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Showing posts from June, 2010

Kevin’s M2M News Weekly – June 30, 2010

You are reading the first edition of "Kevin's M2M News Weekly." This is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news and articles related to M2M (machine to machine) and embedded mobile devices that I run across each week. 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. I believe that enterprise mobility and the M2M markets are converging.  Both areas exchange wireless data with the enterprise.  Both play important roles in enterprise asset management, fleet management and field services. You can read archived editions of Kevin's M2M News Weekly at   http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/m2m.html . Please send me any interesting M2M news links, market numbers, events, case studies, analyst reports or whitepapers that you come across and I will include in my newsletter. Enjoy!

What I Learned about Mobility at Sapphire 2010, Part 2

At Sapphire 2010, not only did SAP discuss their intent to acquire Sybase, but they also announced Project Gateway. Project Gateway is an API layer (gateway) that is designed for simple mobile applications and M2M (machine to machine) integrations with SAP. The intent as I understand it is for SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform) to be the integration layer for complex mobile applications (rich/thick clients) that require advanced synchronization technologies, and Project Gateway for lightweight iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and other micro applications. SAP was quick to add that mobility partners can develop and use their own integration methodologies as well.  They espoused the virtues of choice.  As a result, I see the following integration options: SAP's strategy for integrating advanced rich or thick client mobile applications will be SUP. SAP's strategy for integrating lightweight mobile applications will be Project Gateway. SAP also certifies a variety of integration strateg

Shift Gears Now!!! An iPhone Application That Tells You How to Drive

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Oh no!  An iPhone that tells you how to drive.  That's all I need.  The application is called DriveGain and it gives a range of visual and audio feedback on what changes are required by the driver to burn less fuel.  I wonder if it uses my father's voice? It works with any petrol or diesel car with a manual transmission and features a database of over 8,400 European and 8,500 North American cars to choose from. Verbal instructions given by the iPhone app range from general advice such as “try reducing your acceleration!!!!!”, to specific gear changes. While on the visual side, DriveGain provides more detailed information including current speed, level of acceleration or braking and the affect this has on fuel consumption, a smoothness score, average fuel economy reading and other eco-related statistics.  I wonder how much sarcasm is built into the app? Is this supposed to make my driving experience more pleasurable?  "Turn left, SLOW DOWN, not third gear stupid, BRAK

What I Learned about Mobility at Sapphire, Part 1

It has been about six weeks since Sapphire, and it is about time I consolidate and share my thoughts on what I learned.  I tracked down and interviewed ( text interviews | video interviews ) just about every management team of every mobile enterprise company that was present at Sapphire - with the notable exception of ClickSoftware , which is an SAP mobility partner and the leading provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for every size of service business.  I will catch them next time. SAP's announced intent to acquire Sybase in the weeks before Sapphire forced all the mobile enterprise application vendors to quickly consider the impact on their strategies, solutions and marketing messages.  There was a bit of "testing the waters" with various marketing messages at Sapphire.  I think most of them were able to come up with an adequate marketing message.  The messages were uniformly, "We understand why SAP did it, and we plan to support

Mobile Enterprise Users Need Simplicity

SAP has a section of their SDN/SCN portal for enterprise mobility .  On this site they have a diagram depicting an end-to-end mobile solution.  This diagram does a good job of causing fear in just about everyone.  The diagram shows a deep stack of technology components, each with their own complex technical design and functionality.  I can just imagine an enterprise IT team gasping in distress at this diagram.  However, understanding how everything in your car works is not necessary in order to drive it. Let me give you an example.  ClickSoftware is an SAP mobility partner and the developer of a host of workforce automation and service chain optimization applications.  They have already mobilized field services applications and implemented them with SAP.  It is now available out-of-the-box.  The complexity of the implementation has largely been removed. If the backend business application and database is a known entity, and is already mobilized, then implementing mobile enterprise

