If you were not able to attend the webinar this past week on Mobile Trends Through 2014 with Bzur Haun and myself don’t worry – it was recorded for your convenience! We had a great time, turn-out, and content. We even through in a crazy prediction or two.
Watch it here and let me know what you think!
Filed under Future, Mobile, Mobile-Only, Productivity, Strategy
What have you done lately on your iPad? Can you run one of the world’s largest enterprises on it? What’s going to happen when Mobile and Big Data collide? I got a chance to sit down and disucss these questions with CIO of SAP, Oliver Bussman. Bussmann shared some great insights on mobility, the enterprise, and the future. Be sure to check out what he had to say in the first Mobile Masters post on the Guardian Mobile-Only site. Feel free to ping me if you have a nomination for other mobile masters – those who excel in the use of mobility in the enterprise.
Filed under Future, Mobile, Mobile-Only
On Wednesday September 19th I hosted a really great live webcast in Chicago on Consumerization of IT, BYOD, and Employee Led Innovation. My two panelists, Steve Duncan from Trend Micro and Ron Hyde from Dell, and I had a fun round-table discussion on the issues facing organizations of all sizes. If you didn’t get a chance to watch the live webcast, don’t fret, you can watch the recorded version here.
You can also still participate in a Tweet Chat happening tomorrow Wednesday September 26th at 26, 2012 at 12PM CDT (1PM ET, 10AM PT) with host Ramon Ray (@RamonRay). The topic will be “Debunking 4 myths in consumerization of IT. More details can be found here.
I fielded several questions from the twitter and blogasphere before the live webcast. To close the loop on Q & A here are the questions and the responses. Thanks to all who participated!
1. How should companies think beyond the app (or the device) when developing Employee Led Innovation (ELI?) What is the role of the employee in ELI beyond the insatiable appetite for cool devices?
Steve Duncan: Companies have to take a holistic approach to ELI and not just create policies and technology frameworks for devices. It starts with creating a structured and continuous method for collecting ideas/initiatives and reacting to them. Every initiative needs to be answered by management such that employees remain motivated to participate. Some times that means identifying the right people to evaluate the merits of every idea or initiative. Once employees know that Management and IT are really listening and reacting, the initiatives will flow.
2. How do you establish and maintain a collaborative attitude between IT and the rest of the company?
Steve Duncan: It’s the job of IT to create the environment that allows employees to innovate. That starts with developing and publishing boundaries for how technology can be used inside and outside of the company. It has to be backed up by providing a technology environment that lets employees to choose their applications and devices without risking loss of company data or breeching security. By providing security and provisioning support for employee initiatives, an environment of collaboration would be established.
Ron Hyde responds to both questions:
One way to ensure success would be to establish an ELI committee, made up of both end-users and IT staff. Ideally, this committee would be the ‘voice of the company’. This purpose of this group would be to jointly collaborate on key corporate initiatives around mobility. The committee will consist of IT savvy end-users who are familiar with the mobile devices and software applications of the ELI. The IT department would provide folks that are focused on delivering and managing these mobile devices and apps. Together the end-users would outline objectives and the IT department could prepare for them. By working together, both sides can craft timelines, develop a budget, and muster resources. This would help set expectations on both sides. Ultimately the committee would introduce solutions that provide value to the corporate end-user and be effectively managed by IT.
Are there apps and services that you use on a daily basis that you find collect and store too much personal information? Where is it all going? Check out my latest post on the Guardian – Future Mobile – Is Creepy the New Cool? Let me know what mobile service creeps you out the most.
Benjamin Robbins is a Principal at Palador, a consulting firm that focuses on providing strategic guidance to enterprises in the areas of mobile strategy, policy, apps, and data. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
I had the privilege today of hosting a webinar on Right Time Experiences – The Future of Big Data, Analytics, and Mobile with Maribel Lopez. If you missed the webinar you can watch the recorded version here. You can also download the pdf version of the deck.
If you missed Maribel’s original post on Right Time Experiences on Forbes.com you can read it here.
Benjamin Robbins is a Principal at Palador, a consulting firm that focuses on providing strategic guidance to enterprises in the areas of mobile strategy, policy, apps, and data. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
Changing company culture in a large enterprise is a tall order. Once a mindset has congealed, it becomes very difficult to get people un-stuck from a certain way of thinking. However, when it comes to mobility, SAP is turning the ship around. David Brutman, Senior Director of Developer Relations at SAP, shared with me this week just how SAP is making huge strides in rooting out big, lumbering enterprise thinking with their approach to mobility.
There are a few key areas where SAP is making a significant shift in lowering the barrier to entry for enterprise app developers. Brutman stated that, “We’re introducing a new free developer license that is unlimited in time with full development capabilities.” He further explained, “We had a 30 day free trial but we are elevating that significantly by removing any time restriction.” This free license will provide developers unfamiliar with the SAP mobile platform a chance to develop against it without monetary commitment. Developers can then publish apps to their platform of choice.
