Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Fast Tempos and Digital Transformation

“What matters most is the tempo of change.” ~ John Boyd

Few businesses would argue that data collection and analytics are not important to their current and future success. Data can provide situational awareness, enhanced customer service and more personalized experiences. It also supports vigilance and the ability to recognize both problems and opportunities early. The problem, however, is not many enterprises can act on the data fast enough to matter.

In most companies, organizational structures, decision-making processes, business models and business cultures aren’t nimble enough to change at a tempo fast enough to capture competitive opportunities and respond to challenges. In today’s world of digital transformation and fast changing mobile and online consumer behaviors (see Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me), businesses must be as nimble as their customers, or they risk losing market share to a nimbler competitor.

The First Law of Thermodynamics states, "energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.” In a business context that means if energy is being used to resist change, then it is not available for making change. Change is difficult. The default mode for most organizations and people is to resist change. In order to overcome this resistance, a new reality must be created.

Companies need to transform in order to minimize resistance and reward behaviors and environments that support a fast tempo of change. Companies that can support a fast tempo of change have a big competitive advantage, while those that can’t risk obsolescence.

The military strategist John Boyd found some fighter planes with poorer performance numbers on paper were actually better in competition because they could transition at a faster tempo. The ability to change directions quickly trumped speed and performance. There are lessons there for businesses.

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Kevin Benedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time

We humans have a finite speed at which we can think, analyze and make decisions. We can only focus on a small set of data before we are overwhelmed. When important decisions must be made, our brains need time, significant time, to weigh all the variables, pros and cons and possible outcomes in order to arrive at a good decision. In times of high stress where making fast decisions is required, many of us don’t perform at our peak. In addition, weak humans that we are - need sleep. We are not always available; we require daily downtime in order to function.

Humans operate in human time, a biological time influenced by the environment and universe that we live in. Computers, though, are not subject to these human limitations and can act on algorithms and pre-determined decision trees 24/7 in milliseconds.

Human time challenges and limitations are not going away. As IoT sensors and mobile devices proliferate, so also does the volume of real-time data and required analysis. Humans, already at their limit, must somehow augment their capabilities to handle the massive increases in the volume and complexity of data. Many believe, as do I, that the competitive marketplaces of today and tomorrow will be won by those with better and faster information logistics systems. Systems that can collect larger quantities of data, analyze and execute relevant actions faster.

The new F-35 fighter jet in the USA’s arsenal has over 24 million lines of software code running it. Why? It requires sensors, computers and sofware just to keep it in the air. Code is required to process all the data fast enough to augment the pilot’s skills. In addition, the F-35 comes with a $500,000 custom helmet that provides a 360-degree view of the operational environment, and displays so much data pilots have reported suffering dizziness from information overload. We have hit the wall of human capabilities, and we are only getting started.

The late military strategist and US Air force Colonel John Boyd, taught a key advantage in air combat was to get “inside” an opponent's decision curve. That means to understand the true situation faster, and then make better decisions quicker than an opponent. He taught that humans need a simple formula for quick thinking. His formula was OODA (observe, orient, decide and act). He taught a continuous cycle of observing a situation, orienting or understanding it, deciding what needs to happen and then acting quickly. He taught that competitors executing OODA cycles faster than opponents had the advantage. The OODA quick thinking process is proven, and has now made the leap from human time to computer time via artificial intelligence.

The leap from human time to computer time has relevance in business today, especially in the age of Mobile Me, where consumer’s expectations for mobile app performances demand instant responses. Mobile apps and real-time consumer interactions are now in the realm of the F-35. Consumers today demand more real-time information processing, decision-making and business process execution than are humanly possible without computer and software augmentation operating beyond the limitations of human time, and into the future of computer time.

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Watch my latest video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uF2ntnskHA&feature=youtu.be.

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Kevin Benedict

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The Role of Sensors, Real-Time BI, Big Data and Personalization in Mobile Commerce: The Report and the Video

I just completed a video that accompanies my latest research on mobile consumer behaviors, and the strategies retailers must implement. If you design, develop or deploy customer facing apps, this content is relevant and important.

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Kevin Benedict

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Human Thinking vs Technology - Digital Intrusions

In a world filled with millions of instances of hyper-stimulating digital content - thinking, learning and the development of intellectual assets suffer. In a recent article I authored titled, It’sTime to Make Technology Disappear, I shared that technology has increasingly become a hindrance to my thinking, a distraction to thoughtful, productive work. I love technology, but it has reached the point where it has overwhelmed my senses, and I doubt I am the only one.

