SAP's Mobility Vision - Any Way You Want It

When you first look at the list of mobility vendors that are attending SAPPHIRENOW 2012, it may seem like most of them compete with SAP mobility, but that would be to forget that SAP sells ERP software.  Look at where SAP makes their money.  They make their money selling and maintaining large enterprise software implementations that run companies.  Mobility is an enabler.  Mobility extends and adds value to these large SAP users.  Those are important points to understand.

In a way, I think SAP's mobile strategy can be defined as, "I don't care."  I don't care what mobile software you use as long as it adds users and value.  If more users can access SAP through a third-party mobile solution, and SAP receives more user fees, then all is well.  Yes, they have spent billions of dollars on mobile middleware, tools, infrastructure and mobile applications (e.g. Sybase and Syclo), but that was, I believe, to ignite a now explosive enterprise mobility marketplace.  They needed to kick-start the market and they have succeeded.  There are now many mobility vendors supporting SAP users.

This week I read a story, written I believe, by Eric Lai about how fast SAP's internal developers could develop mobile applications using Adobe's PhoneGap mobile development environment.  Why might you ask would SAP be promoting the virtues of developing in another vendors solution?  Again, I think the answer is, "They don't care!"  SAP will provide everything needed to mobilize SAP environments, but if you want to use another vendor's solution - go for it!!!  SAP will get their user licenses, more value will be added to the SAP environment and everyone is happy.

I think the most important thing SAP has done for mobility in the past three years is to be aggressive and to promote that mobility is essential for large enterprises.  The folks at SAP invited me in late 2009 to join their SAP Mentor program.  This is a voluntary position, and I taught dozens of sessions over the past three years on mobile strategy at their events.  Today, everyone seems to believe in the value of enterprise mobility.  I read this morning that there are now eighty-one mobile applications on the SAP app store.  Very nice!

I think SAP's new partnerships with Adobe PhoneGap, Appcelerator and Sencha, plus the continued partnerships with appsFreedom, ClickSoftware and Sky Technologies prove my point.  There is room for many mobility vendors as long as they support SAP's middleware strategy and add value to the SAP user community. 

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobile Retail Apps Equal Sales

If companies have hesitated to develop a mobile strategy or mobile retail apps over concerns as to their value, this article on a report from ABI Research should send them straight to the phone calling the next available mobile developer.  Here is an excerpt from the article, "The results are promising for retailers, with 45.8% of respondents saying the app caused them to visit the store more, buy more of the store/brand’s products and services (40.4%), spread the word about their store shopping experience (35.8%), and even encourage friends to visit the store (30.8%)."

Once a company decides (the sooner the better) to invest in mobile retail applications it is important to recognize this is a permanent project.  Just as things change by season and holiday in retail, so to will the mobile application needs and designs.  Many companies choose to work with their ad agency or other third party developers on mobile retail and marketing apps because of the campaign nature of these applications.

IT organizations are rarely equipped to manage application projects that change as rapidly as mobile commerce and marketing applications.  Most often, the IT organization will create web services and other APIs that expose certain business processes like "order entry" and "track shipments" that are used by these mobile applications, but out-source the design, development, deployment and support of them.

SAP already seems to recognize the value in mobile commerce, for their customers and for themselves.  Here is an excerpt from an article I read last week, "Luis Cesar Verdi, President of SAP Brazil, told Computerworld UK, “Our strategy is to first help our clients understand how to use our mobile technology internally within their organisations,” he explained.  “However, we intend to extend this and get them to offer our mobile applications and infrastructure to their customers,” he added.  Verdi said that this is likely to be specifically within the services sector, for example, in retail, financial services and utilities.