Mobile Applications for Knowledge Management, Collaboration and Human Progress

I am very interested in mobile enterprise applications that deliver collaboration and knowledge management functionality.  I believe these solutions will revolutionize businesses that use them.  I saw three of these applications at Sapphire this year that I describe later in this article.  First let me share a very interesting article by Matt Ridley that was recently published in the Wall Street Journal on May 22-23, 2010, Humans: Why They Triumphed.  Here are some excerpts: Collective intelligence is the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural progress or change in a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. The sophistication of the modern world lies not in individual intelligence or imagination, rather, it is a collective enterprise. Exchange stimulated innovation by bringing together different ideas. Exchange and collective intelligence is the key to human progress. Once human beings started swapping things and thoughts they stum

Kevin’s Mobility News Weekly – June 24, 2010

You are reading the second edition of "Kevin's Mobility News Weekly." This is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week. 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 enterprise mobility. You can read archived newsletters here - http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/kevins-mobility-news-weekly.html Please send me any interesting mobility news links, market numbers, events, case studies, analyst reports or whitepapers you think I should include in my newsletter. Enjoy! ******** A recent analysis from Frost & Sullivan, finds that the new mobile office market earned revenues of roughly $1.7 billion in 2009. This is predicted to reach $6.8 billion in 2015. http://hosted-exchange.tmcnet.com/topics/mobility/articles/

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Pyxis Mobile's EVP Christopher Willis

Pyxis Mobile is one of those companies that accomplishes great things, but moves under the radar.  Gartner recently highlighted Pyxis Mobile in their Magic Quadrant report so moving under the radar may be over.  Pyxis Mobile has over 500,000 mobile clients in the field.  Most of their traditional customers are in the financial services industry, but they have been rapidly expanding into higher education, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals. I had the opportunity recently to interview Chris Willis, Pyxis Mobile's EVP of Marketing and Strategy. Chris joined Pyxis in 1998.  In 2001 the company became 100% focused on enterprise mobility.  Chris what mobile device do you carry? I carry two mobile devices, the iPhone for personal use, and the BlackBerry Bold for professional use.  I have always used BlackBerrys professionally and am just used to it.  I know how to get what I need from it.  I use the iPhone as a large iPod. What is your favorite mobile application? A CRM applicatio

New Research Shows the Importance of Mobility to SAP Customers

I received an email today from a firm that just completed face to face meetings with over 100 SAP customers.  In these meetings the SAP customers identified the SAP solutions they would like to learn more about and then prioritized them.  The fifth hottest topic among these SAP customers was SAP enterprise mobility.  NICE! SAP, systems integrators and enterprise mobility vendors should all take note of this research.  SAP's customers are wanting to learn more about enterprise mobility.  SAP's SDN site, this blog, the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin, and Kevin's Mobility News Weekly  are all sites dedicated to sharing information on enterprise mobility. *************************************************** Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/ www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict http://twitter.com/krbenedict ***Full Disclosur

M2M - Growth Opportunities for MNOs in Developed Markets

The new M2M analyst report that I just finished has now been uploaded and is available on the Maximizing Wireless Profits website .  M2M, machine-to-machine communications, is a very intriguing market.  It is closely related to enterprise mobility in that mobile devices (embedded mobile devices, remote sensors and monitors) are collecting and sending data back to a central server. The audiences for this report are mobile network operators (MNOs), M2M and mobile enterprise software companies. Handset driven customer growth has reached the saturation point in many regions of the world and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are looking for new applications, new markets and new technologies for their next phase of growth. Machine to machine (M2M) devices and applications are an area of wireless data usage with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 25% per year through 2014 and a projected need for up to 50 billion M2M devices by 2025. In addition, low churn rates, low acqui

