Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Enterprise Mobility Challenges from the Experts

Interview, Interview, Interview

In the past several months I have interviewed 15 mobility experts from Australia, Finland, Germany, Sweden, USA, Canada and the UK. I asked each of these experts what were the biggest challenges they were seeing in the enterprise mobility market. These are their answers:

Kimmo Jarvinsivu, Newelo: Usability and integration. If your end-users are not happy about the mobilization possibility, they are not going to use it. And if you can't integrate (and change integration) easily, your information systems will not be up-to-date and information in those is useless. From the corporate point of view, it is important to take into account the fragmented situation in the mobile device market. Corporates need to use existing mobile devices (both personal and corporate owned), but also be prepared for the future (new devices).

Jack Chawla, SAP: In enterprise mobility, we need to make it easier for developers to write mobile apps without having to worry about enterprise security, scalability, data sync, device support, etc. Enterprise developers should be able to write apps as easily as consumer app developers.

Malachy Martin, AMT-Sybex: We all have a 9:00 am to 5:00 pm day job, but what about our 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm personal life? For example, one of the most popular mobile apps in the UK last year was called, Tube Exits. It is a simple but brilliant mobile application that lists all London Underground stations and lines, and tells you which carriage you need to sit in to be able to get off right at the exit. This application offers value to people wanting to get home quickly after work. Consumer driven mobile application like Tube Exits will influence user expectations for enterprise mobility applications. Also, companies must figure out how to accommodate personal liable devices.

Puneet Suppal, SAP: Lack of governance. All the technology is there, but companies need to manage it. I define governance as a comprehensive approach that makes sure the appropriate level of security is implemented, device management, data management, etc. Many companies still must understand the importance of mobile device management. It cannot be over emphasized. The same mobile device (smartphone) often holds both important corporate data and personal data. That means confidential enterprise data is on personal devices. How is that going to be managed? Much of the work people do every day is now on their mobile devices.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phone +1 208-991-4410

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Skanska Optimizes Mobile Workforce Management

I read this week that Skanska, a

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Challenges in Enterprise Mobility Today

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

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Kevin Benedict,Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 14, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SAP Enterprise Mobility in the Cloud

Some kinds of solutions just seem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starbucks Card Mobile Payment

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

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

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

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

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

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Phones, Cameras and Enterprise Mobility

Touch Inspect

I believe that enterprises are not yet taking full advantage of the cameras and video capabilities on mobile devices. I also believe the saying, "A picture paints a thousand words." The attached image of the fire hydrant as seen in the mobile application, Touch Inspect from Mobile Epiphany demonstrates how a quick photo, with quick photo editing tools, can communicate a great deal of information.

I also predict that as more applications like the iPhone's FaceTime become available you will see more mobile applications within the services sector integrate them into their solutions. Not only can these digital cameras be used to record work, but connected to a GPS enabled devices, they can help document compliance, monitor SLAs, help in training and provide real-time and onsite expert advice.

This 2nd image demonstrates how I believe a junior service technician could utilize a live video feed to communicate with an experienced expert back at the office. The expert can watch the live video feed from the remote jobsite and quickly help the less experienced service technician complete their work.

What do you think? Do you think digital cameras and video capabilities on mobile devices are still under utilized?

Whitepaper of Note: Networked Field Services

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of February 15, 2011

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

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

Google’s strong fourth quarter earnings proved that it is now firmly ensconced in e-commerce, and also showed that, with its Android operating system and related apps, it is smoothly transitioning to the mobile world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/technology/21google.html?src=busln

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Mobile commerce may be maturing at a quicker rate than many experts have predicted, according to a report from Adobe Scene7. Sixty-two percent of consumers with web connected mobile devices have purchased merchandise in a wide range of product categories using their mobile devices.

http://www.internetretailer.com/2011/02/10/62-consumers-have-purchased-goods-mobile-device

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Three quarters of U.S. brands surveyed by the Association of National Advertisers/Mobile Marketing Association say they plan to up their spending on mobile marketing initiatives by some 60 percent this year, while close to 90 percent will deploy mobile marketing initiatives.

http://brand-e.biz/could-do-better-on-mobile-marketing_11526.html

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By the end of 2011, an estimated one billion people around the world will be connected to the mobile web and 50 percent of all Americans will own a smartphone.

On Thursday, February 17th, at 1 PM EST, I will be opening a webinar with a discussion on the biggest challenges in enterprise mobility today. Not just my opinions, but the opinions of over a dozen mobility experts that I have interviewed recently. I will be the first presenter, and then handing it over to Steve Levy, CEO of Pyxis Mobile to discuss The Latest Thinking and Strategies for Deploying Flexible Mobile Solutions - The Four Big Issues for Mobilizing SAP and Other Enterprise Systems.I invite you to participate by registering here.

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: 10seconds Software's Greg Donaldson, Part 2

Greg Donaldson

This is Part 2 of an interview with Greg Donaldson of 10seconds Software. You can read Part 1 here.