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly – Week of May 13, 2012

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

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

Citing a commitment to the Asia Pacific region as an important market for cellular communications, Celcite Management Solutions has opened a new office in Singapore. Read Original Content

The results of a survey by Frost & Sullivan reveal that 25 percent of Australian businesses rate mobility to be either their top priority or a very important priority in 2012. Read Original Content

Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase Inc. has been working with The Philippines’ Globe Telecom to run live commercial voice traffic across multiple Asian operators, allowing Globe Telecom to exchange international calls directly with other mobile operators rather than routing calls through traditional wholesale voice carriers. Read Original Content

Indian e-commerce firm Snapdeal has launched a mobile app for Android devices, reaching out to the millions of Android users in India. Read Original Content

To increase the options for mobile banking in India, banks have begun offering mobile services through a new method, USSD, which works on a menu-based banking model on mobile devices allowing users to perform services by recalling the menu and simply dialing a number. Read Original Content

The number of citizens in Taiwan accessing the Internet via mobile devices is currently more than 4.9 million, according to the Institute for Information Industry in Taipei. Read Original Content

Subscriptions for 3G last year grew 172 percent in China and a staggering 1,050 percent in India.  It is predicted that China will have 230-250 million 3G subscribers by the end of 2012. Read Original Content

SAP Enterprise Mobility and Multilevel Marketing

In an article I read this morning, "Luis Cesar Verdi, President of SAP Brazil, told Computerworld UK that Brazil currently has 1.5 million end users for its mobile applications, but plans to increase this rapidly to 20 million by 2015.  To achieve this, Verdi plans to target the general public by going through enterprise customers that currently use its ERP systems and mobile applications."

I wrote about this multilevel enterprise mobility strategy last year and believe it will be effective.  B2C mobility is and will continue to be a fast growing market for mobility vendors, and SAP has the opportunity to touch billions of mobile users through B2C mobility.  Let's think about it.  SAP is big in utilities, consumer packaged goods and other industries with large customer bases.  Providing mobile IDEs (integrated development environments) through SDKs through partnerships and acquisitions will make it easier for mobile vendors to extend SAP out to these users.

Mobility is going to touch every industry, supplier ecosystem and customer base.  Companies need to start developing their strategy for supporting these groups sooner rather than later.

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobile Health News Weekly – Week of May 6, 2012

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

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

Rogers Communications will enable wireless infant pajamas in Canada later this year as part of its M2M mobile health portfolio. Read Original Content

Telit Wireless Solutions announced its CC864-DUAL cellular module will connect the next generation Mobile Cardiac Outpatient Telemetry from CardioNet, Inc., a wireless medical technology company with a current focus on the diagnosis and monitoring of cardiac arrhythmias. Read Original Content

The Department of Defense released a mobile app to help service members adjust to life at home after returning from combat deployments. Positive Activity Jackpot, developed by the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, uses augmented reality with a smart phone’s GPS to help find nearby activities and diversions for someone used to the high tempo of combat life. Read Original Content

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

Mobiquity, a professional services firm creating mobile solutions, announced Dr. Stephen Ferzoco has joined the company as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Ferzoco will help Mobiquity tap the vast potential of the mHealth industry, estimated by analysts to top $4.6 billion by 2014. Read Original Content

The future of the mHealth space is, in a word, "growth," which is exemplified at this week's International CTIA Wireless 2012 trade show in New Orleans. The mHealth market is expected to grow from just $500 million in 2010 to $8 billion by 2018, according to a report from Global Data. Read Original Content

Float Mobile Learning’s most recent quarterly report on mobile applications for wellness, home care, emergencies and hospital management reveals a trend toward “do-it-yourself” medicine. Key findings show a movement toward patient-centered healthcare, with mobile devices placing medical knowledge in the hands of patients. Read Original Content

Mobile Expert Video Series: Harish Rau, Part 2

This is Part 2 in this series with Element Five Solutions' Harish Rau.  In this segment, he shares advice and lessons learned during implementations of the Sybase Unwired Platform. He is a true enterprise mobility expert.  By that I mean, he has been down the path and lived to share his experiences with you and I.