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly - June 16, 2010 Edition

If you are reading this you have stumbled upon the premier edition of "Kevin's Mobility News Weekly."  This is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week.  I will aggregate the information, include the original links and add a synopsis of each article.  I will also be searching for the latest market numbers such as market size, growth and trends in and around enterprise mobility. Please send me any interesting mobility news links, market numbers, events, case studies, analyst reports or whitepapers you think I should include in my newsletter.  Enjoy! ******** In April Nokia announced it had increased its smartphone market share to 41 percent, up from an estimated 40 percent in Oct.-Dec. last year. That means Nokia sold roughly 21.5 million of the 52.6 million smartphones sold globally during the first quarter. http://fixed-mobile-convergence.tmcnet.com/topics/mobile-comm

ClickSoftware and Rugged Working Environments

It is easy to forget about the world beyond the pocket, but it remains out there.  There is a large market for mobile devices that must survive the rigors of rain, sand, mud and daily impacts.  In the field service automation space, these working environments are the norm.  SAP mobility partner ClickSoftware focuses on this area of enterprise mobility, and this means they add features to their mobility suite that others don't. I had the opportunity to interview Gil Bouhnick from ClickSoftware a few months ago, and he shared that one of their recent projects included building union regulations and rules into the mobile application.  Before certain tasks could be requested or started the union rules were considered in the mobile application.  How many iPhone and BlackBerry applications have these requirements? Because ClickSoftware focuses on rugged environments where the field service technician, lineman, or inspector may be working in solitary and remote locations, features h

M2M Market Overview Part 2 - Consumer Electronics

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I just completed a 40 page analyst report on the M2M industry last week.  It is a fascinating market, but I am relieved it is finished.  Analyst reports are like taking a four week final exam at the university.  If you are interested in the M2M (machine-to-machine) or embedded mobile devices market for consumer electronics, you may want to watch this short video that I recorded on the consumer electronics segment of M2M. I am now working on an executive workshop to help companies understand M2M and the value for remote asset management.   Contact me if you would like to discuss! One of the things I am watching closely these days is to see if enterprise mobility vendors will add M2M data management to their offerings, or whether they will limit their support to smartphones and mobile computers.  What makes this interesting is that M2M/embedded mobile devices are sending mobile data to servers that are increasingly useful and valuable to ERPs (see attached image from http://www.m2m

Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP VP of EcoHub, Usman Sheikh

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Usman Sheikh is VP of SAP's EcoHub, and I had the opportunity at Sapphire this year to  interview him about SAP's ecosystem of mobility partners.   What is the SAP EcoHub ?  EcoHub is a website and a mobile application that accelerates the process of finding the right solution at the right time and provides a new means to address key questions including: Have I considered all relevant solutions? Is this applicable to my business? Are there success stories in my industry? Is this partner solution certified? What are my peers saying? For more interviews in the Mobile Expert Video Series click here . *************************************************** Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/ www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict http://twitter.com/krbenedict ***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I w

Mobile Expert Video Series: Syclo's CEO Rich Padula

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SAP has many partners in the mobility industry, but only three co-innovation level partners in the enterprise mobility space.  They are: Sybase (SAP announced their intent to acquire Sybase) RIM (the BlackBerry folks) Syclo (EAM - mobile enterprise asset management experts) At Sapphire this year I was able to interview Rich Padula, Syclo's CEO.  I asked him to explain the "co-innovation" partnership program with SAP and what it really means. Syclo's mobile solutions include pre-packaged and pre-integrated applications that mobilize CRM, ERP and EAM systems to improve communications and data capture. For more interviews in the Mobile Expert Video Series click here. *************************************************** Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/ www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict http://twitter.com/krbenedict ***Full Disc

Mobile Expert Video Series: Vivido Labs' CEO, Greg Tomb

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I was the moderator at several enterprise mobility events at Sapphire this year and following one of the sessions I was able to sit down and interview Greg Tomb, the former President of SAP Americas, and now the CEO of an enterprise mobility company called Vivido Labs .  In the interview, he makes three very interesting points about mobility: Mobility is a way of getting more value out of your existing SAP investment by making it available to those in the mobile workforce. Mobility can enable business process re-engineering by compressing the time of some business processes from days to hours. Extending SAP mobility into the hands of those not at their desk, can increase productivity for many users. Vivido Labs describes themselves as leaders in smartphone enterprise mobility with their Mowego mobile platform and their portfolio of mobile enterprise business applications. For more videos interviews from the Mobile Expert Video Series click here . *****************************

Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP's VP of Enterprise Mobility, Prashant Chatterjee

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I was lucky enough to be able to sit down with SAP's VP of Enterprise Mobility, Prashant Chatterjee at Sapphire this year and record an interview .  In this interview Prashant describes how enterprise mobility is key to SAP reaching 1 billion users by 2014. For more videos in this Mobile Expert Video series click here . *************************************************** Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/ www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict http://twitter.com/krbenedict ***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles. ***************************************************

Best Sources of Information on Enterprise Mobility

Outside of SAP's SDN site, the SAP Enterprise Mobility  group on Linkedin  has some of the smartest people in the world sharing their thoughts on enterprise mobility.  The membership includes the thought leaders from just about all of the big enterprise mobility vendors.  I was reading through some of the discussions today and the comments included in-depth advice from SAP on architecting mobile applications and understanding what mobility platforms are needed in different situations. If you or anyone in your company is interested in subjects related to enterprise mobility I would encourage you to join.  Here is the link . *************************************************** Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile Industry Analyst CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/ www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict http://twitter.com/krbenedict ***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0

Mobile Expert Video Series: Smartsoft Mobile's CEO Dan Homrich

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Dan Homrich, Smartsoft Mobile Solution's CEO likes to talk about mobile B2E (business-to-everyone) solutions for smartphones. These are mobile applications that companies provide to their customers, partners and service providers. Mobile B2E solutions are intended to address large markets.  Insurance companies can provide mobile solutions to their customer bases.  Banks and retail companies can provide mobile applications to their hundreds of thousands of customers.  This is a very interesting target market.  Watch the video interview that I recorded with Dan Homrich at Sapphire and learn about his strategies. Related videos: The video interviews listed below can all be found here : Mobile Expert Video Series:  Open Text's VP SAP Solutions Group Patrick Barnert Mobile Expert Video Series: Leapfactor's Luis Cabrera Mobile Expert Video Series: Sky Technologies President Bruce Johnson Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP's VP of EcoHub, Usman Sheikh Mobile Expert V

Mobile Expert Video Series: Open Text's VP SAP Solutions Group Patrick Barnert

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I am a big believer in the saying "content is king!"  So when I read recently that Open Text announced they were going to mobilize their enterprise content management products with a solution called Open Text Everywhere , I was intrigued but skeptical.  Open Text provides powerful enterprise content management solutions, the SAP Invoice Management solution, and collaboration and social networking tools for the enterprise, but now mobile solutions as well?  At Sapphire I was able to schedule a video interview with Open Text's VP SAP Solutions Group, Patrick Barnert.  One of the first questions I asked Patrick was, "Are you serious or just playing around with mobility?"  You can watch and hear his response here . I appreciate mobile applications that add value in unique and powerful ways.  The accounts payable processes in large enterprises is a very important area.  Companies can save millions by processing invoices quickly and capturing early payment discount

Mobile Expert Video Series: Sky Technologies' Steve Ware

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I was able to meet up with Sky Technologies' CTO, Steve Ware, at Sapphire a few weeks ago and unfortunately for him I had a digital video camera in my hands.  SAP had provided us SAP Mentors with very small Flip digital video cameras, and I recorded  his views on MEAPs (mobile enterprise application platforms). I also noted this week that Sky Technologies is now supporting Sprint's enterprise initiative for the new Android phone HTC EVO 4G as described below: Sprint's new HTC 1GHz EVO- 4G smart-phone enables true multi-tasking while on the move. Road warriors can now view documents and files while simultaneously having a conversation with a colleague on the phone. With the large HTC 4-3 inch touch screen and superfast processing power, the HTC is aimed at customers who have serious mobile business requirements.  The HTC EVO 4G boasts thousands of Android-driven mobile applications, with many geared toward businesses across a variety of industries. Sky Technologies i