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10A MOBILITY PROJECT CAN

TRANSFORM YOUR ENTERPRISE—IF YOU AVOID

COMPLEXITY AND COST PITFALLS

10STEPSTO MOBILIZATION

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B Y F R A N K B U L K

This article, the first in a three-part series, is just oneelement of a special CMP Technology multimedia pack-age on business innovation. For links to related storiesfrom INFORMATIONWEEK, INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE and OPTI-MIZE and additional editorial content, including podcastsand Webcasts, go to businessinnovation.cmp.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, CMP Media LLC. Important note: This PDF is provided solely as a reader service. It is not intended for reproductionor public distribution. For more information on obtaining a Reprint, please contact a Reprint Services Rep at 516.562.7026 or visitwww.cmpreprints.com/faxback.jhtml

SOME SHOPS DEVELOP MOBILE APPLICATIONS the way a BoyScout rolls his sleeping bag: fold, press air out, roll, pressand repeat until you can stuff it in the nylon sack and tiethe pull-string tight. Companies likewise take a desktopapp, remove all the white space in forms, rearrangefields to fit tiny screens, shrink the database and jam thepackage into a mobile device. In this case, though, it’snot a pull-string but a noose they’re pulling tight, damn-ing the application project to a slow, painful death at thehands of its own inflexibility and dearth of usability.

Repeat after us: Mobile applications are not thesame as desktop applications. Mobile applicationdeployment cannot be compared with rolling out thelatest version of Microsoft Office to PCs on the corpo-rate network. Mobile applications feel different, thehardware is smaller, and connectivity is limited andsporadic. Unfortunately, as we discuss in “Mobile Ver-sion of the Valdez,” at nwc.com/2006/0928, the mobile-application ecosystem has been thoroughly polluted bythe consumer-focused character of wireless carriers. Itisn’t easy for an enterprise to completely meet its needswithout assembling the parts itself. Never fear: Here’s a10-step road map to ensure a successful rollout.

1. ANALYZE THE PROCESSSure, you know what process you want to automate.But deploying a mobile application won’t simply accel-erate existing business procedures. Inevitably, mobiliza-tion leads to change—in the process, in communicationpatterns, in how employees interact and serve cus-tomers. Slavish adherence to process replication willnot take full advantage of the mobile application’s abil-ity to save money by increasing efficiency.

Say technicians use paper work orders to identifydaily appointments. At close of business they file com-pleted forms to accounting, which generates invoicesmanually. A mobile application could convert a workorder into an invoice, e-mail it to the customer whilethe tech is on-site, even let the customer pay immedi-ately with a credit card. The customer benefits by hav-ing an immediate copy of the work order and eliminat-ing a future statement and resulting payment cycle. Theorganization benefits by having an accurate capture ofthe service work and a lower accounts receivable bal-ance. But to realize maximum benefits, the processmust change, in this case by reducing or redeployingaccounting staff.

2. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE Identify the mobile workers who will use your applica-tion, gather their activities and profiles and ascribe ROIvalues to each group.

Four broad categories can be used: field-service work-ers; remote salespeople; day-extenders/knowledge workerswho check e-mail, retrieve voicemail and review status

reports during off-hours; and extended enterpriseemployees or partners who regularly work off-site, suchas auditors, consultants, contractors and their employees.

Once group profiles and typical activities are identi-fied, you can tally the ROI of a mobility application andfinalize a budget (see “Make Your Case,” at nwc.com/2006/0928).

The mobility-assessment team should comprise across-functional group of people from multiple busi-ness and IT groups, including security. Business usersprovide IT with insight so it can correctly scope theproject and develop an open architecture for antici-pated mobility, while IT educates the business side onthe realities of mobility applications.

A multidiscipline team also may help avoid a classicmistake plaguing mobile applications projects: under-estimating the complexity related to a new mode ofoperation—a different UI, different processes, the logis-tics of deploying and supporting users and devices, inte-gration with back-end systems, to name a few gotchas.

The application must be designed to tolerate inter-mittent access, so it usually requires local storage anddata replication to a subset of the complete data set.That’s an uncommon set of functional requirementscompared with the typical desktop application.

Another mistake is to work around a specific mobiledevice. Users will want choice, and the device you likenow may not be available in six months. Productrequirements, such as screen size, wireless interfaces,keyboard availability, size, weight and ruggedness, areall reasonable parameters, but building an applicationthat requires support for specific APIs or special but-tons will guarantee mobile device lock-in and restrictapplication enhancements, because moving to anotherdevice will break a function that was a core componentof the design.