Thoughtful thinking, and by that I mean thinking that utilizes analysis, comparisons, judgment, creativity, planning, forecasting and imagining requires dedicated time to ponder, formulate and connect ideas and thoughts. These activities require a mental focus void of interruptions.

I had the opportunity to manage teams of programmers for many years. You quickly learn that quality programming requires dedicated time absent from distraction. I read once that programmers, if interrupted, take 20 minutes to fully return to the level of mental concentration they had before interruption. This is one of many reasons I turn off nearly all sound and visual alerts on my laptop and mobile devices. It is hard enough focusing my own brain for long periods of time, let alone being bombarded by digital distractions.

In our personal multi-screen lives filled with alerts, notifications, reminders, news flashes, advertisements and 24x7 communications via smartphones and social media, it is easy to lose the storyline we each want for our own lives. Our personal storyline is our past, present and future. It is the story we want our lives to tell. Recognizing our past storyline, determining how we want to change, and then ensuring we are taking the necessary steps to live it, takes focused thinking and time – all things we quickly lose under the onslaught of digital glimpses and instances.

In our professional lives we often have specific and routine deliverables, plus the increasing request to help our employers innovate, create, invent and digitally transform. Our routine deliverables and tasks often benefit greatly from technology that improves productivity (and by the way can often be done by robots), but unless we can “make technology disappear” into the background, it inhibits our human ability to think thoughtfully about important future business and digital transformation issues. If we are to claim and protect our humanity amongst all of the digital distractions, we are going to need to figure out a way to control both our technologies and ourselves.

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Kevin Benedict

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It's Time for Technology to Disappear

In 2015, technology reached the tipping point for me, it moved from the efficient column, to the inefficient column, from a pro to a con, from a help to a hindrance. You can hear it in every complaint about how email messages are overwhelming our day, interfering with priorities, impacting our schedules, hurting our productivity and forcing more of us to take our work home at night and over the weekend.

In 2016, technology needs to disappear into the background, while productivity and purpose should be the siren's call. We have approximately 700,000 hours between our birth and our death. About 350,000 of those hours are spent in our careers. How many of those hours do we want to waste on poor technology experiences? I propose the following technologies must disappear, and by disappear I mean fade into the background:

We shouldn’t have to read through hundreds of useless email messages to find the three necessary to complete our job. Communications need to change and email must disappear behind a veil of utility and productivity.
We shouldn’t have to check dozens of different locations, apps and websites to communicate with our work colleagues and friends. All of these various collaboration and communication platforms need to disappear into a consolidated and efficient aggregated solution like Slack.
Communication technologies should disappear into the background, and the quality and utility of the message improved by technologies.
Email and meeting driven schedules must disappear, in favor of schedules that honor purpose and deliverables. This may mean prioritizing thinking time and mental productivity. Scientists agree that the creative parts of our minds work better at different times of the day. Those times need to be reserved, blocked and honored on schedules, to optimize their utility.
The requirement to develop, store and retrieve dozens of different passwords and user names must disappear. The ability to accurately authenticate a user must become more efficient and secure.
Trivial messages and alerts from hundreds of different sources arriving 24 hours a day must disappear. Trivial messages and an urge to immediately respond must not be allowed to negatively impact our thinking, creating, planning, sleeping, loving, relationship building, driving and the handling of dangerous equipment.
On-premise IT solutions, hardware and apps that serve to distract from the business, and offer no additional business value, competitive advantages or market agility must disappear into the cloud.
The 200+ mobile applications on my iPhone must disappear into an artificial intelligence engine (think advanced Siri) that will access their functionality and assist me even before I ask.
Mobile applications that are not personalized, and are not contextually relevant should disappear. I don’t care what you sell, if I am not interested, or it is not relevant to me, I don't want to see it.
The routine process work I do on my computer must go away. Intelligent process automation should be pushed down to individuals. An AMX mobile app should process my expenses without me. It should only alert me to exceptions, not the routine.
Everyone agrees that ideas, creativity and innovation are critical to the success of businesses, but technologies today are more often a hindrance than help in these efforts. Technologies and the use of technologies that hinder creativity and innovation must disappear.

In the lifecycle of technologies, there is a time when users are enthralled and distracted by the technology itself, we are there today, but these times must quickly pass and the technology must disappear into the background. In the year 2016, it should be all about making 2015’s technology disappear.

The challenge with making technology disappear, is it is hard, time consuming and expensive. Adding a layer of artificial intelligence, that can analyze data, understand context and personalize an experience is complex and hard, but that is how technology disappears.
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Kevin Benedict

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Time, Speed and Space - Mobile vs. Static Apps

Most of today’s technology was designed and developed for static, stationary environments. Even today, in a mobile world, mobile apps are most often developed based on assumed static endpoints. Why is that a problem? We are rarely static people.

