Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Good Technology, Vendor of Mobile Sync for Handheld PDAs is Sold Yet Again

It is not easy being a mobile synchronization technology vendor. Synchronization is a technology category that is about as sexy as the kitchen drain pipe. Yes, it is needed, but do you want to schedule a board level meeting and use up precious IT budget on it? Obviously not many companies. For the second time in 2 years Good Technology was sold and the price goes down each time.

"Mobile push synchronization platform and service provider Visto acquired Motorola's Good Technology Feb. 24. Motorola acquired Good in 2007 for more than $400 million in hopes of challenging Research In Motion's dominance in the enterprise mobile e-mail market. "

[Opinion Alert] People get excited about cool mobile gadgets, PDAs, Smartphones and manly rugged handhelds with integrated GPS, digital cameras and powerful mobile software applications that make their work and life easier and more enjoyable in an obvious way. The problem with synchronization software is that it is the drain pipe and no one cares about it unless it doesn't work. [/End of Opinion Alert]

"We believe that this transaction is in the best interest of our customers, employees and shareholders," said Gene Delaney, president of Motorola's Enterprise Mobility Solutions. [translation] No one was buying it.

When an individual purchases an iPhone, do they walk around the Apple Store with the hip, pierced and scruffy-faced Apple nerd pondering the merits of various synchronization technologies? Of course not! They want the cool smartphone to work and they want the provider of the device to figure out synchronization. That is Apple's and AT&T's strategy (and most others) and you can see this strategy in Google's recent license agreement with Microsoft for their Activesync. Google, with their growing suite of mobile applications, are hiding synchronization in their cloud computing environment. It is just there and available. The user is not spending a lot of time thinking about it.

Perhaps that was Motorola's original plan. but Good Technology was competing with RIM's world of Blackberrys, Microsoft and Apple. That is not a list of competitors I would want to be facing and betting $400 million against. I must say that the person behind that purchase must have studied Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and took it to heart.

Good luck Visto!
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Windows Mobile Rugged Handheld PDA the i-Mate 810-F

For those of you involved in the mobile handheld PDA industry you know that there is usually a distinct line between the categories of rugged industrial grade handhelds and the category of consumer grade mobile devices such as Smartphones, PDA Phones, iPhones, etc. It only takes a few questions about the environment the customer is working in to make a recommendation as to the kind of mobile device required. That process is now getting harder as the announcement below demonstrates.

"i-mate, the global specialist in Microsoft Windows Mobile devices and software, today launched the i-mate 810-F, the world’s first complete lifestyle mobile with a lifetime warranty. Designed to meet military specifications, the 810-F combines high-end mobile technology and incredible durability in a single sleek package. Whether you work in the great outdoors or in an office, on the road or on a building site, or you just simply want a tough take-anywhere mobile, the 810-F offers everything you need for work and play. The phone comprises waterproof rubber casing and exposed metal screws to lock in the factory seal, making it impervious to almost anything. A full QWERTY keyboard, and impact resistant touch screen, means you don’t miss a thing while you are out and about... The 810-F is designed around the stringent MIL-STD-810F series of standards. These standards are issued by the U.S. military’s Developmental Test Command, a body whose role is to ensure equipment can withstand the rigours of the most extreme environments. This means the i-mate 810-F can cope with pressure, heat, water, humidity and even extreme shock without missing a beat. The 810-F is equally happy at a chilly -10°C or sweltering 60°C, and can be fully submerged in water."

How do you select the right rugged handheld, Smartphone or PDA? This article on the site called Mobile Software & Handheld PDA Business Strategies has a chapter called Selecting the Right Mobile Computing Device for the Solution.

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Questions to Ponder before Starting a Mobile Software Development Project for Handheld PDAs, iPhones and Smartphones

This article identifies some basic questions that should be asked and pondered by the business user and software development teams before starting on a mobile software development project:

Do you anticipate needing one mobile software application, or many? Can you start with a mobile software development platform that supports all of your mobile application needs, or will each mobile application be a separate IT project and use different development technologies and infrastructures (e.g. Windows Mobile, Google Android, RIM Blackberry, Symbian, iPhone, etc.)?
Do you know your exact solution and data requirements in advance? Do you anticipate needing to edit and adjust your mobile application as you learn from your field users and their experiences? Can it be hard coded, or does it need to be flexible and easily edited? The answers to these questions will impact both design and schedules.
Do you have an in-house software development capability, budget and helpdesk infrastructure to enable you to develop and support your own mobile application(s)?
Are you going to outsourcing the development of your mobile software application's design, development and deployment to an experienced mobility company, or build it internally?
Will you be synchronizing your field data with one back-office database, or multiple database applications? How will you do this? Are you using a middleware solution in this process?
Do you know how to integrate field data to your database applications? Do you have your own DBA that can do this? Are they involved in the data synchronization discussions. How can you ensure valid data is synchronized from the field?
How secure does the mobile data synchronization need to be? The more security that is added and layered the slower the data synchronization. Does only a small part need to be secure or all of the data?
Will the user always need and have internet connectivity, or will the application run equally well disconnected? Does you design take this issue into consideration?
Mobile solutions are often used on laptops, Tablet PCs, Smartphones, PDAs, and rugged handhelds. Do you know your hardware requirements and user environmental requirements? Is the user environment hot, cold, dry, wet, dusty, flammable or frozen?
Will you be supporting just one mobile device, or many different kinds and sizes? Is the screen size an issue? What size is the screen on your chosen devices? Is it sufficient for the work done in the field. Does the mobile worker need to read manuals, maps, images, blueprints and drawings, or just click on a few buttons?
What mobile device operating system(s) will you be supporting?
How will the mobile handhelds or mobile devices be carried and stored. Is the user wearing a suit, or wearing overalls in the rain. Does the environment require a rugged case, or a suit pocket? The answers to these questions impact your choice of mobile devices, operating systems and screen sizes.
If your internal IT staff are developing your mobile solution, do they know how to do the following: integrate with and support GPS, Barcode scanners, RFID radios, Digital Signatures, digital cameras and synchronize data bi-directionally across multiple databases?
What mobile database will you use? Does it have its own synchronization technology? If not, what mobile middleware are you going to use? Does the mobile database vendor support the operating systems you have chosen?
Do you have an IT development team that is experienced in designing, developing and deploying mobile applications, or is this their very first mobility project. Can you afford the steep learning curve, time and money developing a mobile application in-house with no experience?
Have you considered the implementation, training and support effort required to manage large mobile software deployments? Do you have project management and helpdesk software in place to manage it?
Have you made sure that your mobile software application's database and screen design will include the data fields required by the office database application you will sync with?
Does the mobile software application need to support a specific business process in SAP or other ERP? Have you designed the mobile software application to do so?
One of the most challenging and complex parts of mobile application development is to create the right data model for your mobile application before you start development. Often an appropriate data model for a simple mobile application, is not the appropriate data model once you start adding features and additional modules in future versions. Is your database model designed to easily support additional components?