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobility News Weekly – Week of May 6, 2012

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

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

Apple is in roughly the same position it was last quarter, with an 8.8 percent share of the market in terms of units shipped (according to IDC) and a share of profits (according to Dediu) down two percentage points to 73 percent.  Read Original Content

comScore announced the U.S. launch of Mobile Metrix 2.0.  Mobile Metrix 2.0 brings comScore's Unified Digital Measurement to smartphone devices, combining passive on-device measurement with census-level data to provide one of the most accurate and detailed views into actual U.S. mobile media usage across apps and mobile browsing.  Read Original Content

A new Canalys report reveals worldwide smartphone shipments in the first 2012 quarter have reached 146 million units, which means a 45 percent year-on-year growth. In the U.S. the industry grew by 5 percent.  Read Original Content

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

Buoyed by its successful launches, Samsung Electronics hopes to increase its share in the 18 to 19 million unit Indian smartphone market to 60 percent in the current year.  Read Original Content

Lenovo wants a piece of the smartphone pie and has confirmed it’s willing to spend the dough to get a taste of the action with an $800 million investment in a smartphone division.  Read Original Content

By the end of 2017, smartphone shipments will reach 1.7 billion units, research firm Ovum predicts. That would represent a staggering compound annual growth rate of just under 25 percent for the period of 2011 to 2017.  Read Original Content

Mobile Marketing News Weekly – Week of May 6, 2012

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

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

Internet Broadcasting, provider of digital publishing technology and services and one of the world's largest digital advertising agencies, has unveiled a new family of interactive mobile-marketing products that enable advertisers to offer text-based solutions for digital marketing campaigns. Read Original Content

Amtrak, the government-owned corporation that oversees the nation’s railroad train services, has been training conductors since November to use the Apple handset as an electronic ticket scanner on a few routes. By late summer, 1,700 conductors will be using the devices. Read Original Content

With nearly 80 percent of the population owning a mobile phone, major brands, retailers and start-ups are using SMS to interact directly with consumers and drive new business. Read Original Content

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

Mobile advertising spending has been growing between 50 to 80 percent year over year and, according to eMarketer, it is set to reach 2.6 billion this year and 4.3 billion in 2013. Read Original Content

This week Web.com Group, Inc. published its latest Small Business Mobile Survey. According to the survey’s findings, 69 percent of small businesses consider mobile marketing “crucial to their growth in the next five years.” Read Original Content

Facebook will play up its prospects for expanding in mobile advertising when it begins pitching its initial public offering to investors in New York, Boston and Silicon Valley next week. Read Original Content

Worldwide advertising dollars devoted to mobile devices are expected to leap 85.4 percent this year to $11.6 billion, according to a study by market research company Strategy Analytics. Read Original Content

Mobile Expert Video Series: Clicksoftware's Hadar Shafir

Last week in Atlanta, I met up with ClickSoftware's Product Manager Hadar Shafir, and had the opportunity to interview here and ask about their new ClickAppStore.  Enterprise app stores are an interesting recent development in the enterprise mobility space and I am intrigued by the possibilities.  The video camera is a bit shaky and for that I apologize.  If it is too much, just close your eyes and enjoy the conversation :-)

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sencha's Michael Mullany

Sencha is one of the three new partnerships SAP announced in April around HTML5.  Here is a quote from SAP, "By collaborating with Adobe, Appcelerator and Sencha, SAP will enable millions of developers to effectively build mobile apps based on their choice of client architectures - from native to hybrid Web containers to mobile Web.  Developers will be able to do so while leveraging an industry-leading enterprise mobile application platform from SAP."

Sencha targets the enterprise market and is very excited to be a partner of SAP.  Sencha is doing a lot of things right.  They already have over 1 million downloads of their HTML5 tools, and have 350,000 members in their forum.

I believe SAP is very smart with these partnerships.  There is no way that SAP can keep up with the demand for mobile applications, so they partner with HTML5 tool vendors and ask the industry to standardize on their mobile platforms.  The end users can now choose their own development environment as long as it supports SAP's mobility platform.  The burden for supporting the demands of developers will then mostly fall on the shoulders of these HTML5 tool and framework vendors.

At the same time as SAP announced the partnerships with HTML5 vendors, they also announced the acquisition of Syclo.  Syclo has many great mobile application development tools, but does not currently have HTML5 support, so these partnerships will also serve to provide an alternative development environment for companies wanting to standardize on HTML5 when possible.