Let’s consider two people in a vehicle. The driver, assuming they use their smartphone only when safely parked, searches for places, locations and directions based on a static starting point. However, if the person searching for places, locations and directions is a passenger in a moving car, a different set of information is appropriate. One based on movement, speed, direction, intersections, changing distances, etc. How should those variables change the way mobile apps are designed?

If you want to meet up with friends or family members who are travelling, in transit, or commuting, today’s mobile apps require you to select a stationary physical address in order to provide a map and direction. Mobile apps designed with static assumptions are not going to help you coordinate an intersection point based on time, space and speed. What if you want to meet as soon as possible to exchange children after a soccer game? Today’s apps are not going to help.

What if you want to meet up with a mobile business? Someone who sells handmade jewelry or crafts at different locations everyday? Wouldn’t it be useful to search and find a real-time and accurate address, rather than a static, out of date, physical address?

If you are working outdoors, or in a hardhat industry, you will often need to coordinate with contractors and subcontractors bringing specialized equipment and materials to a jobsite. Often these moving parts must all come together at once in order to complete a project. Wouldn’t it be useful if your project management software were using real-time dynamic information (GPS, IoT sensors, mobile apps, etc.) that utilized real-world times, space and speeds to update schedules dynamically?

Calendars apps assume static locations and times, but is that how the real world works? What if we assumed constant motion, changing variables, obstacles and dynamic schedules? You know, like in the real world. How would your mobile calendar apps behave differently?

A transformation in thinking and design needs to take place, one based on the real world, rather than on static models.
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Kevin Benedict

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My Best Articles on Mobile Commerce Strategies 2015

In 2015, a master strategy for mobile commerce emerged. Mobile apps need to be personalized, but that is not enough. Personalization without context, relevance, value to the customer and permission is just creepy and/or obnoxious. We recognized a new kind of partnership is required between customers and trusted vendors. One that requires a deeper level of earned trust, and one that provides mutual benefits through the sharing of data. We call this relationship a MME Data Partnership.

Parts of MME Data Partnerships can be found within many existing loyalty and rewards programs. Although the purpose is rarely understood. These programs define how the collection and use of specific data will be used to provide mutual benefits. It is an overt agreement by both parties to share and use data in return for defined rewards. Within a MME Data Partnership we found three types of data, we call 3D-Me, are needed to optimize a mobile user experience:

Digital data - online and mobile activities and behaviors
Physical data - Sensor and IoT
Personal data - MME Data Partnerships

For each of these categories purposeful strategies need to be developed and implemented to collect, analyze and utilize the data in order to provide the best experiences for customers.

Personalization, as we have learned, is not enough. Personalization needs to be combined with CROME Triggers (contextually relevant opportunities, moments and environments), which are bits of data that when collected and analyzed in real-time, identify the need for specific and relevant personalized content.

All of these strategies and more are discussed in "The Best of Mobile Commerce 2015" articles listed below:

Download the full report, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me" here: http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf.

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Kevin Benedict

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Instantly Personalizing Mobile Apps - Cutting Through Chaos

Unique Consumers and Unique Profiles

Smartphones, laptops, PCs and in-store visits have made path-to-purchase journeys very complex and confusing for online retailers to recognize and support. Consumers can search and discover products and services using a smartphone on their way to work. In the evening they can pull out a tablet and engage in immersive research while laying in bed. They may decide to review some more on their desktop at work, then at lunch time stop at a brick and mortar store to look at the product in more detail. That evening, they purchase the product online using a laptop. How is a retailer or e-tailer going to cut through this chaos and recognize individual consumers and their needs along their path-to-purchase journey?

In our research at Cognizant's "Center for the Future of Work" we found online shoppers use different devices for different categories of products. In fact, 56% of online shoppers use multiple devices on many online path-to-purchase journeys. On the go search and discovery is often initiated on smartphones, immerse research on tablets, while completing transactions on laptops is a common pattern.

Some products consumers are comfortable purchasing on a smartphone, others not. We found online shoppers of different ages exhibit markedly different shopping behaviors. We found significantly different online shopping behaviors between those with different education levels, genders, ethnicity and technology preferences (laptop/desktop vs. mobile).

Our findings reveal these variables, all added up, equate to thousands, if not millions of different combinations of needs, preferences, unique activities and behaviors. These unique set of variables we call Mobile Me Profiles (MME-Ps), require different personalized content, at different times and locations, for each consumer in order to provide an optimal experience. In this age of "mobile me" where customers demand personalized and relevant user experiences, it is necessary to identify these differences, precisely and instantly.