Scalability must remain front of mind as well. Demosturned into pilot projects may perform well, but don’tbuild an application and infrastructure that can’t scale.Middleware vendors we spoke with recounted horrorstories where a great application concept failed because

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P L U S : See our companion pieces online at n w c . c o m / 2 0 0 6 / 0 9 2 8 :

• Mobile Security: The smaller the device, the easierit is to lose. We cover security best practices suchas passwords and encryption.

• Device Disconnect: Why is integrating today’ssmartphones into the enterprise ecosystem so dif-ficult?

• Make the Case: Having trouble defining the ROI ofmobilization? Try real-world examples.

• How We Got Here: He who forgets the history ofmobile application deployments is doomed torepeat mistakes.

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it didn’t afford the flexibility or interfaces to grow withthe organization, requiring a complete rewrite.

3. KNOW YOUR FRIENDSCorporate desktops require a variety of applications andagents to keep them in line, and mobility deployments areno different. Antivirus software, application management,configuration and security policy management, VPNclients, the list goes on. Consider the vendors with whomyou’ll partner: Device and asset management by the likesof iAnywhere Solutions and Research in Motion (RIM)keep track of your stuff. Because native security providedby device manufacturers is insufficient for the enterprise,you’ll need mobile security vendors such as Bluefire Secu-rity Technologies, Credant Technologies, Mobile Armorand Pointsec Mobile Technologies (read “Security on theRoad,” at nwc.com/2006/0928, for more security advice).

Unless you standardize on RIM BlackBerry or a Win-dows device with ActiveSync, you need a product thatcan do PIM/e-mail synchronization against the corpo-rate groupware platform. If the application is not beingdeveloped from scratch, you need middleware, such asiAnywhere, Intellisync’s Mobile Suite or Motorola’sMotoPro Mobility Suite.

Clearly, a fully fitted mobility deployment canbecome a little weighty. The reality is, few organizationsput it all on. Rather, they leverage the fact that each com-ponent has a bit of another—for example, middlewareproducts might perform some on-device encryption,while the PIM sync product can run inventory reports.Sybase subsidiary iAnywhere recently launched its Infor-mation Anywhere Suite, which bundles its own productsand those from previous acquisitions to essentially wrapup all of the above. For more on the vendor landscape,see “How We Got Here,” at nwc.com/2006/0928.

4. BE THE POLICY POLICECreating a set of policies to address your mobility proj-ect is just as critical a component of the road map aschoosing hardware or a primary mobile data provider.In “Don’t Get Burned,” page 28, we discuss building poli-

cies; some recommended items include a power-onpassword, wake-up password after 30 or 60 seconds ofidle time, automatic wiping after several unsuccessfullogin attempts and encryption of important data.

The group supporting the mobile application mustcommit to automated and consistent application ofsecurity policies, and these policies must be defined upfront, certainly before device selection. Your chosensecurity-management system may support only a subsetof devices, or maybe only select devices have the securityfeatures that the mobile application requires. Mobilepolicies will aid the device-selection process and dictateguidelines in how employees purchase such devices.

Provisioning is another piece of the mobile-policypuzzle. Who decides which people have access to themobile application, and is a sign-off required? Howdoes the employee acquire the device, and how does hego about receiving the application? Does device provi-sioning and application deployment happen over theair, or at the user, department or IT group level?

What’s your support policy for the device, mobile dataservice and mobile application? The first two may well beoutsourced because they’re relatively generic, but if theapplication is hosted on-site, the IT department will likelybe involved. If the application is outsourced, sometimesthe vendor manages all three. In any case, this must bedecided beforehand, clearly defining which aspects aremanaged by whom, taking care to plug any perceived gaps.

5. ARTICULATE YOUR APPSBuy or build? As in any IT project, the application couldbe a best-of-breed amalgamation of OS, mobile devicemanagement vendor, mobile security solution and soft-ware development platform. Middleware vendors such asiAnywhere bring a lot of this together, but you mustdecide if the features provided by certain components arecomplete enough or whether you need further add-ons.

