Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Webalo's Peter Price

Webalo Co-Founder Peter Price

I had the privelege this week to interview mobility expert and co-Founder/CEO of Webalo, Peter Price. You know it is going to be an interesting conversation when four of the six people on the management team have PhDs or are working on PhDs. Webalo formed in 2000 and has since written over 600,000 lines of code to power their solutions.

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

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Peter: BlackBerry Bold, iPad and MacBook.

Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications?
Peter: I must say our own Webalo application. I practically run the business from my BlackBerry. Any kind of travel related applications. My family really likes the HeyTell mobile application. It turns your smartphone into a walkie talkie, push to talk kind of device.

Kevin: Do you use mobile devices to purchase things?
Peter: Absolutely. My iPad is my ordering device. I buy all kinds of things online using mobile devices - tickets, books, reservations of all kinds. I think the iPad will really drive online purchases because it is so convenient.

Mobility Experts

This report consists of the answers that seven enterprise mobility experts recently provided me in response to the question, "What advice do you have for companies considering implementing enterprise mobility solutions?"

• Make sure the users get to provide feedback and direction. Make sure the mobile users will use it. Make sure the mobile application actually supports the work and the way the work is done in the field.

• Think bigger. Mobility is not a nice to have or a fad. It is here to stay. It will be here for the rest of your career. It is now a core component of your IT environment.

• Plan on supporting your employees' personal devices. Have a strategy for supporting personal mobile devices, and develop policies for managing and supporting them.

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of January 24, 2011

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IMPORTANT! In the January 27 webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned, Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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More PayPal customers are using its payment service from their mobile phones. eBay’s payments unit in 2010 nearly tripled its eBay Mobile gross merchandise volume to $2 billion from the previous year, driven by strong holiday shopping.

http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/176_14/paypal-mobile-payments-1031590-1.html

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AT&T aims to drive awareness of mobile bar codes and the services it provides to companies that want to use them within marketing collateral via a business to business campaign that combines sight, sound and motion on Apple's iAd platform.

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/8879.html

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Apple plans to introduce services that would let customers use its iPhone and iPad computer to make purchases using NFC, said Richard Doherty, director of consulting firm Envisioneering Group.

Kevin’s Mobile Retailing News Weekly – Week of January 24, 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.

IMPORTANT! In the January 27 webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned, Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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When Google releases year-end and fourth quarter earnings this week, it will report a 20.2 percent lift in search ad revenue to $25.4 billion compared with the prior year. Revenue from display advertising will rise by an estimated 61 percent for the year.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=143255

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The number of mobile phone ad impressions in the United Arab Emirates has surged by more than 50 percent, as the devices become the medium of choice for consumers accessing the Internet. The Nielsen Global Online Survey has found that 43 percent of Middle East consumers plan to use a mobile phone to access the Internet over the coming year.

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/mideast-mobile-phone-advertising-surges-by-more-than-50--375308.html

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Facebook is on track to generate more than $2 billion in ad revenues in 2010, far surpassing earlier estimates of $1 billion, and will likely skyrocket past that figure in 2011, as more marketers shift budgets from TV, radio, and print to the social realm.

M2M Industry Segments

Analysts project significant growth numbers for the M2M market. M2M or machine-to-machine is the market for wireless embedded chips that can send data to a central server. By the year 2020 there are projected to be billions of connected devices. At the end of 2010 roughly 80 million subscribers were using of M2M technology. That number is set to rise to 300 million subscribers by 2015 according to research done by Berg Insight. Europe and North America currently dominate the number of connected M2M devices and are expected to continue through 2020.

Looking even further ahead the projected growth of M2M will hit 2.1 billion by 2020, and about 1 billion will come from utility companies, says Tracy Ford with RCR Wireless News. Utility companies are jumping on the concept of M2M technology to efficiently monitor and regulate services to clients.