SAP also has a partnership with ClickSoftware which has an HTML5 development environment in their ClickMobile Professional solution.

I asked Sencha's CEO Michael Mullany for his prediction on what percentage of enterprise mobility apps will be based on HTML5 by 2014.  He answered, "50% will be HTML5, 20% native and 30% will be hybrid HTML5 apps.  I read that as 80% of enterprise mobility applications will be using some form of HTML5 by 2014.  Wow!

For integrations with SAP, Sencha is connecting via NetWeaver Gateway.

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

What's New in HTML5 - Week of May 7, 2012

HTML5 is changing the enterprise mobility industry.  Just look at what SAP announced over the past month.  They announced partnerships with 3 of the leading HTML5 SDK (software development kit) companies.  These partnerships are to help SAP users quickly create HTML5 mobile apps that work with and connect to SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform), which is the standard SAP defined integration layer between mobile apps and backend SAP systems.  In addition, SAP already has partnerships with companies like ClickSoftware that have an HTML5 solution called ClickMobile Professional.

I keep reading things like 63% of the worlds financial transactions move through an SAP system.  These kinds of numbers reflect the pull and push that SAP can have on the entire IT marketplace.  Their endorse of HTML5 and its use in the enterprise will change many roadmaps in this industry.

The mobile web is dividing the Silicon Valley technology companies, which could slow down innovation.  “Official statements from all of these companies show the same thing: They believe in the power and potential of the mobile web to flourish and eventually become more prevalent than native platforms.”  Read original content

Flickr is launching a new HTML5 photo uploader for images.  The HTML5 technology provides additional features such as drag and drop functionality.  Other improvements are an average 20-30 percent increase in upload speed and an increase in file size limits.  Read original content

HTML5 adds a “scoped” attribute to the style element, allowing the developer to nest styles within HTML.  The scoped style attribute is described and illustrated in this article.  Read original content

According to research from eMarketer, 29.7 percent of Americans were accessing the mobile web on a regular basis by the end of 2011, and predict the number will grow to 36 percent in 2012.  Read original content

With website traffic from mobile devices on the rise, mobile software development firms are scrambling to expand their mobile web development services to enable businesses to keep up with the mobile web trend.  Read original content

Rapid Intake has launched a new mobile learning development system, enabling developers to “deploy training courses in HTML5 format as a downloaded application, allowing mobile learners access to their courses while they are offline”.  Read original content

Google has unveiled a new resource, The Mobile Playbook, to assist companies and advertisers in building a mobile campaign.  The Mobile Playbook was built in HTML5 and optimized for viewing on tablet devices.  "[Because] the Mobile Playbook site is built with HTML5, we had the flexibility to customize the experience for different types of screens."  Read original content

RIM is incorporating HTML5 technology as one of the key strategies “to create a viable ecosystem of applications for a new generation of mobile devices expected to ship by year-end”.  Read original content

Built as an experiment to test the boundaries of HTML5, ForestFly is a Facebook photo gallery visualizer built entirely with HTML5 elements, primarily Canvas.  Read original content

Three examples of impressive 8-bit color-cycled landscape images running on HTML5.

Read original content and see images with animation - http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/

Two of the developers of the popular Angry Birds games have left Rovio and created their own game studio, Boomlagoon, and will focus on creating mobile and web based games with HTML5.

Read original content

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobile Expert Video Series: Harish Rau, Part 1

I had the honor of interviewing Element Five Solutions' Harish Rau last week.  He is one of those rare people that have a lot of experience implementing SAP's mobility platform including SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform).  He has a great deal of real world experience and is the guy to speak to about the good, bad and ugly of implementations.  The value he brings to us, is real world advice.  I hope you enjoy.