Alternately, many CRM and ERP vendors, such as Ora-cle, Salesforce.com, SAP, Siebel and their partners, offermobile extensions for their products. An interestingexample from Salesforce.com is AppExchange Mobile, the

Worldwide unit shipments of smartphones by OS1

MARKET SHARE (%) MARKET SHARE (%) GROWTH (%)Q305 Q305 Q304 Q304 Q304-Q305

Symbian 8,403,008 66.4 3,196,111 78.3 162.9

Linux 2,925,165 23.1 211,244 5.2 1,284.7

Palm OS 594,903 4.7 333,177 8.2 78.6

Microsoft 538,544 4.3 289,870 7.1 85.8

RIM 188,000 1.5 50,037 1.2 275.7

Total 12,649,620 100.0 4,080,439 100.0 210.01Figures include both consumer and business sales. Source: Gartner Dataquest

S M A RT P H O N E S S E L L I N G


result of its acquisition of Sendia. Like all of Salesforce.com’s offerings, AppExchange is fully hosted, but thatdoesn’t prevent data exchange between the enterprise andthe CRM app; in fact, the Salesforce.com API is used bymore than 50 percent of transactions. Also unique areAppExchange Mobile’s many prepackaged apps that useSalesforce.com’s back end, but run on the most popularhardware, namely Windows Mobile, RIM and Palm.

A third option is to purchase applications targeted forspecific verticals. Many organizations assume they need todevelop software from scratch, only to discover later thatsomething appropriate has already been built. One conun-drum of the mobile application market: It’s relativelysmall overall, yet it sports hundred of applications, oftenvery obscure, each with a tiny customer base. RIM aloneoffers hundreds of applications covering a dozen verticalsthrough its “Alliance” partner program. Palm, Symbian andWindows CE/Mobile also host online Rolodexes thatassist in identifying potential applications.

Mobility management providers such as Traq-wire-less also maintain relationships with application ven-dors, and wireless carriers have forged similar partner-ships tied to their own consulting and integrationservices. Sprint’s recently formed Enterprise Mobilitysubsidiary, for example, offers consulting, analyticaltools and experience in certain verticals.

Purchasing a ready-made app is not without gotchas.Any given application will run on only a subset of thepopular devices, and customization will be limited. Butif you’re willing to limit device selection, forgo extensivecustomization and follow the product development life-cycle of a vendor, this can be an affordable option.

While enterprises will want to limit device optionsfor support reasons, to limit yourself to just one mobileOS is probably a shortsighted mistake. By using a middle-ware product, you’ll be able to take advantage of newdevices that might be cheaper, faster or lighter, withoutrewriting the application from scratch.

The fourth track—internal application developmentwithout middleware or mobile database tools—hascomplexity and cost levels such that only the largest ofmobile deployments can justify this route. Maybe ifyou’re the next FedEx or UPS; otherwise, not likely.

6. SELECT YOUR HOSTGoing relatively hand-in-hand with application sourcingis the decision of where to host the app. In-house hostingprovides the comfort of physical proximity to what couldbe sensitive data. Middleware such as Dexterra Concert,iAnywhere and Nokia Intellisync support this choice. Ifyou purchase middleware, you have just added anothertier between your mobile devices and your application;add the cost of requisite servers to address design tiering,scalability and redundancy. Factors to consider includeextra cooling, power, OS licensing and management. For

a smaller deployment, building redundancy and load-bal-ancing may require just two servers, but if you need toscale it up, you’ll need to add iron accordingly.

If you decide to build the application yourself with-out the benefit of middleware, it’s important to exten-sively simulate and perform live testing to confirm thatthe in-house choice supports not only average loads,but also peak demand and anticipated growth.

Mobility application outsourcing can happen at sev-eral layers. Most obviously, the application can be builtby independent software vendors and companies suchas Dexterra or Antenna Software. Unless the applicationis absolutely basic, budget at least $50,000 to $100,000for Version 1.0. The next level mixes application develop-ment, integration with back-end systems and applicationhosting. This might mean you continue to operate theback-end systems, likely serving desktop users, but let athird party operate the mobility piece.

One step further, the service provider actually hoststhe application, à la SaaS (software as a service). On asmall scale, myServiceForce.com does just that with ahosted version of QuickBooks and mobility applicationdevelopment tools by E-Tech Solutions. On a much largerscale, Salesforce.com’s AppExchange Mobile offers ahosted mobility platform for its own hosted CRM suitefor $50 per user per month.

Outsourcing—of application development, the mobil-ity piece, or the whole enchilada—can be attractivebecause the hosting provider has expertise with the soft-ware, which should result in fast development. It also willhave the resources to scale, implement best-practice secu-rity measures, provide redundancy as required, transpar-ently maintain version levels and convert what would nor-mally be a capital expenditure to an operating one.

7. PICK YOUR PIECESIt’s somewhat artificial to separate them from the mid-dleware, application and hosting choices because theyare in many ways so intertwined, but form-factor,device, platform and connectivity selections remain.