“With many leading wireless service providers and utility companies looking to profit from the M2M opportunity and the growing support from US federal and state governments, M2M applications in smart grids have tremendous potential for growth. The smart grid is expected to provide a major boost to the M2M industry in the next few years.” GlobalData

Kevin Benedict's Perspective
on Enterprise Mobility 2011

I have been in enterprise mobility for over a decade now, and am beginning to feel like an elder statesman. It's cold outside here in Boise, Idaho. I've got a hot Starbucks mocha next to me, my warm slippers are on and my dogs are asleep at my feet. It feels like a good time to exchange stories about deploying mobile solutions in distant lands, and sharing adventurous and humorous stories, but let's hold that to another time when we are face to face. Today, let me share where I see enterprise mobility as of January 2011.

1) The mobility platform conversation is right. The right topics are being discussed in the community. The right problems are being solved. The right kinds of technologies are being debated. I have faith that the free market, competition and funding is available to deliver mobile platform improvements going forward. I saw that Insight Ventures just put $19.1 million into mobile platform start-up Kony Solutions last week (read more). The market finally appreciates the need for mobile platforms. This is good for all of us.

2) Mobile application design, development and deployment systems are adequate for massive and disruptive adoption. Apple's App Store celebrated their 10 billionth download last week. Here is an excerpt from InformationWeek - The statistics for Apple's App Store are staggering. Apple claims that there are 160 million users of iOS devices. That means the average customer has downloaded about 62 applications. At the current rate, iOS users are downloading 206 apps every second, 12,360 per minute, 741,600 per hour, and 17.8 million apps per day. We have great success models that are proven for marketing, selling and delivering mobile solutions. These processes and solutions remove some of the biggest inefficiencies the enterprise mobility market has suffered from over the past decade.

3) Funding sources are interested and eager to invest in mobility and social media. I have been reading a lot lately about the large amount of investments VCs and others are making in social media, and we all know that social media is benefiting from and growing in parallel to mobility. These investments foretell many new innovations and new resources for us all.

4) Mobility experts and enterprises have accepted that companies must support all the major mobile devices and operating systems, and even their employees' personal smartphones and tablets. This means having a good mobility platform and an MDM (mobile device management) solution in place are critical. I remember a few years back when Sybase could barely sell Afaria because companies did not feel they needed MDM, but today it is mission critical. This trend also makes Terry Stepien (president of Sybase/iAnywhere) and John Chen, president of Sybase look like geniuses for recognizing the value of mobile platforms and MDM early on.

5) Once a good mobile platform and an MDM are in place in the enterprise, the focus for mobility will change to the individual. The individual position or role will need specific tools, mobile apps, access to backoffice systems and data to fulfill their specific roles and responsibilities. The user becomes the center of the mobility universe and the ROI becomes role based. How can this position or role best optimize their performance using mobile solutions? What do they need? IMPORTANT! This is the area where third party mobility vendors can really add value to the SAP or other ERP ecosystems.

6) Integrating location-based services (LBS) with everything. In addition to marketing and retailing, any work that is performed in remote locations, on routes, involves delivering products or services to customers, or in mobile environments will benefit from LBS. LBS is an area that will become more and more important to companies. Geospatial information systems (GIS) and LBS provide valuable views and perspectives that are very difficult to achieve without.

7) There is a deserved emphasis by SAP and others on mobile business intelligence (BI). The use of in memory computing for near real time business intelligence that can be shared with mobile devices in mobile environments can be revolutionary. Combine a user centric mobile application approach with mobile BI and LBS, and I can image amazing productivity gains. I am very excited to see the innovations that will be forthcoming from this area.

8) Context aware mobile solutions are only starting to be thought through but promise incredible productivity gains. Imagine that your mobile application recognizes, based on your calendar and location, that you will be visiting a customer. As a result of this recognition, the mobile application queries back office BI, CRM and other systems to provide you with a complete and updated profile of the customer. All of this is done automatically because your mobile application understands the "context" of your actions and movements.