Kevin: What do companies fail to plan for when implementing mobility?
Greg: First, let me explain that we provide both a desktop and a mobile version of our software. It seems that companies still use the desktop the most. Consider the entire work week. If a manager is traveling for two days out of five, they may need a mobile application for two days, but they would rather use their laptop or desktop during the three days in the office. A company needs to think of the entire work week. Many of our applications are simplified versions of an ERP. Managers would rather access SAP through our simplified interfaces. They don’t need to see the entire SAP ERP, just the parts they need to see in order to do their jobs.

Kevin: What advice do you have for companies just starting down an enterprise mobility path?
Greg: 1) Understand how you will connect to devices and how you will secure them, 2) Start with a simple mobile application and get an easy win (a good success), 3) Focus on a great user experience, and 4) Look for a packaged app (or off the shelf) to start. Building a complete enterprise quality mobile application yourself requires a huge amount of effort, and much of it has no business value for a one time development project. Find a packaged application for a quick and easy implementation.

Kevin: How important is mobile device management and security?
Greg: Very important. Have the right infrastructure in place to protect your data before you implement mobility. There are thousands of ways to connect to a back end system, so the company first needs to decide how they want to connect.

10seconds Software's
Greg Donaldson

I want to introduce Greg Donaldson from 10seconds Software to you. He is the Founder and Director of the Australian mobility company, 10seconds Software, a company he started two years ago and now serves as the chief solution architect.

Greg has been working around enterprise mobility for the past five years and has spent much of his career working in the banking industry, but also has experience working in the RFID and barcode space.

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

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Greg: I ride my mountain bike to work and carry my four year old daughter to school on a bike seat so am careful what I carry. I carry an iPhone, iPad and a Dell laptop.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device?
Greg: My Twitter app is used constantly, and so is WhatsApp (chatting app), Viber (VoIP app).

Kevin: Do you use your mobile device to buy things?
Greg: Yes, I buy music and apps.

Kevin: How many computing devices do you have in your home?
Greg: Four, two laptops, an iPad and an iPhone.

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

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

The City of Sacramento recently spent over $100,000 on a GPS fleet management system. Many tax payers questioned if the new fleet tracking system was a luxury or a necessity? Turns out, that using the fleet management system, the City identified ways to cut fuel costs by over $60,000 in just one month.

http://www.fieldtechnologies.com/city-of-sacramento-cuts-60000-per-month-in-gas-costs-with-gps-fleet-management-system/

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Last week, Lehigh announced a deal with StarPath Technologies for a system that will allow students to track the locations of university buses on their phones or computers.

http://media.www.thebrownandwhite.com/media/storage/paper1233/news/2011/02/11/News/New-Gps.Tracking.On.Buses.Benefits.Students-3975741.shtml

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced last week that it has given 510(k) clearance to a new mobile radiology application developed by Cleveland-based MIM Software. The software, called Mobile MIM, allows physicians to view medical images on Apple's iPhone and iPad mobile devices.

The professor installed the video camera in the back of his skull, but the camera caused awkward social interactions and was painful. It was like having eyes in the back of your head, but no one wanted him around.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/10/nyu-professor-unsurprisingly-removes-camera-from-the-back-of-his/

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The Catholic Church (in Indiana, USA) has now approved a mobile confession application for the iPhone. The mobile application was developed with the help of Catholic priests, and enables Catholics to keep track of their sins. It even helps identify possible sins based on a user’s age, sex and marital status. I wonder if you can password protect it? I hope so. I wonder if this involves real time connectivity, or is it synchronized in batch? What happens if there is an untimely accident before the data is synchronized?

http://unplugged.rcrwireless.com/index.php/20110208/app-corner/6921/catholic-church-approves-confession-iphone-app/

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Hans Nygaard

This is Part 2 in of my interview with Hans Nygaard. You can read Part 1 here.

Kevin: What are some of the most surprising trends you are saw in mobility in 2010?
Hans: Personally I have to say that I am surprised by the fact that the large vendors (SAP, Sybase, Oracle, QlikView) still push hard on BI solutions for smartphones. The UI/UX doesn’t lend itself to a task like that. It looks sexy, but if you are running an important business function, why would you need to see dashboards, cut and slice BW data etc. on a 3.5” screen? They are pushing a segment that is served (well) by laptops with 3G wireless – and a keyboard!

A second surprising trend for me was that most companies emerged from the financial crisis ready to take on new IT projects. Yet a surprisingly small number of companies (in Scandinavia) have enterprise mobility on the agenda. In transportation, supply chain, field service, maintenance, QA, etc., we continue to demonstrate dramatic business cases, yet many top managers seem unaware of the gold lying at their feet! I think that the processes mobility can improve are either not core to the company (i.e. internal maintenance and inspection) or not sexy enough for decision makers to bother about! Often the process ownership is in middle management, and it’s not in their job description to be visionary.