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Mobile Commerce News Weekly – Week of May 6, 2012

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

Kiwibank's first mobile banking app may make banking relationships more intimate. Due to be released this week, the bank's iPhone app has the unique feature of assigning customers their own online relationship manager to help deal with any queries via text or email. Read Original Content

Forrester Research has just released its 2012 U.S. Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings report, which indicates that approximately 17 percent of American adults are currently using their smartphones and tablets in order to interact with their financial institutions. Read Original Content

DropWallet is introducing M-Commerce to the publishing industry, starting with Real Simple's new Mother's Day Gift Guide app for iPhone. By powering an in-app shopping experience, DropWallet's digital content commerce solution enables publishers to diversify their revenue. Read Original Content

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

NFC phones developed by HTC, Intel, LG Electronics, Nokia, RIM, Samsung and Sony have all now been certified for contactless payments — and have the right to carry a new “MasterCard PayPass Ready” logo. Read Original Content

Web.com Group, Inc. published its latest Small Business Mobile Survey, which looks at small business growth and the tools and resources being used to drive that progress. According to the survey’s findings, 69 percent of small businesses consider mobile marketing crucial to their growth in the next five years. Read Original Content

The mobile payment landscape is rapidly evolving. Many smartphone users welcome the convenience of mobile payments (87 percent in the UK), while others worry about the privacy factor (79 percent in Asia). In the U.S., 49 percent of consumers found shopping on a smartphone awkward. Read Original Content

Guidance on Selecting a Mobile Solution Vendor

Last week while working on a mobile strategy project in Scotland, I was reminded of a few things companies should ask vendors when they are in the RFI process.

1. Do you support HTML5 today, in all products or a limited subset?  Which products support HTML5?
2. Do you have a hybrid mobile app development capability?  If so, how does it work and what are the limitations?
3. What versions of Android do you support today?
4. Where is your support center located?  I learned of a recent situation where support was only given during India's business hours.
5. Do you have your own proprietary MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) or do you embed another market leader's?
6. What IDE (integrated development environment) or SDK (software development kit) can be used to edit mobile application and develop new ones?
7. How do you secure your Android devices today?  Are they secured through software or a specific hardware level partnership with a manufacturer?
8. What specific mobile operating systems and versions are supported today?
9. Ask the mobile solution vendor for a list of third party software components in your solution.  Get a list of software vendor dependencies that must all work together in order for your solution to be effective.
10. Ask about R&D funding.  This might be an uncomfortable discussion, but being a mobile solution vendor in 2012 means large amounts of resources need to be invested into research and development to keep current with the rapid developments.  This often requires external funding sources to keep up.
11. Do you have a connection at the top of the company that you can contact for big and important mobile projects?  You don't want to get assigned a junior sales assistant (three weeks on the job) for a mobile project involving ten thousand mobile users.  
12. How soon can the mobile solutions vendor support new versions of popular mobile operating systems?  Do they take 90 days, 9 months or three years?
13. Understand the mobile vendor's expertise with integrating into your specific ERP or backend business solution.  Often, the mobility vendor does not have expertise, and you will need to find it.
14. How do you get your new feature requests on the product roadmap?  How does the process work? Can you add new features yourself, that may provide competitive advantages, or must you wait for the vendor to add it to a roadmap?
15. What is your mobility vendors core focus?  Is it enterprise asset management?  Is it workforce scheduling?  Is it B2C solutions?  Is it mobile banking?  You need to understand what expertise you are getting with the relationship.
16. Is your mobile solution expertise coming from the solution vendor or a third-party system integrator?  There are advantages for both, but it is just important to know who your experts are.
17. Ask you mobile solution vendor what percentage of their annual revenue comes from software and what portion comes from services.  This might help you understand if you are truly buying an off-the-shelf solution, or a long term services relationship.
18. Ask for a list of all products and services sold by the mobility vendor that are likely going to cost you.  This is important to try to uncover any and all anticipated costs up front.  Ask for a typical break down of expenses for a similar project.
19. Is the annual software maintenance fee charged the first year, or does it start on the second year?
20. We all know and want our mobility vendors to make money.  We want them to be financially healthy and investing in R&D.  What are their business models?  How do they charge for their solutions?  Do they charge by mobile client?  Do they charge a server fee?  Do they charge a subscription by the month, but paid annually?  Do they charge for development environments?  Do they charge for their IDE/SDKs?  What is their annual maintenance costs?
21. Upfront, getting-started costs are important to understand.  I know some mobile platform vendors that want to charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of platform before there are any mobile apps.  To me this is difficult to swallow. There is no ROI on a mobile platform without apps.  I would rather pay for the platform as part of an app.  I want to pay when my ROI starts.
22. Scalability for your mobile platform is very important to understand.  Does it take one server to support an average of 1,000 mobile users, or does it require one server to support every 100 mobile users?  This can make a huge difference in total cost of ownership.  Schedule and insist on interviewing real users that have the same numbers of users that you may require.  Don't take promises, interview real users.
23. Often mobile solution vendors have many different products, and each product has its own feature list.  Often they do not support all the same devices, operating systems, security solutions and capabilities.  If a vendor has 25 different mobile solutions, then you need to review each to see what their capabilities are.  It is very easy to assume that because one of the products supports Android, that the other 24 products support Android.  That is rarely the case in the real world.
24. Ask the mobile solution vendor which mobile platforms they support for each of their products. 
25. Some mobile solution vendors only support online solutions only.  This is important to understand if you require offline support.  Ask if they support offline/online solutions or connected/disconnected solutions.
26. Ask vendors if there are hardware dependencies in their solutions.  I know some solutions are only available on Windows Mobile 6.x operating systems.
27. If you get a bad RFI or RFP from a good vendor.  Reject it and go higher up in the vendor's organization.  Don't give up on doing business with a good company just because one of their junior level people can't write or answer written questions.