9) Mobile money, mobile payments, mobile banking and more. I have already stopped carrying family photos in my wallet. Why would I carry them when I have 1,400 family photos on my iPhone? Why would I carry a Starbuck's card, when I can pay for my Mocha at Starbucks with my iPhone? The same holds true for nearly all other purchases. Yes, there are many security issues and privacy concerns that need to be resolved, but that is why we surround ourselves with smart people. I have faith that these issues will be worked out. Once they are worked out satisfactorily, I can imagine all kinds of mobile applications will benefit from the ability to manage business transactions on them.

10) One of the hardest tasks of business owners, supervisors and managers is to remotely manage work and workers. Holding staff accountable and compliant to safety regulations, government regulations, legal requirements, customer SLAs (service level agreements), quality work, best practices and company policies is a huge challenge. I believe there is an entire new category of mobile applications, workflows and media that can contribute to solving this challenge.

Notice of Whitepapers:

***************************************************
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 Benedict's Holy Grail
of Enterprise Mobility, or Not

I am presenting a report on the advice 17 mobile experts have given me in a webinar on Tuesday, January 25 at 2:00 pm EST, and on Thursday, January 27 at 11:00 am EST. Although, perhaps not thee holy grail of enterprise mobility, I hope it will be useful. I will be presenting the report and then handing it over to the Smartsoft Mobile team to share Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies - 10 Lessons Learned. You are invited to join the webinar by registering here.

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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 Field Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 17, 2011

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

IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned (January 25 and 27), Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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A unique battery-operated, submersible device for automatic meter reading is now being used in the UK. The device simply clips on to the existing water meter in seconds and requires no modifications or costly re-engineering of the water meter.

http://news.thomasnet.com/companystory/Novel-Clip-on-Submersible-Device-Enables-Low-Cost-Automatic-Meter-Reading-841180

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The Nevada Highway Patrol, a division of the Nevada Department of Public Safety, has chosen Janam's XM66 for use by all officers in the Patrol's thirty-seven statewide duty locations.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nevada-highway-patrol-selects-janam-114119564.html

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Jason Urso, CTO at Honeywell Process Solutions has identified four interrelated themes of innovation over the past few years. First, is mobility of devices and sensors. Second, is wireless technology as an enabler. Third, is the challenge for operators and personnel to convert data to useful knowledge. The fourth is the integration of various control layers—closing the gaps from distributed control systems to advanced control to safety to fire and gas systems.

What Would a Mobile Expert Do?

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that I routinely publish interviews with enterprise mobility experts. You also know that I often ask them about the mobile device(s) they carry. In this report, I have gone back over 17 recent interviews and collected the data on my interviewees' mobile device ownership and use.

Mobile Device Ownership Data:

82% own iPhones
53% own BlackBerrys
24% own Androids
8% own Windows 7
82% own iPads

Primary Work Phone:

59% use iPhones for work
35% use BlackBerrys for work
0% use Androids for primary work phone
8% use Windows 7 for primary work phone

Primary Personal Use:

71% use iPhones as a personal or dual purpose phone
24% use BlackBerrys as a personal or dual purpose phone
0% use Androids as a personal or dual purpose phone
8% use Windows 7 as a personal or dual purpose phone

Interesting Statistics:

100% of Mobile Experts that use BlackBerrys at work own iPads
80% of Mobile Experts that use iPhones at work own iPads
50% of Mobile Experts that use BlackBerrys at work, use an iPhone for personal use
90% of Mobile Experts that use iPhones at work, use an iPhone for personal use
24% of Mobile Experts own Android devices, but nobody (0%) use them as their primary work or personal phone - they are demo phones or back-up phones only.

I realize this report consists of data gathered from only 17 mobility experts, but it is interesting data nonetheless.