These are a few of the questions you will want to discuss with both the business and the technical team before you begin this effort. For more questions and possibly some answers you may want to visit this Google Knol called Mobile Software & Handheld PDA Business Strategies.

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Google Latitude for Handheld PDAs, Smartphones and Work Orders

Google recently announced a new application in the world of cloud computing called Google Latitude. This is a very interesting application in that it allows friends to see where friends are located, or managers to see where his or her work teams, vehicles and job sites are located.

In the past, this functionality has only been available to companies for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (or name your currency). You could find these features on enterprise quality work order management solutions or proof-of-delivery solutions for handheld PDAs and Smartphones. Google has a way of shaking the industry up by making mobile applications free.

Today, for free, a manager can implement Google Latitude on his company issued handheld PDAs and Smartphones and see where his workers are at all times. The manager, from his desktop, can view a map of the location of all of these mobile handhelds.

In a previous article I wrote about the inefficiencies caused by a lack of management visibility and knowledge on the location of their employees, job sites and inventory. Here is an excerpt on how to waste time and money:

Waste time and fuel driving back and forth to the office to pick-up and deliver new work orders, tools and parts. With the high cost of fuel, reducing driving distances is a necessity. Can you dispatch a service technician directly from their home to a nearby jobsite? Can you make sure your service technician has the most common parts in the van before they travel to the jobsite?
Waste time and fuel by being unprepared for the job and driving around looking for parts. Can you reduce travel time and fuel costs by being better prepared for the job before traveling? Can you ask customers for more information on the equipment such as brand, serial number, year, location, problem etc? Can you ask the customer for a digital photo of the equipment, serial number, etc., and email it before dispatching the service technician?
Sit outside of a locked and vacant location wasting time waiting for the owner to arrive. Can you set up an automated phone call to let the customer know you are on the way? This avoids showing up at a vacant house or closed business and wasting time.
Send service technicians to a distant location, when another service technician is closer and available. Can you use GPS tracking on the vans to better know the location of all service technicians so you can dispatch the closest and best service technician for the job?
Miss opportunities to sell more services, parts and equipment to the customer at the time of work and at the point-of-work. Can you automatically remind the service technician to promote service contracts by using a mobile handheld work order system? This will help increase service contract sales.
Poor scheduling and routing. Can you schedule service contract visits based on geographic location to reduce fuel costs and wasted travel time? Can a service technician complete more service calls in a day if they are routed more efficiently?
Drive large and heavy vehicles when not required. If you have a better understanding of the parts required for today’s service calls, can you take a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle to the jobsite?
Implement poor cash management and collection processes. Can you collect money, swipe credit cards and print receipts from a mobile handheld device to improve collections at the jobsite? Are you wasting time, paper and postage sending out invoices weeks after the work was completed?
Too much administrative costs. Can you reduce the costs of data entry and administrative staff by automating the dispatch process by using wireless work order dispatch that is integrated directly with your work order management and accounting systems?Every company, upon self-evaluation, will be able to identify additional inefficiencies that can be corrected and reduced. Many of the costly inefficiencies can be resolved by automating and mobilizing field services business processes.

Google Latitude would allow an Operations Manager to dispatch and route his service technicians or delivery vans based upon current locations of his employees and vehicles.

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Google and Cloud Computing Comes to Mobile Handheld PDAs and Smartphone Users

Google has just announced they will be offering synchronization and support for Cloud computing for mobile and wireless handheld PDAs and smartphones users including those using the:

iPhone
BlackBerry
Nokia S60
Nokia standard
Sony Ericsson
Windows Mobile

Why is this important? It demonstrates a trend that people are moving away from the view that their desktops or laptops are the center of the universe, to a view that Cloud Computing - their online Google or Yahoo Accounts are the center.

Google has now enabled synchronization directly through any wireless connection to your online account(s). Your contacts and calendars and other Google Apps no longer must be synchronized through a desktop, iTunes account or laptop. This is big news! This functionality permits the concept of a truly untethered mobile computing environment for handheld PDAs and smartphones. The home or work desktop is no longer the anchor weighing you down. You are free to move around the world and have access to your valuable content and applications.

I can't emphasize enough what a monumental change this is for mobile users. The advent of the iPhone and other convergent multi-media mobile handhelds along with synchronization to the Cloud where hundreds of Google Apps exists changes everything.

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