If you are going to compete and win in mobile commerce today, you must target markets of one. It is no longer an effective strategy to treat your customers as one homogeneous market of unknown consumers. In today's world of mobile commerce, where devices are intimate extensions of unique individuals, knowing those individuals, as individuals is key.

Read more on how to deliver these strategies in my new report, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me."

Download the report here http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf.

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Kevin Benedict

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Mobile Technologies Revealed: Web and Native App Development Strategies

Our resident Cognizant mobile and digital technology guru, Peter Rogers, shares his insights into web and native app development strategies in this guest post: Enjoy!
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Peter Rogers

I often meet customers who want to transition web developers into mobile application developers. Apple has clearly tried to address this market using Swift but that does not offer a cross platform solution. Developers who have come through this transition will traditionally wrap the latest and greatest web framework (like Angular 2 or React) using Adobe Cordova through initiatives like Ionic. However great the latest web frameworks are though they can never compete with pure native mobile user interfaces powered by dedicated hardware acceleration. It may be a simple solution but the net result is never going to be present the best possible user experience and there will always be problems with Apple App Store submission and changes to WebView technologies designed to gently nudge developers towards pure native Apps.

Appcelerator Titanium has long since offered an excellent solution in this space but the only downside is the lack of a combined desktop and mobile solution.

Recently three new exciting initiatives arrived to offer new Titanium-like solutions in this space:

1. React Native (http://www.reactnative.com/)
2. Angular 2 Native Apps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SbiiyRSIwo)
3. NativeScript (https://www.nativescript.org/)

The benefit of the first two is that the technology can be shared across both mobile and desktop effectively. There is no learning a new framework. For the web developers who are trained in Angular 2 or React then this is a very attractive solution for transition to mobile development without having to go anywhere near Cordova. In fact in most cases all you have to do is to swap out the final Cordova Wrapping process for a dedicated Web Native Development phase, which means you don’t have to throw anything away.

How does this magic work? Well advanced web developers have already started to mix Angular and React: using the big framework quality of Angular and the high speed rendering of React. This architecture is made even simpler with Angular 2 in which there is platform-agnostic template parsing and platform-specific rendering. This makes it possible to plug in React Native or NativeScript as the underlying rendering engine. This offers a future in which Angular 2 can create cross-platform desktop or cross-platform mobile applications, allowing you to choose your programming language (ECMAScript 5.1, ECMAScript 2015, TypeScript, Dart or CoffeeScript) and choose your platform-specific rendering engine (React Native, NativeScript, Angular 1, Angular 2 or React). For those who wrote off Angular 2 due to radical design changes then suddenly that decision is looking incredible hasty, for it is nothing short of genius.

If you watch the Angular 2 Native App video then you will see the focus around NativeScript. The question is why not consider Titanium or React Native? Whilst that is perfectly possible using the plug and play nature of the new Angular 2 rendering engine there is a clear advantage offered by NativeScript. To understand this advantage we need to take a slight diversion into Hybrid App world. As you may recall there are three main models for Hybrid Apps: wrapped web; runtime interpreters; and cross-compilers. If we start with cross-compilers then we will find Xamarin ruling the roost but I would not call this a Rapid Application Development approach. You trade performance for a slightly longer development time and a more difficult programming language. The interesting thing with Xamarin is the 100% API coverage available within a few days. There are also a few HTML 5 canvas cross-compilers like those found in Intel XDK but these are specific to Canvas technology which works better for the specific use case of widgets and games. We all know the most popular wrapped web solution is Cordova, with another notable entry being IBM Worklight.

Runtime Interpreter solutions do not quite offer the performance of a cross-compiler but they do offer support for rapid application development through JavaScript. Appcelerator Titanium is the most popular Runtime Interpreter solution and has teased a cross-compiler solution called HyperLoop for a long time but it is offered in a restricted capacity. I am a huge fan of Titanium and have used it a lot for various customers. I was really looking forward to HyperLoop but looking at the software repository then it seems to have slowed down to a halt. The only downside of Titanium is the lack of 100% API coverage but this is a shared limitation with most other portable native solutions with Xamarin and NativeScript being the notable alternatives. Now in the case of Xamarin the API wiring has to be performed by hand however in NativeScript then it is automatic.

So what is the magic of the Runtime Interpreter solution powering Titanium, Kony, React Native and NativeScript? Well Telerik (who created NativeScript) provide the best explanation that I have quite possibly ever read before online (http://developer.telerik.com/featured/nativescript-works/). In a nutshell the two core JavaScript engines that power iOS (JavaScript Core) and Android (V8) both expose a very advanced set of APIs that power the JavaScript bridge (http://izs.me/v8-docs/namespacev8.html).