Notice of Whitepapers:

***************************************************

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 Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 17, 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 Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly

IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned (January 25 and 27), Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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According to global telecom equipment provider Ericsson, the number of mobile broadband subscribers reached a remarkable 500 million in 2010, and that number is about to double in 2011, bringing the total to an even billion.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mobile_broadband_users_hit_1_billion_in_2011.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29

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Over 40 percent of all Twitter posts are made via a mobile phone. This figure is up from 25 percent 12 months ago.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/3022093.article

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Eric Lai

I have read many articles related to enterprise mobility over the past few months from Sybase's Eric Lai. This is interesting for a number of reasons, 1) Sybase traditionally has not chosen to participate in the social media space, 2) Sybase has not traditionally had full time writers helping educate the public, 3) Sybase has rarely let employees share thoughts and insights publicly as Eric does, and 4) Eric Lai was a writer at Computer World for over five years and is a very good writer.

Sybase's Senior Writer
Eric Lai

For the above reasons, I thought it would be interesting to interview Eric.

Note: These are not Eric's exact words, but rather my notes from our discussion.

Kevin: Eric tell me about yourself.

Eric: I lived in Washington state (Everett area) for many years. Worked for Computer World for five years. We have two young boys. Moved to California nine months ago, where I am now Senior Writer for Sybase.

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?

Eric: iPhone 4 (he left his iPhone 3 on the roof of his car in San Francisco), old company issued Dell laptop and a NetBook. I was a BlackBerry user for many years, but love the iPhone now. I want an iPad.

Announcing Field Mobility News Weekly

I have been writing several weekly newsletters over the past year and have come to realize that many of the articles and reports I read are of interest, but do not fit into my existing newsletter categories which are:

Mobility News Weekly (general interest enterprise mobility numbers and news)
Mobile Retailing News Weekly (mobile retail applications, mobile marketing, location-based services, etc.)
Mobile Money News Weekly (mobile money, e-wallets, mobile payments, mobile security, mobile banking, etc.)
M2M News Monthly (machine-to-machine, smart machines, smart grid and embedded wireless solutions news)

Many news stories and articles related to geo-tagging assets, geo-spatially aware mobile applications, RFID, rugged devices, CMMS (computer managed maintenance systems), FM (facility management), rugged tablets, field service automation, barcode scanners, utility applications, GPS vehicle, asset and fleet tracking, etc., are not adequately covered in my existing newsletters. As a result, beginning this week I will be publishing a new weekly newsletter called Field Mobility News Weekly.

If you have news, stories, case studies, research, analysis, etc., relevant to this newsletter, please feel free to email it to me.

Download Whitepaper Here

Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly – Week of January 17, 2011

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.

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IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned (January 25 and 27), Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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Mobile banking and mobile payments were pegged as two of Bank Systems & Technology's ten game changing tech trends for 2011. Consumers everywhere are flocking to banking services on smartphones, over text messages or through mobile browsers.

http://www.banktech.com/blog/229000115

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Mobile banking use is expected to soar by nearly 55 percent un 2011. While 17.8 million consumers used mobile banking last year, 27.4 million are expected to use it in 2011, and 53.1 million consumers are forecast to adopt it by 2013.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/12/pf/saving/smartphone_dangers/

SAP Workforce Scheduling
and Optimization

I have been reading recently about how the U.S. military is consolidating data centers around the world. They want to reduce costs, but also have quicker and faster access to data in a unified view. This morning I read with interest a case study on how Pacific Gas and Electric had similar goals and ambitions and what they did to accomplish them.

In the past PG&E coordinated crew schedules within the SAP project management application, and had dispatcher teams at each of their 67 local PG&E offices. However, to improve on the efficiency of the scheduling, PG&E decided to consolidate the dispatching teams to work out of two regional remote management centers in Concord and Fresno, California.

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of January 17, 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.

IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar, Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned (January 25 and 27), Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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The results of a new report on U.S. consumers suggest retailers may want to focus advertising dollars on mobile shoppers, as more Americans are turning to their mobile devices and the mobile web to make purchases.

http://www.creativedepartment.com/news/advertising/mobile-shopping-exploding-us-new-report-finds-173900

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While 2010 saw the emergence and popularization of a number of novel marketing techniques and devices, 2011 is expected to be the year businesses both large and small begin to grasp and make full use of these trends.

http://www.nebsmarketingstore.ca/news/business-marketing/marketing_projections_and_predictions_for_2011$1062.html

Massive Real Time Data Feeds

Last February American helicopters were involved in a deadly attack that resulted in many Afghan civilian deaths. Investigators have pointed to data overload as the cause. The drone operators were simultaneously receiving dozens of secure text messages from the troops, radio exchanges with analysts and live video feeds from drones. All of this information was coming in real time at such volume that the operators were not able to process it quickly enough and bad decisions were made and executed upon.

Military officials are trying to determine what they can do to fix or improve the weak link in the data processing chain, which is the human link. In earlier blog articles I have shared that there were similar findings in the Gulf of Mexico accident and resultant oil spill this past summer. Hundreds of sensors on the oil rig were reporting data in real time, predicting trouble. The problem was that the data was coming in at such volume that humans were not able to process and understand the full meaning of it in time to prevent the tragedy.

Syclo's
Jon Schmidt

Between flights around the world (172,000 United air miles in 2010), 4 children ranging from 2 months (baby Finn) to 23 years, and a record breaking sales year at Syclo, it has been hard to catch up with Jon for an interview. However, where there is a will there is a way and we got it done earlier this week.

For inclusion in this article, I asked Jon for a photo and I think he sent me one from 1993. This photo does not appear to be from a person with a 23 year old child and 2.7 million total United air miles.

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

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you regularly carry?
Jon: iPhone (work), BlackBerry Pearl (personal), laptop for power points, iPad for mobile everything. I like the iPad because it can be up in 2 seconds. Immediacy is critical.

Kevin: What industries do you see adopting mobility today?
Jon: Two years ago it was mostly utilities and oil and gas companies. Today, all industries seem to be buying including; Telco, CPG (consumer packaged goods), electronics, shipping companies, mining, etc. New and young employees will expect to have company supported smartphones and connectivity with business applications.

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – Week of January 10, 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 Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly

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IMPORTANT! In the upcoming webinar Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies-Ten Lessons Learned, Smartsoft Mobile will share the top ten lessons learned from implementing SAP enterprise mobility solutions in Fortune 500 Companies. If you are a systems integrator or an end user, you will value from learning what works and what doesn't work in deploying mobility solutions. This webinar will also include an overview of the enterprise mobility industry in 2011 by SAP Mentor Kevin Benedict.

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Juniper Research's latest report claims mobile advertising revenues for mobile games will increase tenfold between 2010 and 2015. Juniper estimates that ad-spend in mobile games was $87 million last year, but will rise to $894 million by 2015.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/39983/Juniper-predicts-894m-of-mobile-games-ad-revenues-by-2015

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Forty-six percent of iPad users indicate they are more productive and use their iPad daily. In fact, 13 percent of these users say the iPad is mission critical for their job.

http://community.citrix.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=158564368

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RIM recently provided the first hands on demonstration of the PlayBook, a seven inch touchscreen tablet that will go head to head with Apple's iPad when the Wi-Fi only version ships, likely in March.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7050VJ20110106

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Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp. saw its fourth quarter unaudited net profit more than double from a year earlier, driven by strong growth in handset shipments.

Mobile Retailing Applications

On January 25th and 27th I will be the opening act for two webinars on the subject of Implementing SAP Enterprise Mobility in Fortune 500 Companies - Ten Lessons Learned. I would invite you to join me and the development and implementation experts from Smartsoft Mobile who will be sharing experiences and lessons learned from their deployments. There are two dates for this webinar, so you can register for the one that works best for your schedule. You can register here.

The folks who will be joining me on this webinar from Smartsoft Mobile were actually involved in the design, development, deployment and support of these mobile enterprise applications. Smartsoft is an SAP Services Partner and they have developed mobile solutions for a number of large SAP customers now. They have also developed multiple versions of mobile retailing applications and can share what they learned in version 1.0 and implemented in version 2.0.