Besides the free developer license, SAP is providing additional support for development integration with the leading mobile software development frameworks. Brutman told me, “Another component I’m especially excited about is the partnership with Sencha Touch, Adobe PhoneGap, and Appcellerator Titanium.” Those frameworks are quickly becoming the de facto development mobile platforms because of their ability to develop one code-base that works across multiple different platforms. As Brutman put it, “SAP wants to take advantage of those platforms, with their ability to create beautiful UIs [user interfaces] and merge it with SAP capabilities in secure and managed way.” Those development platforms make perfect sense for enterprise mobile requirements and SAP is taking full advantage of that fact.
Historically, SAP has maintained a complex partnering process that all but excluded smaller development shops. This focus on opening the platform to the masses represents a major shift in partner thinking for SAP. As Brutman explained, “Typically we worked with larger companies and larger partners. Engagement was high-touch.” That kind of thinking represents the classical method of large enterprise engagement that SAP is moving away from. “Now we are accelerating the [partner] program to be able to scale. We want the ability to support a large number of developers. Those developers don’t have experience with SAP applications and they want to enter the enterprise space.” This is a win-win situation, as developers get to create solutions and SAP expands their mobile capabilities.
My conversation with Brutman only further confirms that SAP gets mobile. They get that success in this space requires solutions that are simple, play well with others, and fit into a bigger picture. They are positioning themselves to take advantage of the milieu of open platforms and integrated ecosystems. It is amazing to see such a large organization have such sustained commitment to change in the right direction. The change isn’t going to happen overnight and isn’t going to be without some bumps in the road. However, I foresee that this commitment will allow them to prosper well into the future.
For information on the announcement from SAP visit:
Benjamin Robbins is a Principal at Palador, a consulting firm that focuses on providing strategic guidance to enterprises in the areas of mobile strategy, policy, apps, and data. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
Last week I participated in a really great podcast regarding enterprise mobility. Entitled BYOD SMACKDOWN it featured:
The discussion was moderated by Pete Erickson, Founder of MoDev and Disruptathon
For those of you who missed the announcement last week, Cloud content store Box announced OneCloud, a suite of 30 productivity applications that will allow users to securely access, edit, and share content from their mobile devices. There are four premier Box OneCloud integration partners which include Quickoffice, Adobe EchoSign, Nuance PaperPort Notes, and PDF Expert. These premier partners will support the new round-trip workflow functionality which allows content updates to be instantly stored and secured on the Box platform. Box also announced integration with Enterproid, a mobility management solution that can leverage Box to extend its dual personal container in order to secure content. These announcements are in addition to Box’s existing capabilities to integrate with other apps, management, and security platforms such as MobileIron, AirWatch, Good Technology, Okta, VMWare, OneLogin, Citrix, etc.
Why should this be of interest to you outside of the immediate functionality it provides? What does this promote for enterprise mobility? To see this more clearly, let’s take a step back and enumerate all the advantages mobility brings to end-users.
It is really amazing what you can accomplish with a single device. However, this functionality needs to extend beyond your immediate device.
Mobile functionality cannot be a silo – connected and useful unto itself. This is true for devices, apps, services, and data. This seems obvious and simple to say, but there are lots of apps available that perform a single task or function, but don’t fit into a larger context. While the functionality a single app or service provides might be of interest to the immediate user, it has limited value in the enterprise. Data and capabilities must be frictionless and inter-connected to achieve maximum value. Being able to manipulate data in an application is great, but if it takes jumping through a lot of hoops to get the relevant pieces on to the next process or person, then its value is diminished. The advantages of mobility can work against it just as easily as for it. All these little pieces that are lying around are great in amongst themselves, but you need to be able to draw them together into a cohesive whole. This need is even more pronounced when it comes to enterprise mobility.
So why are announcements, like the ones from Box, so important? They represent the seeds of a mobile enterprise ecosystem. More importantly they encourage ecosystem thinking, both in partners and competitors; partners want in, competitors don’t want to be left behind. It also creates the opportunity for good functionally of apps to become great, by being able to extend security and management capabilities. In order to fulfill the dreams the advantages of enterprise mobility suggest, it will take many apps, services, and management suites working in concert.
In this highly fractured environment of apps and services, no one single player is going to dominate functionality and capabilities. To reach a state of mature enterprise mobility, it is going to take a concerted effort of collaboration and integration between those who develop apps and services. For developers and services providers, it will mean looking at your app or service with an eye toward the end-user and the enterprise, and not solely at one’s own functional capabilities. Box seems to be one of those companies that gets this. They continue to evolve and improve not only their own services, but they push to develop integration capabilities and partnerships. This is great news for the enterprise as it creates the opportunity for an ecosystem to emerge. These types of ecosystems retain the flexibility and choice while at the same time, have a place in a larger framework of services and management capabilities.