· Inject new objects into the global namespace
· JavaScript function callbacks
· JNI to talk with the C layer on Android

NativeScript offers the following explanation of how it uses these APIs in order to build the JavaScript bridge:

1) Metadata is injected into the global namespace at build-time
2) The V8/JavaScript Core function callback runs.
3) The NativeScript runtime uses its metadata to know that the JavaScript function calls means it needs to instantiate an Android/iOS native object
4) The NativeScript runtime uses the JNI to instantiate an Android object and keeps a reference to it (iOS can talk directly to the C layer)
5) The NativeScript runtime returns a JavaScript object that proxies the Android/iOS object.
6) Control returns to JavaScript where the proxy object gets stored as a local variable.

This is probably quite similar for most of the other vendors but the additional step that NativeScript adds is the ability to dynamically build the API set at build time using Reflection (introspection). Because generating this data is non-trivial from a performance perspective, NativeScript does it ahead of time, and embeds the pre-generated metadata during the Android/iOS build step. This is why NativeScript can offer 100% API coverage immediately because it does not involve the manual step required in Xamarin. To be accurate it is unlikely that NativeScript can offer 100% API but instead it will offer all of the APIs that can be discovered through reflection – there is a subtle difference here as those who have use reflection programmatically will pick up on.

NativeScript offers two different modes of operation:

1) Use the low level iOS and Android objects directly
2) Use high level abstraction APIs

The high level abstraction APIs are provided as RequireJS modules and allow you to work at a higher level of abstraction. If you were wiring this into Angular 2 then you would probably have an Angular component which either calls a Browser Object or an NS Module, which itself talks to either an iOS proxy object or an Android proxy object through NativeScript. Of course there is nothing to stop you having an Angular component that calls out to React Native and that option is being explored as well.

This is not to say that NativeScript is better than React Native, Titanium or Xamarin. In fact I can see the main use case of NativeScript as being used inside of Angular 2 as its platform specific rendering solution. I can actually see more people using React Native as a standalone solution even though it is in a much earlier state. I can also see Titanium carrying on as one of the most popular mobile solutions on the market today. I can however see native mobile web applications becoming a hot new topic and a great place to transition web developers towards.

Download the latest mobile strategies research paper, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me," here http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf
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Kevin Benedict

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Latest Research on Mobile Consumer Behaviors and Mobile App Requirements

I just finished a major research paper titled, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me." Our findings reveal current mobile consumer behaviors, the challenges in creating mobile apps for them, and specific recommendations and business strategies for winning in an age of "Mobile Me." Download the full report here http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/IqN6NbY_Q0A
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Kevin Benedict

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Beacon Essentials You Must Quickly Learn

Our resident Cognizant digital/mobile expert, Peter Rogers, asked me to recommend a digital strategies topic to share, and I suggested Beacons for this week. I confess to reading about them daily without knowing much about them, so I want to thank Peter for this article! Enjoy!
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Digital & Mobile Expert
Peter Rogers

Let's start with a Basic Beacons 101 class:

Beacons do not push out notifications. They broadcast an advertisement of themselves (traditionally their UUID, major and minor values) and can be detected by Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices.
The proximity from a number of Beacons can be measured using typical triangulation techniques in order to get a (very) rough idea of (typically) indoor location.
The Beacon UUID, major and minor version values are typically used for identification and used to map to either a message, service, media content, website, application or location inside the Native App.
Beacons can have their UUID, major and minor versions (and indeed power level) modified statically before deployment or dynamically using WiFi connectivity. A Beacon Management App is often provided by a Beacon Platform Vendor to allow you to manage these values dynamically.
Updating the Beacon major and minor values can be used to update the identity of the Beacons and subsequently change what they map to inside the Native App. This does mean there is a security risk of somebody remotely hacking your Beacons and changing their values to take down or corrupt your service.
iBeacon is Apple’s proprietary BLE profile but their patents seem to cover more than just the profile aspect. There were Beacons before iBeacons. Apple did not invent the Beacon. What they did is an incredibly good job of integrating Beacon support into iOS. iBeacon is not a piece of hardware. It is a BLE profile that is loaded onto a piece of hardware. This profile makes the Beacon an iBeacon.
There are many Beacon vendors who offer various capabilities such as: BlueCats; BlueSense; Gelo; Kontakt.io; Glimworm; Sensorberg; Sonic Notify; beaconstac; mibeacon (Mubaloo); estimote; Gimbal (Qualcomm); Apple; and Google, etc.