Kevin: What are some of the biggest challenges you see in mobility today?
Hans: Awareness in the enterprise market. Mobility is core to many companies, but not yet on management's agenda. Also, most of our enterprise users own a smartphone and are pampered by snazzy app stores, where apps compete in looking sexy and offer the best UX. To offer similarly appealing enterprise apps is a real challenge and user adoption and project success depends on it.

Kevin: How are enterprise mobility implementations different from other typical IT projects?
Hans: We work exclusively in the SAP market space. Mobile projects often fail to reach their success criteria when done exclusively by the SAP project organization; too much ASAP (accelerated SAP Implementation methodology) does not work well for SOA environment.

Kevin: What do companies fail to plan for when implementing mobility?
Hans: If they have no SOA experience, they fail to realize how many links there are in the mobility business ‘service chain’, from cell phone plans to VPN certificates over middleware application management, help desk training, etc. Most are used to operating just the monolithic ERP and office apps and their respective GUIs.

Acando's Hans Nygaard

I recently had the privelege of interviewing Hans Nygaard from Acando, a consultancy company with over 1,000 employees in six European countries. SAP is one of Acando's most important partners.

Hans is the Manager for Mobile Solutions and focuses most of his time on blue collar and field services kinds of mobile projects. They work on a lot of 100-200 user projects, but are currently working on a large deployment that includes 5,000 service technicians in 14 countries.

Hans has been working in the SAP ecosystem since 2003 and on SAP related mobility projects since 2007. He has a wife and two kids and lives 45 minutes outside of Copenhagen.

Note: This interview consists of both written and verbal responses from Hans.

Kevin: Since you have been involved in SAP enterprise mobility since 2007, what are your thoughts about SAP's acquisition of Sybase in 2010?
Hans: I have mixed feelings. It was a lot of money. Sybase has great offline and push mobile technology, so that is good, but I am still confused about how Sybase's and SAP's middleware will merge into one mobile middleware solution.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Hans: iPhone 4, iPad and a laptop (PC).

Any Advice?

You may have noticed that I have been struggling with some font and formatting issues this week in my articles. After a lifetime on PCs, I have purchased a MacBook Pro. Along with the MacBook Pro, I am trying to use Pages (and Word for Macs) and Safari to access and post to my blogging platform. I am having many annoying formatting issues. The Apple environment is introducing all kinds of junk code which is messing up my text formatting.

Any advice?

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 7, 2011

Also read Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly

Also read Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly

Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly

The Latest Thinking and Strategies for Deploying Flexible Mobile Solutions

Mobility can be a Challenge

I will be participating in a two part webinar next week on Thursday, February 17, 2011 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST that I invite all of you to attend. I will be presenting my research results in the first part called Challenges in Enterprise Mobility from the Experts, and the second part, The Latest Thinking and Strategies for Deploying Flexible Mobile Solutions - The Four Big Issues for Mobilizing SAP and Other Enterprise Systems will be presented by Steve Levy, mobile industry expert and CEO of Pyxis Mobile.

Enterprise-grade mobility is quickly becoming a core component of every company’s IT environment. However, it brings with it some big and often hidden challenges that companies need to plan for, including:

Multi-device proliferation: support for a growing number of smartphones
Data integration: the freedom to connect to any data in the enterprise
Security: more than just authentication
Agility: the need to iteratively update applications with new content and functionality in a quick and easy way

Please join us! Register here.

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly – Week of February 7, 2011

Also read Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly

Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Enterprise Mobility Challenges from the Experts

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

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

Skanska Optimizes Mobile Workforce Management

Challenges in Enterprise Mobility Today

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 14, 2011

SAP Enterprise Mobility in the Cloud

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of February 16, 2011

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Mobile X's Hannes Heckner

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Zenware's Jody Sedrick

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

Mobile Phones, Cameras and Enterprise Mobility

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of February 15, 2011

The Biggest Challenges in Enterprise Mobility Today

Mobile Expert Interview Series: 10seconds Software's Greg Donaldson, Part 2

Mobile Expert Interview Series: 10seconds Software's Greg Donaldson, Part 1

Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 14, 2011

Weird, Odd and Strange Mobility Series: Cameras in Skull, Wireless Confessions and Best Bathrooms

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Acando's Hans Nygaard, Part 2

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Acando's Hans Nygaard, Part 1

MacBook Pro, Safari, Pages and Blogging Headaches

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of February 7, 2011

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Newelo's Kimmo Jarvensivu

Mobile Expert Interview Series: SAP's Jack Chawla

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of February 7, 2011

Mobile Expert Interview Series: AMT-Sybex's Malachy Martin

Food and Enterprise Mobility

Independent Mobility Analyst - What Does that Mean?

The Latest Thinking and Strategies for Deploying Flexible Mobile Solutions

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly – Week of February 7, 2011

Interviews with Kevin Benedict

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