apps as the best way to provide content to readers and viewers, states Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of Technology Review, which is published by MIT.  Read Original Content

Digital advertising company Exponential Interactive has launched a mobile advertising division, Appsnack, which provides advanced HTML5 rich-media advertising.  Read Original Content

Gaming Club Casino has gone mobile with an HTML5-based mobile casino game platform.  Read Original Content

LEAD Technologies has launched two new HTML5 add-on products for multi-platform and mobile device application development, a document HTML5 module and a medical HTML5 module.  Read Original Content

Facebook has announced its new App Center, which will include free and paid Facebook apps plus HTML5 apps that exist within the Facebook app itself.  The App Center is expected to officially open in late May or early June, 2012.  Read Original Content

In a decision based in part on user input, Bank of America has opted to develop functionality in HTML5.  Read Original Content

The Elinext Group is striving to increase involvement with HTML5 technology for mobile, web and television app development.  Read Original Content

The DevCon 5 HTML5 and Mobile App Developers Conference will be held July 23-24, 2012 in New York.  “DevCon5 will offer attendees a comprehensive HTML5 program; from HTML5 design and execution, to gaming and animation to building new HTML5 business models for the mobile web”.  Read Original Content

SAP has recently launched many new mobile apps, and HTML5 versions of its SAP Store for iPads.  SAP has and is a vocal advocate of HTML5 for enterprise mobility.  Read Original Content

FunMobility has opened a new division, FunMobility Professional Services, which will offer HTML5 cloud-based mobile solutions.  Read Original Content

Internet Broadcasting has announced the launch of a group of mobile advertising products created in HTML5, “the emerging standard for interactive media on smartphones and tablets”.  Read Original Content

A video from the recent Tizen Developer Conference showcases HTML5, with the OS running HTML5-based apps “as smoothly as if they were written in native code”.  Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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.

Mobile Health News Weekly – Week of May 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 and M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Mobile health in Africa and the Middle East is developing quickly, but there are differences in drivers and characteristics of the mHealth models employed in each of these areas, according to a new report from Pyramid Research. Read Original Content

The proliferation of mobile and electronic technologies, both in the United States and overseas, has changed the way medicine is practiced, affecting both physicians and medical students. Read Original Content

The growth of global mobile healthcare, while rapid stateside, is limited due to economic, organizational and technological differences between nations, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation. Read Original Content

An FCC proposal to allocate spectrum for wireless health monitoring devices could lead to the development of products that may lower healthcare costs and improve outcomes for patients, the head of the agency said today. 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.

Demonstrating its technology leadership within the healthcare industry, Ingram Micro Inc. has announced it will co-host the 2012 Health IT Innovation Summit on June 28 at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California. Read Original Content

Mobility News Weekly – Week of May 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 and M2M News Weekly

Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly

Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly

Also read Mobile Health News Weekly

The Apple iPhone continues to lead mobile video messaging usage, increasing from 7.4 percent to 23.6 percent since August 2011. However, the use of Samsung devices is quickly gaining ground, increasing from 2.9 percent to 21.9 percent over the same period.  Read Original Content

Worldwide enterprise wireless local area network segment recorded a growth of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 over the first quarter of 2011, according to a report by the International Data Corporation.  Read Original Content

Google has announced that the acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. has closed, with Google acquiring MMI for $40 per share in cash.  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/.

Chief executive of ARM - Warren East - in an interview with Dow Jones news agency, said he expects companies making ARM-based chips to capture about 10 percent to 20 percent of the notebook PC market by 2014 or 2015.  Read Original Content

Android smartphone sales were up by 61.3 percent in 2011, and it has been estimated that 700,000 new smartphones are activated every day. This benefits Google, whose Android operating system was on 56.1 percent of the smartphones that were sold in 2011.  Read Original Content

Samsung continues to pump out mobile phones like there's no tomorrow, while Nokia's global market share continues to slip. Apple now gobbles up 7.9 percent of the market with its iPhone, and Research In Motion keeps on flailing.  Read Original Content

Rotterdam at the Enterprise Mobility Exchange and Too Long on the Road

We had a great three days at the Enterprise Mobility Exchange in Rotterdam this week.  This is a great mobility event where most of the sessions are end user lead, and I filled over 9 pages with notes.  If you ever get a chance to attend, it is worth it! 

What happens when you spend nearly 4 weeks on the road talking about enterprise mobility and mobile strategies?  The following...

Join me next week for a webinar called, Mobilizing the Real Time Enterprise - opportunities, challenges, threats

Companies report that this year they are building multiple applications and deploying to multiple user groups. They also report that they are struggling with their mobile strategies, worrying about how to secure their applications, and unsure of what development approach to take. How prepared are you to tackle the complexities of integrating your enterprise systems and mobilizing your critical business applications?

The ability to dispatch workers, process orders, update records, and run your businesses – all in real time – offers competitive advantages as well as technical challenges.

Learn about:

What it means to run a real-time enterprise supported by mobile technologies in 2012
The mobile strategies and trends of 602 large enterprises and what they mean for you and your competitors

• Enterprise mobility challenges that could haunt you the rest of your career
• Approaches to mobile app development and the value of a platform
• We will set aside time for Q&A, so there will be plenty of opportunity to answer your specific questions on mobile development best practices. So please join us to learn about building the right apps – on time and on budget.

When: May 31, 1:00 PM EDT

Register for the webinar

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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.

Mobile Marketing News Weekly – Week of May 20, 2012

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

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

A recent study estimates mobile advertising will be a $5.04 billion industry by 2015. HighTable, a startup social website for professionals, compiled data about key factors in the growing mobile marketing space in an infographic. Read Original Content

The Holy Grail of marketers used to be a home telephone number and address. Direct mail and telemarketing, despite being some of the most hated forms of advertising, are historically effective. Now mobile takes marketers closer to consumers than direct mail ever will. Read Original Content

The Australian group buying industry generated $123.5 million in Q1 2012 representing a 72 percent growth over the same period last year. Despite the phenomenal growth, the market contracted by 14 percent on last quarter. Read Original Content

Verivo is a leading provider of enterprise mobility software. Verivo helps companies accelerate their business results. Its unique technology empowers teams to build, deploy, manage and update their mobile apps -- rapidly and securely. Verivo’s mobility platform is used by hundreds of companies in numerous industries, worldwide. This newsletter is sponsored in part by Verivo.  To learn more, visit www.verivo.com

Facebook shares fell 11 percent Monday, highlighting the challenges the No. 1 social network faces to live up to its frothy market value. Facebook already has some 488 million mobile users, its fastest-growing platform, but hasn't yet unveiled a strategy to make money in the field. Read Original Content

Tremor Video, the largest independent online video technology company, has announced the launch of its Mobile Creative Platform, a toolset that helps advertisers build and deliver interactive video across all mobile devices and operating systems, without sacrificing ad functionality or viewer experience. Read Original Content

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: Optimized Intersections and Mobility

I believe that it is important to understand high level concepts in order to make sense of detailed plans.  Last week, I was in Spain attending a field services related conference and listened to a field services manager explain the importance of teaching service technicians the economics of service businesses.  He wanted his team to understand what it meant to optimize their business, and the role that mobile technologies played in that optimization effort.  I agreed!

In this segment of the Video Comments, I share the concept of Optimized Intersections.  Optimized Intersections consists of the following:

• Mobilized workforce
• Latitude
• Longitude
• Altitude
• Time
• Mobilized Objects

I hope you find this concept useful.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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.