Mobility, Business Transformation and the Fifth Dimension


Enterprise mobility is not simply a new set of gadgets and technologies for communications.  Enterprise mobility is transformational.  Business transformation is a process that impacts at least four major areas:

•          Concepts
•          Processes
•          Organizations
•          Technologies

Most often changes and innovations in any one of these areas, invites change in all of the areas.  Is your company re-thinking concepts, processes, organizations and technologies because of the capabilities mobile and SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) solutions have made possible?

Historically militaries have focused on four dimensions of warfare: land, sea, air and space.  They have focused all of their attention on building military platforms (guns, tanks, ships, aircraft, missiles, etc.) that work in these physical environments.  Today they have added a fifth dimension – information.  Today, modern militaries are focused on information-based capabilities such as quality sensors, communication links, M2M (machine to machine), and avionics and analytics as being key areas that offer military/competitive advantages.
I am here to say that the fifth dimension is also the area where industry will find their competitive advantages in 2013.  The fifth dimension involves the ability to collect data, communicate data, analyze data and report it.  The faster this is done, the bigger the possible competitive advantages.  The role of enterprise mobility and SMAC solutions are key to all of these areas.

How does a company transform itself to achieve these competitive advantages?  I suggest companies need to be smart about their development and use of mobile applications, big data, real-time business intelligence, social media monitoring and cloud-based applications that maximize agility.  However, technology is only one of the areas that need to experience innovation during true business transformation.  Companies also need to explore how they can transform their concepts, processes and organizations to work effectively in these new environments.

Running a real-time data driven business is different.  In requires new ways of managing so real-time action can be taken based on real-time data.  This may require organizational changes and new business and operational models.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Commerce News Weekly – Week of November 25, 2012

The Mobile Commerce News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile commerce and marketing, mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking, mobile ads 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 News Weekly
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read SMAC News Weekly

Smartdevices continue to gain momentum and according to Tapjoy’s recent study, m-commerce is expected to globally explode by 300 percent. Read Original Content

U.S. social media ad revenues are expected to reach $9.2 billion in 2016, up from $4.6 billion in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate of 19.2 percent, according to the fall update of the BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Forecast. Read Original Content

Mobile payment volume through PayPal on Black Friday increased 193 percent compared to last year’s Black Friday, and customers shopping through the site increased 173 percent, according to research by the National Retail Federation. Read Original Content

Founded in 1979, DSI is a global provider of Enterprise Mobility Solutions®, helping companies worldwide increase productivity and profitability regardless of data source, device type, operating system or network connectivity.  DSI serves clients globally through its offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by DSI.

Deloitte predicts the UK will see a 17 percent hike in online retail sales this year, with £330 million of transactions made through smartphones and £500 million through tablet computers. Read Original Content

IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers latest report reveals that growth in mobile advertising continues to skyrocket as it increased 190 percent YOY and 25 percent on the prior period to $22 million. Read Original Content


Research firm, ABI Research, predicted earlier this year that an estimated 80 million NFC-enabled smartphones would be shipped this year. Read Original Content

IBM recently reported that total online sales saw a surge of 20.7 percent in spending from last year. eBay-owned PayPal is reporting that Black Friday global mobile payments volume was up 193 percent from last year. Read Original Content

Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5 – Week of November 25, 2012

In this update on "What's New in HTML5" the debate around the merits of HTML5 continues as Brightcove's CEO Jeremy Allaire says Mark Zuckerberg was "dead wrong" about HTML5.

Now for the news...

Nokia’s new free cloud-based map service, HERE, will be available on multiple operating systems, including an HTML5 version for Apple’s iOS.  Read Original Content

Mobile social gaming platform GREE is expanding its compatibility with HTML5 and will roll out the enhanced HTML5 functionality worldwide in open beta this month.  Read Original Content

Caplin Systems has launched a Web-trading tool, Caplin Trader 3, built entirely in HTML5 to provide support for all platforms from one codebase.  Read Original Content

The New York Times has redesigned its crosswords page with a new HTML5 version to enable game play within the browser, allowing players to access puzzles without leaving the NYTimes.com website.  Read Original Content

BoosterMedia provides an infographic detailing the world of HTML5 mobile gaming in this article featured in me mobile entertainment.  Read Original Content

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire believes hybrid apps are essential to getting the technical economy highly productive, and states Mark Zuckerberg was “dead wrong” and it was “shameful for him to throw HTML5 under the bus because Facebook had an outdated and poorly written hybrid app”.  Read Original Content

Mobile and digital consultant Michael Nuciforo compares the native vs. HTML5 debate to choosing whether to purchase a Ferrari or a Toyota in this article in Finextra.  Read Original Content


Computer maker Dell has created tablet-optimized catalogs and smartphone mobile commerce sites for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  The digital catalogs are HTML5-based so consumers can view them on any mobile browser.  Read Original Content