If it takes a village to raise a child, then in terms of mobility, productivity apps are the villagers and Box is trying to be the town center. This is exactly the type village that needs to be created in order for enterprise mobility to flourish.
I originally intended to have my discussion with Chris Perret, CEO of Nukona, only be a two part series. However, based upon the overwhelmingly positive feedback of Part I and Part II, it seemed almost criminal to move on to another topic without first getting his thoughts on the future. Fortunately, I was able to grab some more of Chris’ time for a follow-up discussion. I (and by your feedback many of you as well) was really interested to hear his take on what’s to come in a world of devices in the enterprise. I was anxious to skip the conversation ahead 10 years into the future but Chris first fittingly fashioned a starting point of ‘why’ as the beginning of our conversation of peering over the horizon.
“Why does mobility matter? Why does this notion of app-centric computing matter?” he started off. “The reason we love these devices, besides being elegant and beautiful pieces of engineering, is that it takes little to no effort to find an app to do what I want to do.” For Perret, mobility ultimately matters because of the efficiency and shared cost of services it can provide. He equates this “crowdsourcing of productivity” with mobility’s importance in the future of the enterprise. “Instead of starting from scratch to create an app that may only be useful to me and my organization I can now spend a few thousand for an entire ecosystem.” This, he also added, requires little to no training and allows for frictionless updates. Perret views this model as an irreversible trend. ‘Crowdsourcing for productivity’ will ultimately reduce the cost per user. He believes there will still be app customization developed for line of business data and processes but it will be less than we see today in the enterprise.
BYOD Insight – Mobility matters in the long run because of the cost savings through ‘crowdsourcing productivity’.
Perret thinks that there is “an app for IT” (yes that is a play on words) that will emerge once the mobile ecosystem congeals and arrives at a point where people can find an app for anything they want to do. These enterprise apps will be delivered and managed through “an incredible app marketplace where further efficiencies will occur.” With apps that feature rich graphics, a new generation of workers will have apps they love and the ability to process data easier and faster. As well, just as when the PC entered the workplace and it took some time to see the cost advantages, the same will be true in the mobile space. However, Perret says they are already seeing efficiencies with their “app for IT”. One of their larger enterprise customers leverages their enterprise marketplace for an intra-company competition, where the best apps compete for distribution. Development groups eagerly try to create the most efficient, best app for the company. Perret sees this as a win-win model for the future for business and IT. Perret states that “in the future, IT may not even be involved or responsible for app customization as different groups produce the apps required to do their job.”
BYOD Insight – The enterprise marketplace can be leveraged to bring continued incremental value.
When it comes to ITs future role in the company Perret has a very opportunistic outlook. “There was a period in time when IT was sexy, they had the coolest gadgets. However, in the last 10 years we have seen IT viewed as a cost-center and not critical to the line-of-business success.” Perret anticipates that a new golden age is approaching where IT has a chance to impact to the line-of-business by its willingness and ability. He envisions the problems to come as quite challenging. “IT is not going to be able to get by through performing simple checklists,” he stated. “The challenge is going to be figuring out how to make an app-centric world work for their respective communities.” Perret believes that IT is going to be an active partner again with line of business helping figure out ways to out-compete other organizations. “Dr. No (IT’s recent stereotype) isn’t going away, IT will still need to be thinking about security and compliance, but at the same time it is going to be fun – it’s going to be a blast!”
BYOD Insight – In the future, IT moves from being a cost-center to being a part of the critical-path to success!
Next we touched upon devices and what he sees in store for them. “I suspect there will be a new form of virtualization; virtualization of apps, platforms, and presence.” Perret thinks we need to get to where we have a virtual presence rather than a physical presence. This virtual presence will be “manifested on whatever ‘glass’ you are using at the moment.” Perret reasons that this presence, or persona, will be ubiquitous. “Picking up and putting down the ‘glass’ from one location to next – all the while maintaining your work persona, your personal persona, and perhaps other personals.” For Perret, it is critical that IT have the tools and services to manage these personas and the data they have access to. “It’s going to require more horsepower on the server-side, sophisticated information management, sophisticated security management, more data compression, and much better power management across the board for all devices.”
BYOD Insight – In the mobile future your ‘presence’ will proliferate from ‘glass’ to ‘glass’.
The future is never certain and Chris was careful to point out several times that his crystal ball is hazy for things further than 3 to 4 years out. Whatever hesitation he may have projecting the future, he more than overcomes with excitement and zeal that Nukona is “just starting to push the boundaries in mobility.” If the present vision is any indication, Nukona will surely help give enterprise a reason to love IT again!
About Nukona – Nukona has designed a unique enterprise-grade mobile management solution that delivers an outstanding, intuitive consumer-like app store user experience for employees, while also providing the level of management, control and security that IT requires to support data loss prevention and compliance on both personal and corporate devices. To learn more visit http://www.nukona.com
Benjamin Robbins is one of the founders of AdminBridge – providing IT Administration from mobile devices. For more information visit http://adminbridge.com