A mobility application doesn’t necessarily presume acellular-data-supported PDA. Some deployments mightuse regular laptops; even smartphones with small userinterfaces and no QWERTY keyboards support simpleapplications for short-character communication or sim-ple information retrieval.

As mentioned, middleware vendors help smooth outthe differences among back-end databases, mobile plat-forms and device features. Nevertheless, certain platformshave greater attractiveness than others. RIM applicationsonly run on RIM’s own BlackBerrys, while Microsoft Pocket PC and Mobile are offered across several hardwarelines. Despite the popularity of RIM’s e-mail app, theBlackBerry application development environment is rela-tively closed compared with Microsoft’s Windows CE and


Mobile platforms. Symbian, popular in Europe, is avail-able from several handset vendors and has a strong affili-ate program and software application choice.

Palm OS continues to idle at Garnet (version 5.4),while Cobalt remains unused. Japan-based Access Co.,which owns PalmSource, has introduced the AccessLinux Platform, which claims to run native Palm OSapplications for backward compatibility.

Many apps were developed for Palm OS, of course,with the Treo 650 and Treo 700p the most populardevices. The Treo 700w, which runs Windows Mobile

5.0, demonstrates that Palm is diversifying its offeringsin case Palm OS falls by the wayside.

As for connectivity, cellular data services from majorwireless carriers—CDMA-based technologies from Veri-zon Wireless and Sprint, GSM-based technologies fromCingular and T-Mobile—are the almost de facto choice fordevice connectivity. A recent NETWORK COMPUTING coverstory on 3G broadband data offerings revealed that,though throughput far exceeds speeds of yesteryear, theycome with price tags to match; see specifics at nwc.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192203038. Larger organizationscan negotiate volume discounts or per-megabyte pools.

Metro Wi-Fi offerings in select areas promise goodprices and higher speeds. Most offerings are $20 to $30per month for roughly 1 Mbps of access, which will offerconsistently higher speeds and lower latency at half theprice of cellular data services from the likes of Cingularand Verizon. But because they lack nationwide servicethey’re really applicable to only a subset of mobile application deployments. Mobile WiMAX services,announced by Sprint, could in the future offer carrier-class service in large swaths, but it will be several yearsbefore small-form-factor devices sport radios with thebattery life necessary to make daily use possible.

No matter the back-end connectivity, the applica-tion should be designed to perform consistently in bothspeed and behavior. Inconsistent “page turn” times,time-outs and failed data retrieval are sure ways toalienate end users. The application should functiontransparently no matter if it’s tethered or has goodwireless connectivity; background database synchingshouldn’t require end-user input unless there is an egre-gious consistency problem. Local data stores that con-tain an appropriate subset of data are almost a must.

8. PILOT THE APPLICATIONEven if your organization has deployed a mobile appbefore, best practices dictate piloting the project to a sub-set of the entire group. Look at what Toshiba AmericaMedical Systems, a provider of medical imaging systemsand customer of mobile systems vendor Antenna Soft-ware, was able to do. Dave Croteau, project leader, says ittook an average of 13 days for employees to finalize repairjobs. Rather than identify employees with the longestclose times and try to overcome process issues, Croteauchose a small pilot team with an average close time of 8.5days. Antenna Software developed about 75 percent of theapp, then Croteau deployed and provided some training.After six weeks, close times were down to 3.9 days, butmore important, the pilot team provided valuable feed-back for development of the last 25 percent of the app.

9. DEPLOY YOUR SYSTEMDon’t overwhelm users with new hardware, new soft-ware and new procedures all at once. Toshiba’s Croteausays employees needed time to adjust to the BlackBerryshis team had selected for this mobile application, sowhere possible he deployed the devices well in advanceto be used for phones and/or mobile e-mail.

Only the smallest deployments will be complete inone shot. It’s more likely you’ll take a staged approach,targeting certain user groups or geographical areas togive the helpdesk and project manager time to get func-tionality or stability issues resolved and any surprisescalability concerns addressed.

Croteau performed training using WebEx. He alsoidentified another reality: Not every technician uses themobile application. Whether due to personnel idiosyn-crasies or data coverage, 100 percent penetration maynot be a reasonable goal.