I hope you will join us and bring your questions!

***************************************************

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 Money News Weekly – Week of January 10, 2011

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.

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Square, the mobile payment start up from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, announced today that it has raised a new round of funding that values the company at about $240 million.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/square-keith-rabois-mobile-payments.html

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Mopay Inc., a payment service provider for online merchants, forecasts considerable momentum and movement in the global mobile payments industry in 2011. The massive growth of the market in North America, increased consolidation and lower transaction costs are the top trends that will have a significant impact on the blossoming mobile payments industry in 2011

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/mobile-payments-industry-to-experience-monumental-growth-in-2011-mopay/

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Last year, only 4.1 percent of mobile phones shipped had near field communications capabilities. That number is expected triple to 13 percent in 2014, according to ISuppli.

Twitter Conversion

It's true. I am but a recent convert to Twitter. Since I typically write obnoxiously long articles, I had a difficult time understanding the value of a technology that limits itself to 140 characters. I have now, however, seen the light and the light is an iPad app.

I use the iPad application Flipboard. Flipboard and Paper.li are two applications that convert RSS feeds, tweets, Facebook and other content into online newspapers or magazines that are easy to read. I am very impressed with Flipboard's ability to show the original tweet, and automatically open up the tiny URL link and display the content in the online newspaper format.

I was simply too impatient to read through a list of tweets with enticing titles about world changing mobile technology, and not be able to see the content without waiting for the link to open in a browser and display the content. In Flipboard it is a one step process. All the tweet links are automatically opened and displayed in the newspaper. BEAUTIFUL!

Leapfactor's Lionel Carrasco
and Luis Cabrera

I had the opportunity to spend some time on the phone with Leapfactor's founder and CEO, Lionel Carrasco, recently. For readers not familiar with Leapfactor, they are an SAP partner that provides mobile solutions for the enterprise market. Here are some short descriptions of their solutions:

LeapApps, a set of cross-industry micro apps that deliver actionable information to white-collar workers in the field, including everything from approvals, alerts and business indicators to mobile intranets and collaboration tools.
LeapShell, a proprietary Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows the platform to be wholly adopted by developers, partners and IT departments.
LeapCentral, the cornerstone of Leapfactor’s infrastructure. Leapcentral is the device, user and application-management cloud-based infrastructure that enables Leapfactor to deliver a cost-effective and scalable mobile platform.
LeapAgent, the interface with enterprise systems that acts as a Chinese wall separating IT systems from the services and content that Leapcentral accesses.

Lionel updated me on events at Leapfactor since I last saw them in May at Sapphire. Here are my notes from our conversation:

Kevin: Lionel, what is new at Leapfactor since May?
Lionel: We formally opened operations in Brazil this summer. We hired an experienced SAP veteran to be our country manager. Although 90 percent of our focus is in the USA, Brazil is an amazing market and has a big economy. We also set up operations in Mexico. We hired the former President of SAP Mexico to be our country manager.

Yesterday Ian Thain from Sybase reported these findings from a recent Kelton Research survey:

Ninety percent of IT Managers surveyed are planning to implement new mobile applications.
Nearly one in two believe that successfully managing mobile applications will top their priority list.
Twenty-one percent are looking to introduce 20+ mobile applications into their organizations.

This is BIG news! Earlier this week in an interview with T.L. Neff from Pyxis Mobile, T.L. also reported that customers are planning multiple mobile application deployments. What does this mean? It means good news for companies that are in the EMM (enterprise mobility management) and MDM (mobile device management) market. This information also matches up with the opinions and predictions that Bryan Whitmarsh from Sybase made in his recent interview.

Products like Sybase's Afaria, Syclo's Agentry Analytics (see short video) and B2M's mProdigy are set to play more important roles in 2011 than in any previous year.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @krbenedict! I am using Twitter more and more to share interesting articles that I find on enterprise mobility.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility 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 January 10, 2011

TL Neff

T.L. Neff, is an EVP at Pyxis Mobile in charge of customer services. We met last year when we both spoke at the same conference. T.L. lives in the Boston area and is an expert in mobility. Last week we were able to schedule some time together for an interview.