Beacon vendors offer various difference offerings such as:

hardware
proprietary BLE Beacon profiles
support for popular profiles
remote Beacon management
analytics
associated content management
marketing campaigns
software version management
profile switching
client side SDKs
professional support services

Most do not offer the whole solution, and so it was interesting to see Apple and then Google throw their hat into the ring. Most people are still really excited about Apple’s iBeacons, but they look like they will become a closed eco-system which could possibly even include being able to be physically undetectable to non-Apple hardware. Today Beacon vendors are just not allowed to provide library based support for iBeacons on Android hardware (http://beekn.net/2014/07/ibeacon-for-android/).

At the start of 2015 Google created a new form of Beacon called UriBeacon (http://uribeacon.io/) which was able to actually advertise a URL pointing to a website or a URL that could be processed locally. This was in stark contrast to all the previous forms of Beacon which could only advertise their identity (UUID, minor, major). UriBeacons also promised to be cheaper and easier to configure, which was largely down to their more limited use case of just being used to advertise a URL/URI. The killer concept, however, was that of The Physical Web. The Physical Web is an approach to unleash the core superpower of the web: interaction on demand. People should be able to walk up to any smart device and not have to download an app first. A small pre-installed App (like the Web Browser or something Operating System level) on the phone scans for URLs that are nearby. Google previously used the UriBeacon format to find nearby URLs without requiring any centralized registrar.

This was a major breakthrough because having to download an App for each Beacon vendor completely breaks the organic, intelligent, evolutionary Smart City model. Notice that I used the words ‘without having to download an App’. You still need an App to process the UriBeacons, however, this can be built into the Web Browser (Chrome offers this for iOS) or the Operating System (Android M offers this). The following vendors offer UriBeacons: Blesh; BKON; iBliO; KST; and twocanoes, etc.

Recently Google updated their single-case UriBeacon specification to that of Eddystone. Eddystone is an open-source cross-platform beacon solution that supports broadcasting of UUID, URL, EIDs and Telemetry data. Previously Beacons had only supported UUID until UriBeacons offered the single option of URL advertisement. Eddystone offers an additional two frame types: Ephemeral ID is an ID which changes frequently and is only available to an authorised app; Telemetry is data about the beacon or attached sensors: e.g. battery life, temperature, humidity. Unlike iBeacons, which must be approved by Apple, anyone can make an Eddystone-compatible beacon. Current beacon manufacturers include: Estimote; Kontakt; and Radius Networks, etc.

The Eddystone-URL frame broadcasts a URL using a compressed encoding format in order to fit more within the limited advertisement packet. Once decoded, the URL can be used by any client with access to the internet. For example, if an Eddystone-URL beacon were to broadcast A URL then any client that received this packet and with an Internet connection could choose to visit that URL (probably over WiFi). You can use an App to manage that experience and either take you directly to the URL or process a URI internally to perform some other function without network connectivity. Better still The Physical Web initiative has moved away from UriBeacon to the open initiative of Eddystone.

Now one thing to realise is that Eddystone may support iOS but that obviously does not include integration with CoreLocation as per iBeacons. Eddystone beacons only interact with iOS devices via CoreBluetooth which means you have more work to do. Likewise, on Android M there are a whole bunch of new APIs and those will not be available on iOS.

The Nearby API makes it easy for apps to find and communicate with beacons to get specific information and context. Apparently it uses a combination of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and inaudible sound.
Nearby provides a proximity API called Nearby Messages in which iOS devices, Android devices and Beacons can discover, communicate and share data/content with each other.
The Proximity Beacon API helps developers to manage data and content associated with Beacons. Once Beacons are registered with Google's Proximity Beacon API then we can map data and content that can be pulled from the Cloud using a REST interface. This makes Content Management Solutions much easier and gives us the ability to dynamically map content available to Beacons. This functionality will most probably be supported in the Physical Web through Web Browsers clients that support this API through JavaScript.
Place Picker is an extension of Places API that can show Beacons in your immediate vicinity. The Places API is also able to read and write Beacon positioning information (GPS coordinates, indoor floor level, etc.) from/to the Google Places database using a unique Place ID based around the Beacon UUID and then have the Beacons navigable though Google Maps. This would provide a much better retail solution where customers could literally Google “Hair Shampoo” inside a Boots store and be taken directly to the product using indoor positioning.

I am sure you have many questions such as, can a Beacon run iBeacon and Eddystone simultaneously. At the moment the Beacon vendors offer the ability to support both profiles but not simultaneously. This is apparently due to battery usage. Most vendors do seem to support simultaneous broadcast of UUID, URL and Telemetrics within Eddystone though. For any other questions then here is a fantastic Q&A on Eddystone from Kontakt.io (http://kontakt.io/blog/eddystone-faq/).