10. HOLD A POSTMORTEMCompleting a mobile application deployment reallymeans the beginning of regular assessments of thedeployment’s effectiveness. Functionality that wasmissed in the pilot stage must be worked into futurereleases. At this point, you’ll learn how effective yourinfrastructure is in supporting application changes. Busi-ness processes will morph over time as mobility evolveshow users interact with customers and internal staff.Organizations that fail to adjust will not obtain the fullbenefit of their investments, so set dates one, three andsix months out to get your team together for ongoingevaluations and monitor the helpdesk for trends. n

F R A N K B U L K /// is an NWC contributing editor. He works for a telecommunications company based in the Midwest. Write to him at f b u l k @ n w c . c o m .Post a comment or question on this story atw w w . n w c . c o m / g o / a s k . h t m l .

‘NO MATTER THE BACK-ENDCONNECTIVITY, THEAPPLICATION SHOULD BEDESIGNED TO PERFORMCONSISTENTLY IN BOTHSPEED AND BEHAVIOR.’


WWW.NWC.COM I 9.28.06 I NWC 1

DESPITE ALL THE BENEFITS of mobile appli-cations, concerns such as security, effectivenessand policy are hindering movement. Desktops are

hard to lose, laptops, less so—just read a newspaper! Small-er form factors take the risk of loss to a new level: When adatabase containing intellectual property or PII (personallyidentifiable information) on employees or customers is inthe wind, no one cares whether the data resided on a laptopor a Blackberry.

And because the person using the mobility device isessentially traveling in hostile territory without benefit of afirewall, mobile devices themselves need to be hardened forprotection against viruses and worms lest malware comeback to the organization, either remotely over a VPN orphysically into the office network via a USB cable.

Security best practices mandate power-on passwords,wiping the device after a given number of failed passwordattempts, specifying connectivity modes (disabling Blue-tooth, for example), and the requirement that all confiden-

tial information remain encrypted. Because security prac-tices delay or annoy employees, the temptation is to turnthem off; put agents on these devices to record thosechanges or enforce policy to restrict them. If you’re imple-menting NAC, incorporate mobile devices.

Closely related to security is device management. As thenumber of supported hardware platforms grows, it becomesincreasingly difficult to enforce policies and execute codereleases. Standardizing can reduce costs considerably. Onthe subject of cost, note that the device itself is the least ofyour worries: Although high-end mobile devices approachthe price range of a low-end laptop, the annual cost formobile data can easily exceed hardware costs, and thatdoesn’t include application development, back-end integra-tion and related maintenance, future enhancements, orhelpdesk support. Some mobility projects offer more hard-dollar ROI than others to offset these expenses; for infor-mation on selling a mobile application project see “What’s inIt for the Biz?”.—Frank Bulk

S E C U R I T Y O N T H E R O A D

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DESPITE RECENT ACQUISITIONS and merg-ers (see “How We Got Here”), the mobile enterpriseecosystem remains thoroughly disintegrated from

the enterprise, says Daniel Taylor, managing director of themobile enterprise alliance. Enterprises have existing applica-tions, but only the largest CRM and ERP vendors routinelybuild in mobility components, and precious few applicationswere designed for mobility from the ground up.

We see wireless operators pushing devices and connectivi-ty, but not tying them back to the needs of enterprise cus-tomers, a losing proposition in the long term. And hardwarevendors primarily target the larger and more lucrative consumermarket with such mobile devices as the Motorola Q and RAZR.This leaves major distributors such as Ingram Micro and TechData in a vacuum, selling only a subset of major models andforcing enterprises to deal directly with carriers, find a localretail outlet or work with hardware vendors directly.

Device management is not an integrated part of mostmobile platforms, save RIM’s BlackBerry servers and to somelimited extent, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. This meansthat, especially for heterogeneous deployments, mobiledevice management products need to be installed on top ofall devices … where the back-end management system may or

may not integrate with middleware or the application. The middleware market has made more progress, as it

provides the glue between multiple device platforms. Middle-ware offerings may include a device management componentand some application connectors.

Application vendors, eager to gain market share, culti-vate relationships with the top wireless carriers, but thisleaves little time for them to work with system integratorssuch as Accenture, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. In an idealworld, starting from the hardware side, technology vendorswill work with distributors who in turn will take their array ofproducts to resellers that can sell complete mobile applica-tion solutions to all-size enterprises.