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

Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you use and carry?

TL: BlackBerry Torch, iPhone 4, iPad and laptop.

Kevin: What are your favorite mobile applications?
TL: Mobile CRM from Pyxis, Movela Netflix Queue Manager (a Pyxis app), TagIn (GPS tracking - our kids use it a lot to tell us where they are located), FaceBook (I use it for both family and business. Some customers respond faster on FaceBook than on email) and Skype Mobile.

Kevin: What industries do you see adopting mobility today?
TL: Everybody is implementing now. Even personal friends tell me their companies are looking at mobility.

Kevin: Where are you seeing sales opportunities?
TL: A lot of our big sales opportunities come from analyst referrals. Oracle World was also great for us. We also did well at the BlackBerry Developer conference. Both Oracle World and the BlackBerry Developer conference used our solutions for their mobile conference app which gave us a lot of exposure.

B2C Mobile App

Kevin: What business processes are you seeing companies mobilize?
TL: We deployed our first mobile applications in 2002.  Back then they were sales force automation. Now, customers are coming to us with needs in their marketing departments. Some start with internal projects, and now have advanced to consumer facing apps. Interactive marketing teams are calling us today. Customers have asked for mobile HR apps. People buy from Pyxis because they need multiple apps and want to use our development platform.  They buy servers from us, but we don't have a per user fee. When companies want a lot of mobile users, our model is perfect for them. We are getting a lot of interest from medical and pharmaceutical firms.  There is a lot of interest in tablets today. However, developers must realize that iPads are shared devices and security is an issue. By shared I mean they are often used by many people so security across users is an issue.

Kevin: What are some of the most surprising developments for you in enterprise mobility over the past year?
TL: How quickly enterprises adopted iPads.  I thought companies would like them, but I thought it would take years for them to be adopted in significant numbers. Also, we sold a lot of solutions to SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises).  SME start-ups can't imagine having solutions without mobile apps. Many of these SMEs start a website at the same time as a mobile app.

Kevin: What advice do you have for companies just starting down a path to enterprise mobility?
TL: Think bigger. Mobility is not a nice to have, or a fad. It is here to stay. It will be here for the rest of your career. It is now a core component of your IT environment.

Kevin: How important is MDM (mobile device management) and security?
TL: It is critical. When personal and business mobile devices are mixed, they must be managed. Pyxis chooses to secure the mobile applications, not the device.

Kevin: Where does your company fit in the mobile enterprise solutions mix?
TL: We have a mobile development and production platform. Customers buy servers from Pyxis when they want to deploy more than one mobile application. We have companies that want to deploy dozens of different mobile applications on our platform. We provide our customers with a mobile SDK. It is a visual application development environment called Application Studio.

Mobility requires flexibility, fast change, rapid evolution of devices and apps.  We enable you to rapidly develop, edit, and grow apps. Some of our customers release new versions of mobile apps monthly.  We allow for these rapid changes. Most of our competitors require huge development projects to change apps. We take pride in developing mobile applications in eight hours.

Kevin: What industries are you focusing on in 2011?
TL: That is a hard question since we have customers in all kinds of different industries. Probably the best way to describe it is we target Fortune 2,500 and OEM partners. Our partners purchase a development license and build mobile applications for their customers.

Kevin: Where do you see mobility going in 2011?
TL: Mobility is growing so broad. Companies will be looking not for one mobile application, but for platforms that can support ten different ones. Companies are looking to mobilize everything.

Kevin: Tell me about your business model.
TL: We are a mobile platform company with servers and a mobile SDK. We don't sell by the number of mobile users. We sell by the number of servers a customer needs. The number of servers is dependent on the kind of mobile applications they want.

I want to thank T.L. for sharing his thoughts and experiences with us.

To read more in the Mobile Expert Interview Series click here.

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility 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.

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