The Physical Web has now moved away from UriBeacon and onto Eddystone-URL frames. A few months ago, Chrome for iOS added a Today widget. The new Chrome for iOS integrates the Physical Web into the Chrome Today widget, enabling users to access an on-demand list of web content that is relevant to their surroundings. The Physical Web displays content that is broadcasted using Eddystone-URL format. You can add your content to the Physical Web by simply configuring a beacon that supports Eddystone-URL to transmit your URL of choice. When users who have enabled the Physical Web open the Today view, the Chrome widget scans for broadcasted URLs and displays these results, using estimated proximity of the beacons to rank the content.

The Physical Web also support finding URLs through Wifi using mDNS (and uPnP). The multicast Domain Name System (mDNS) resolves host names to IP addresses within small networks that do not include a local name server. It is a zero-configuration service, using essentially the same programming interfaces, packet formats and operating semantics as DNS. While designed by Stuart Cheshire to be stand-alone capable, it can work in concert with DNS servers. The mDNS protocol is implemented by the Apple Bonjour and by Linux nss-mdns services. In other words rather than waiting for your client to discover a Beacon advertising a UUID or URL then you could actually start searching for local services hosted on Beacons using a multicast form of DNS. Beacons are actually more powerful than most people realise and can often run micro-services on them. In fact if we think about it then Beacon based services are the ultimate form of a micro-service architecture. Brillo is an upcoming Android-based operating system for IoT devices and this lightweight OS could theoretically run on a Beacon which would enable a portable way of deploying a Beacon based micro-service architecture.

When you woke up this morning did you honestly think that Beacons were that powerful?

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Analyst and World Traveler

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The 18 Laws for Winning with Data, Speed and Mobility

I have given nine presentations in the past 10 days on mobile and data strategies. I have met with companies in the energy, media, insurance and banking industries. I have brainstormed and discussed these laws for winning with data, speed and mobility, and they have held up. In the age of mobile me, where information is the prize, a new set of laws and strategies are required to win. In my new report, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me," I discuss many of these laws and how they are applied in mobile apps and mobile commerce.

Data is the modern commercial battlefield.
Information dominance is the strategic goal.
Real-time operations and tempos are the targets.
Advantages in speed, analytics, business operational tempos determine the winners.
Real-time business speed is enabled by advances in mobile information, sensors and wireless communications.
Competition is now focused on optimizing information logistics systems (the systems involved in maximizing information advantages).
Businesses that can “understand and act with speed” dominate those which are slower.
In order to win or gain superiority over competitors in the age of information, you must operate information logistics systems at a faster tempo, and get inside your competitor's decision curves. (Adapted from John Boyd)
Situational awareness enables insights, innovations and operations to be conducted faster and at lower cost .
Principle of Acceleration & Mobility – As demand for mobile apps increases, an even greater demand for changes will occur across business processes, operations and IT.
The more data that is collected and analyzed, the greater the economic value and innovation opportunity it has in aggregate.
Data has a shelf-life, and the economic value of data diminishes quickly over time.
The economic value of information multiplies when combined with context and right time delivery.
Mobile apps provide only as much value as the systems behind them.
Full Spectrum Information: Winners will dominate by collecting, transmitting, analyzing, reporting and automating decision making faster and better.
The size of opponents and their systems and platforms are less representative of power today, than the quality of their sensor systems, mobile communication links and their ability to use information to their advantage.
Information is a new asset class, in that it has measurable economic value. There are significant strategic, operational and financial reasons for investing in it, and optimizing it. (Douglas Laney, Gartner)
If I can develop and pursue my plan to defeat you faster than you can execute your plan to defeat me, then your plan in unimportant. ~ Robert Leonard

These laws need to be known, and their relevance intimately understood and applied to every aspect of business and IT today.

Download the new report "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me" - http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf

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Kevin Benedict

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Data Collection and the Modern Battlefields of Business

Dr. John Snow's Map

In 1854 Cholera broke out in the Soho neighborhood of London. Hundreds of people were struck down and died within days. No one, at the time understood where the disease came from, how to treat it or how it was transmitted.

A local physician, Dr. John Snow spent every possible moment of his day studying the victims and data in an attempt to understand the disease. His biggest challenge was a lack of data. He had only the list of the dead and a blank map of the neighborhood. What he needed was more data. This was solved when he met the local priest, Henry Whitehouse. Whitehouse had recorded the time of death, and the location where all the families lived and died. When these sources of data where combined, and then overlaid on a map, visual patterns emerged which ultimately led the two to see the common denominator for all the victims was drinking contaminated water from the Broad Street water pump.