I expect this list to continue to grow over the next few days as I think of more questions.  Can you think of more important questions?  Please add them to the comment section here and share!  Thanks!!!!

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Avengers (Super Heros), Enterprise Mobility and Network Centric Warfare

In the new movie titled, The Avengers - super heroes Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor, Nick Fury and Hawkeye all work together to fight bad guys.  The first thing I thought about when I read the plot was, "How do all these super heroes communicate with each other and coordinate activities when they are running around saving civilization?"  Now I must admit, I seem to be the only person left in the world that did not see the movie this weekend.  My excuse, I was getting organized for the next leg of my "Free Range Eggs with Benedict - Mobile Strategies Speaking Series."  Next up, speaking on mobile strategies in Las Vegas, Spain and The Netherlands.

The military has also been struggling with the challenge of keeping all of their forces informed and connected.  Since the 1990s, however, it has embraced the concept of "network-centric warfare." Here is how it is described on Wikipedia:

Network-centric warfare, also called network-centric operations, is a military doctrine or theory of war pioneered by the United States Department of Defense in the 1990's.  It seeks to translate an information advantage, enabled in part by information technology, into a competitive advantage through the robust networking of well informed geographically dispersed forces.

Specifically, the theory contains the following four tenets in its hypotheses:

1. A robustly networked force improves information sharing;
2. Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness;
3. Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and self-synchronization, and enhances sustainability and speed of command; and
4. These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness.

On a side note, ClickSoftware has a whitepaper titled Networked Field Services that explores how this theory is applied to field services.  You can download it here.

Do you see why I wondered about the Avengers?  How were they informing each other and providing situational awareness?  What networks were they using?  How were they using these networks to support their mission?  I guess I should probably just watch the movie.

Field services organizations face similar challenges.  How do you "robustly network" with your field services technicians and improve information sharing.  Are there ways that your field service forces would benefit from working closer together to "increase mission effectiveness?"

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Field Mobility and M2M News Weekly – Week of May 6, 2012

The Field Mobility and M2M News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to field mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

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

GPS technology provides a method for keeping track of seniors that may wander off – GPS shoes are able to track where the wearer goes and if he or she leaves a safe zone. Read Original Content

The global field service management market is predicted to reach $375.8 million by 2015, and the increasing need to drive workforce productivity is a key factor contributing to the market growth. Read Original Content

The U.S. Army Geospatial Center recently released a new smartphone app for data survey and analysis.  The HyDRA app uses Google Maps and Google Earth and was developed to provide the Dept. of Defense logistics and geospatial intelligence-related water communities with information on water resources data collection, visualization and dissemination in a mobile, enterprise-enabled environment. Read Original Content