LongTail Video has released a major update to its video player with enhanced HTML5 support leveraging many of the recent advancements in HTML5 browsers, including the HTML5 Fullscreen API.  Read Original Content

Tylted has launched GameDrop Network, a mobile advertising platform that integrates Tylted’s HTML5-based ad server with an app publisher’s existing ad server.  Read Original Content

ViewTube is a userscript compatible with various web browsers that replaces Adobe Flash Player with an HTML5 video player on popular websites, giving users the opportunity to try out HTML5 video.  Read Original Content

HTML5 Web-publishing platform Wix has formed a partnership with e-commerce website solution Shopify to enable Wix’s users to integrate Shopify into their HTML5 websites.  Read Original Content

Gaming site JackpotCity Casino has added two new HTML5 mobile casino games.  Read Original Content

Apex Studio has released the new generation of HTML5 Movie Maker for Windows, enabling users to convert multiple formats video files to HTML5 video to play on browsers and mobile devices.  Read Original Content

Magic Software’s David Akka believes the hype around HTML5 continues to gather momentum, but won’t be ready as a reliable development tool for the enterprise for another 2-4 years.  Read Original Content


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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Speed, Mobility and Online Sales

I read an article in the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) today titled, Big-Box Stores Wrestle E-Commerce Gorilla.  Here is an interesting excerpt, "Amazon sells many of the same products as big-box stores but can undercut them on prices due to lower overhead.  It also uses computer algorithms to adjust prices in real time.  Traditional retailers often can't move as rapidly because online prices must match those in stores."  I would like to also point out that an increasing amount of Amazon's sales are coming from mobile devices.  That means Amazon stands to benefit from the show-rooming trend where customers search online for deals while in big-box stores.

Note the mention of "real-time" and "rapidly" in the excerpt.  Amazon is beating big-box retailers on speed, real-time analytics, business strategies and dynamic responses.  Yesterday, I wrote an article titled, Time-Space Compression and Enterprise Mobility.  In this article I discussed dromology, the science of speed, and chronostrategies, time based strategies.  Amazon is using dromology and chronostrategies to achieve a real competitive advantage.

The technology platform that Amazon uses was not mentioned in the article.  It was their business model and business strategies that were the focus.  Amazon's technology platform, however, enables Amazon to implement a business model, with a speed and expense advantage, that provides it with a competitive advantage.

I am going to hammer on this drum for a few days.  Technology supports Amazon's online, speed and low-cost business model.  The strategy, however, is not the technology but the business model supported by a speed and time advantage.

Enterprise mobility is a technology that should support your business strategy.  Is your strategy based on accomplishing speed, time, visibility and analytics advantages or a unique business model?  If so, enterprise mobility has the potential of making that possible.

The task of developing an enterprise-wide mobile strategy is always identified as one of the biggest challenges around mobility.  The reason, I believe, is that the business must recognize the potential impact of mobility, and then develop a business model that will take advantage of it.  How can the IT department develop an enterprise-wide mobility strategy without first having the business strategy and business model defined for the IT organization to support?
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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant
Read The Future of Work
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

M2M News Weekly – Week of November 25, 2012

Welcome to M2M News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to M2M (machine to machine) and embedded mobile devices.  I aggregate the information, include the original links and add a synopsis of each article.  I also search for the latest market numbers such as market size, growth and trends in and around the M2M market.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read SMAC News Weekly

Compass Intelligence, a global consulting and market analytics firm, released its latest forecast of the M2M market today. The cellular M2M market will reach 33.3 million connections in the U.S. in 2012 and grow to 114.7 million connections by 2016 with an annual growth rate of over 36 percent. Read Original Content

Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas last month instituted a policy that requires students to wear ID cards implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip. Sophomore Andrea Hernandez refused to wear the device and was suspended. Read Original Content

Shipments of satellite-based communications nodes used for smart grid applications are forecast to more than quadruple between now and 2020, according to a new study from Pike Research. The market-research company expects node shipments to rise from about 11,500 in 2012 to nearly 48,000 by 2020. Read Original Content

ILS Technology provides ready-to-use cloud based platforms to implement and manage M2M (machine to machine) and embedded wireless devices that connect to SAP.  ILS Technology simplifies deployments and offers unparalleled security to protect company and customer data and to ensure regulatory compliance. This newsletter is sponsored in part by ILS Technology.

ProximaRF, a subsidiary of Tranzbyte Corporation, is working on the development of an RFID reader that could successfully track shipments of legally grown and distributed marijuana from the time the product is harvested to the time it is delivered to retailers. Read Original Content


U.K. mobile operator Three is rolling out a cloud-based M2M platform. The new platform reduces set-up time and costs for mobile virtual network operators and gives them control of their connections, such as activating and deactivating their connections, tracking data usage, setting alerts and applying data limits. Read Original Content

Last year there were roughly 110 million cellular-connected M2M connections in the world. ABI Research, a New York-based follower of technology trends, thinks we’ll see more than 365 million by 2016. Read Original Content

Interviews with Kevin Benedict