The pump handle was removed, people stopped drinking its water, and the disease burned out. Dr. John Snow is now recognized as one of the fathers of modern epidemiology. The data that led to his discoveries were:

Victims
Relationships
Locations
Time of illness
Time of death
Behaviors and patterns of life

Adding all of these data sources to a map, for visual reference and clarity, enabled the insight that ultimately revealed the source and means of transmission of the disease. Minus key data sources, the disease would have remained a mystery and many more people would have died.

In business, many challenges and obstacles today can also be solved with better data collection strategies and enhanced analytics. We have all heard the phrase, "knowledge is power." Knowledge comes from data, so data is power.

I sincerely believe that the battlefields of business today are around data. The winners of today and tomorrow will be those better able to collect, analyze, understand and apply data to the customization and personalization of digital interactions. My colleagues Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig and Ben Pring wrote the book "Code Halos" last year to dive deep into these ideas.

Last week I published a new thought leadership whitepaper on the application of real-time data strategies and analytics to mobile commerce and consumer facing mobile applications. The paper is titled, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me." You can download the whitepaper here http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Analyst and World Traveler

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Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me - New Report

Supporting real-time enterprise mobility that is personalized and contextually relevant takes a lot of work. In fact, it takes digital transformation. We have all grown accustomed to using personal consumer apps that know and understand us (think airline apps and Netflix), our preferences and provide contextually relevant content. Today, we expect the same from all of our apps both consumer and enterprise.

Download the full report here "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me".

Ninety percent of mobile users highly value personalized mobile experiences. In order to deliver these experiences one must have real-time data collection, analytics, personalization engines and mobile applications capable of supporting real-time personalization. One must also have an operational tempo within their IT systems and business processes capable of supporting real-time. These capabilities make possible innovative new business processes that provide significant competitive advantages for businesses that embrace them.

Delivering a personalized experience, however, requires data and lots of it. We have identified three key information rich sources of this data we call 3D-Me data sources:

Digital – online activities, preferences, sentiment and profiles
Physical – data collected from IoT sensors (on vehicles, buildings, equipment, wearables, smartphones, etc.)
Personal – user preferences, roles, jobs, skills, locations, etc.

3D-Me data sources enable enterprises to collect the right data to gain an understanding of real-time activities, and insights into the needs of their users. One of the key ingredients of a 3D-Me data source strategy is users must agree to share personal data in exchange for value. This requires a new kind of enterprise/user relationships we call MME Data Partnerships.
Personalized experiences are not the whole story. End users want contextually relevant personalization. Personalization becomes relevant when you add time, context and location to it. Sending me an SMS alert that my local coffee shop is offering my favorite hot drink at a 50% discount for the next 45 minutes is not relevant if I am on the other side of the country. Relevant personalization requires the use of data triggers that identify contextually relevant opportunities, moments and environments (CROME). CROME triggers are bits of data that provide context, which can be used to provide relevant personalization at a specific time and place. Think geo-fencing jobsites.

These CROME triggers provided the data that when analyzed, understood and integrated with relevant personalization engines, can optimize the user's experience and productivity on the job.

CROME triggers can automatically deliver the right content at the right time. They can be connected to tasks, jobs, timesheets, etc. There are at least six tasks/challenges when implementing a CROME strategies:

Identify the required CROME triggers
Understand the meaning of each CROME trigger
Understand where and how CROME triggers can be placed, collected and transmitted
Monitor and analyze CROME triggers in real-time
Connect specific CROME triggers to specific personalization options and business value
Provide CROME powered personalization in mobile experiences

CROME triggers inform that something different and perhaps significant is happening. Finding the meaning, and then relating it to a particular personalization task or action follows.

The implementation of 3D-ME enabled data and personalization strategies and CROME triggers, all supported by IT systems and business processes running at real-time operational tempos will help companies deliver to the highest expectations of mobile users today and tomorrow.

Download the full report here http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf.
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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Analyst and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

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Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Fast Tempos and Digital Transformation

Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time

The Role of Sensors, Real-Time BI, Big Data and Personalization in Mobile Commerce: The Report and the Video

Human Thinking vs Technology - Digital Intrusions

It's Time for Technology to Disappear

Time, Speed and Space - Mobile vs. Static Apps

My Best Articles on Mobile Commerce Strategies 2015

Instantly Personalizing Mobile Apps - Cutting Through Chaos

Mobile Technologies Revealed: Web and Native App Development Strategies

Latest Research on Mobile Consumer Behaviors and Mobile App Requirements

Beacon Essentials You Must Quickly Learn

The 18 Laws for Winning with Data, Speed and Mobility

Data Collection and the Modern Battlefields of Business

Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me - New Report

Interviews with Kevin Benedict

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