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

FieldAware has released a free white paper titled “The Advantages of True Mobility in Field Service Organizations”.  The report provides information and data showing that mobile field service automation can increase worker productivity by an average of 27 percent and increase overall profitability by an average of 17 percent. Read Original Content

Huawei and Simple Solutions have entered into an agreement which will allow Simple Solutions to sell and support Huawei embedded cellular modules into the M2M market in certain countries in the European Union. Read Original Content

PayNearMe has launched a fully mobile cash payment system. Using barcode technology, a consumer can order goods online via smartphone or PC, and then pay via their smartphone at a participating retailer such as 7-Eleven using a payment screen and barcode scanning. Read Original Content

Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly – Week of May 6, 2012

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

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

Singapore’s EpiCentre is moving into the mobile commerce arena, allowing retail transactions to be made using mobile devices. Read Original Content and Read More Original Content

Apple reports that iPhone sales in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong increased five-fold during the first quarter of 2012. Read Original Content

The National Payments Corporation of India is requesting approval from the Reserve Bank to make mobile payment services provided by banks and telecomm companies work together.  Read Original Content

Ericsson has signed a framework agreement with China Mobile and a letter of intent with China Unicom for equipment and services. Read Original Content

Some of the key trends contributing to the rise in enterprise mobility in India are:
Predicted accelerated growth in mobility among larger enterprises; increased start-up activity in mobility; and concerns on security and integration. Read Original Content

Mobile Health News Weekly – April 29, 2012

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

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

It was no surprise that Apple co-founder and American Telemedicine Association annual meeting keynote speaker Steve Wozniak felt that iPhone mHealth apps would play a role in the future of U.S. health care. Read Original Content

With a focus on mHealth security, Symantec, a provider of security, storage and systems management solutions, intentionally lost 50 smartphones. Findings from the study show 96 percent of the smartphones were accessed by their finders, and nearly half of the finders tried to access the phone owner's bank account. Read Original Content

With mHealth on the agenda, ATA 2012 kicks off in San Jose. Approximately 4,500 attendees will meet to discuss, view and envision the cutting-edge technology and concepts that drive telemedicine, telehealth and mobile health in the nation’s healthcare landscape. Read Original Content

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

The mobile health movement has generated huge buzz over the last several years with its promise of bringing better, more personalized care at a cheaper cost to a wider number of engaged consumers. However, before the mHealth movement can get to that point, two key challenges need to be overcome. Read Original Content

Bethesda-based M3 Information has created an app that asks patients a series of nearly 30 questions designed to assess whether they exhibit symptoms of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder. Read Original Content

Mobility News Weekly – Week of April 29, 2012

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

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

The worldwide smartphone market grew 42.5 percent year-over-year during the first quarter, as Samsung Electronics overtook Apple for the smartphone leadership position, according to IDC's estimates. Read Original Content

SAP AG, the largest maker of enterprise software, chose Amazon.com to host its Afaria mobile offering on the Internet, giving customers a cheaper way of managing employees’ smartphones and tablet computers. Read Original Content

Apple and Samsung combined control 99 percent of the smartphone market’s profits, and that isn’t likely to change any time soon. Canaccord Genuity’s Michael Walkley said his research backs that up, and that some 73 percent of those profits went just to Apple. Read Original Content

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

A new analysis claims the iPhone made up 30.7 percent of the U.S. smartphone market and 14 percent of the mobile market in the first quarter of 2012. comScore noted Apple's steady upward climb when it released quarterly data from its MobiLens service, which surveyed 30,000 mobile subscribers users. Read Original Content

Registrations are now open for ClickSoftware's ClickConnect 2012 APAC conference with attendees expected from all over Australia and South East Asia. This event is the leading business and educational conference focused entirely on mobile workforce management. Read Original Content

Frommer’s, the market leader in travel guides, and Inkling, the publisher behind interactive digital textbooks, have launched what they call “the first-ever truly interactive travel guides for iPhone and iPad.” More than 80 percent of international travelers use their smartphones while traveling abroad. Read Original Content

Mobile Marketing News Weekly – Week of April 29, 2012

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

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

With over 258 million wireless lines in the U.S. alone, mobile marketing’s potential has never been so great. Plus text messaging, globally, has twice as many active users than traditional email campaigns and, unlike email most mobile users don’t feel like the message they receive on their mobile phones is spam. Read Original Content

Those marketing mobile applications via Google AdWords are getting some new weapons in their arsenal this week. Google has announced four new tools: a new Mobile App extension for AdWords, additional information to the click-to-download format, the ability to see Google Play stats in AdWords, and Custom Search Ads for mobile apps. Read Original Content

A report titled 'The State of Mobile Search Advertising in the US' dated March 2012 indicates about 12 percent of all Internet traffic in the United States comes from mobile devices that include smartphones and tablets. In addition, average click through rates on smartphones and tablets is higher than on desktops and laptops. Read Original Content

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

In Q1 2012, 36.8 percent of North American mobile ad impressions occurred on iOS devices, up 3.7 percentage points from 33.1 percent in Q4 2011, reports mobile ad network InMobi. 34.1 percent occurred on Android devices, up 1.6 percentage points from 32.5 percent; and 7.3 percent on BlackBerry devices, down 4.6 percentage points from 11.9 percent. Read Original Content

Last year, the buzzword in e-commerce was Groupon and its myriad of competitors that offered daily online coupons to entice shoppers in a down economy. Now, the latest fashion in retail is social gifting, where people get together on Facebook to buy each other gifts. Read Original Content

Local advertising is expected to dominate mobile ad spending. Google says 40 percent of mobile searches are for local information.  Miscrosoft says 53 percent.  Content consumption in mobile is different than wired and what stands out is the consumption of local information on mobile devices. Read Original Content

Kevin Benedict's Video Comments: The Black Hole of Mobile Apps

In this segment of the Video Comments series, I share that many different kinds of mobile applications may be useful in the enterprise, however, it is important to recognize the challenges each may bring.

Whitepaper of Note:  Enterprise Mobility and MEAPs - The Mobile Cloud Avatar  from Unvired - This whitepaper explains the options that you as a customer have and the considerations to be taken into account before choosing a MEAP. On premise, hosted and true cloud MEAP deployments are discussed in detail as well as Native vs. HTML development.


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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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

Learning about The Real World of Enterprise Mobility in Scotland

Edinburgh, Scotland

It is valuable for me to leave the office and spend time with different IT teams wrestling with real world enterprise mobility challenges from time to time.  This week I had the privilege of working with a team in Scotland.  We explored the use of MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms), the role of HTML5, MDM (mobile device management), IDEs (integrated development environments), mobile business strategies, and how to create RFIs for mobile solutions.  This was the general overview, after those sessions, we jumped into how each of those components work in the real world - where nearly every company has a challenging mixture of back office applications and legacy systems.

In the real world there are many bespoke/custom software applications.  There are good software applications and bad.  There are software vendors that don't want to expose their data to other vendors or mobile apps.  There is corrupt and incomplete data. There are mobile applications that don't work well.  There are old, expensive handheld computers with out-dated mobile operating systems.  There are old mobile apps that only run on old handhelds.

Let me digress for a minute and just say - Microsoft has purposefully destroyed the ruggedized handheld industry.  They stopped developing upgrades to Windows Mobile 6.x and left the entire industry of handheld manufacturers desperate for something new to sell.  They chose to not provide an upgrade path, nor a replacement.  This is like laptop manufacturers trying to sell MS-DOS based laptops today.  It is bad for both the customer and for all the ruggedized handheld manufacturers.  Shame on you Microsoft.

Back to the subject of real world enterprise mobility.  In the real world - there will need to be multiple platforms that support mobile solutions in many companies.  They may need a campaign based mobile marketing platform.  They may want an HTML5 environment for online only mobile apps that is separate from their MEAP environment that supports field services with online/offline mobile app capabilities.  There may also be a B2C environment that is unique and focused on providing multimedia experiences, or mobile banking.

All of these real world discussions, with a Scottish accent, make for a great experience.

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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