Progress is being made, but it’s slow going. Part of theproblem, as it relates to mobile devices, is that the wireless car-rier provides an incentive for the enterprise to purchase from itdirectly or though one of its agents, where it offers the deviceat a heavily subsidized discount for a term contract. If we coulddisaggregate that subsidy for the enterprise market, thendevices could be sourced from other locations, including VARsand ISVs. And then, voice/data services from the wireless car-rier would be appropriately priced. The idea is to let each mem-ber in the value chain do what it does best. —Frank Bulk

M O B I L E V E R S I O N O F T H E V A L D E Z

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There are plenty of hard and soft benefits to mobi-lizing an application. For knowledge workers or fieldrepresentatives, having information at one’s finger-

tips, on demand, as needed, without lugging around a lap-top or attaché case of manila files, can dramatically increaseproductivity and responsiveness.

There are plenty of use cases: A NETWORK COMPUTING edi-tor was recently blindsided while driving down the road,resulting in damage that made her vehicle unsafe to drive.The auto insurance adjuster came to where the vehicle wasparked, avoiding having to tow it to a claims location. Heevaluated the damage, used his laptop to retrieve casedetails and confirm repair estimates electronically, then cut acheck and issued all required paperwork on the spot, with-out even a phone call to the office.

Warehouse personnel can fill orders without using paperpicking tickets by relying on skid-loader-mounted ruggedi-zed PDAs. Service technicians can retrieve diagrams andmanuals for all supported equipment rather than reschedul-ing calls or having someone in a call center walk themthrough the work. The list goes on.

Mobile applications also enhance communications amongemployees, customers, products and assets. For example, ProMechanical Services, a commercial refrigeration specialist,implemented text messaging and dramatically reduced itscellular bill because it has reduced voice minutes. If a cus-tomer calls in to the main office and gives some specialinstructions, the dispatcher can attach it to the work orderand push out an update to service technicians in the field.Sales representatives, who must be responsive to customerinquiries, can take advantage of mobile e-mail so that theycan appear to be at their desks, no matter where they are.

At one time, field-service workers would travel to centraldispatch to pick up their day’s paper-based appointmentschedules. If a service call arose that was of higher priority, an

on-call person was dispatched from the main office or a callwas made to pull someone off a job. Now, with mobile appli-cations, appointment schedules can be adjusted dynamically.

Ready access to data, enhanced communications anddynamic workload scheduling all lead to enhanced efficiencyand hence savings. Many mobility project leads find the nec-essary ROI by calculating how many minutes will be savedper day, per person. As little as 10 minutes per day couldmean three more jobs completed per month, leading tohigher levels of productivity with the same number of peo-ple. Mobile applications may be cheaper than hiring staff.

Improved data accuracy and integrity can be yet anotherbenefit of mobile applications. Because the mobile device isalways handy, it can be used to enter information at the pointof service while the person’s mind is fresh. The appointmentor service request can be converted into an invoice to leverageexisting contact information. Forms, with requisite checkbox-es and drop-down lists, help eliminate the requirement to typein standard information and can be combined with businessrules to validate the entered data. Completed forms with allimportant details can be sent back electronically to the mainoffice within minutes or hours.

Some companies are starting to deploy mobile applica-tions because they see it’s giving their competitors a compet-itive advantage. Ellen Daley of Forrester Research has seenthis in the pharmaceutical industry, where mobile devices areused to share information and take on-the-spot orders. Thejustification is that if the mobile application has value for thecompetitor, it probably does for the company, too.

With mobile applications in a nascent stage, assistingperhaps only 7 million of the 700 million potential employ-ees worldwide (see mobileenterprise.typepad.com/weblog/2006/01/the_future_of_m.html), it’s likely that the mobilityprojects identified at this stage are the ones that generatethe most benefit in spite of the relative costs. —Frank Bulk

W H A T ’ S I N I T F O R T H E B I Z ?

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FIRST-GENERATION mobile applications tend to bepoint solutions, tactical and as such, opportunis-tic in nature, says Eugene Signorini, vice presi-

dent of Yankee Group’s wireless/mobile enterprise solu-tions group. A particular department or business unitsees a potential to, say, dramatically increase productiv-ity or more carefully track expensive parts. They projectdramatic ROI and pitch the plan to management. Thesolution could be as simple as using spreadsheets withPocket Excel and synchronizing them on a daily basis,or as complex as custom-developing software, but therewas no long-term strategic vision to tie into a broaderenterprise architecture. And policies? Those were creat-ed as the department or IT group encountered issues orsignificant support events, such as assisting a key per-son in the organization using a non-standard device ona Sunday evening.

These first-gen projects shouldn’t be pooh-poohed,however: Executed well, they were financially responsi-ble decisions that often continue to generate ROI forthe business unit or company.

TAKE TWO...Second-generation mobile application deployments havetaken the proverbial bull by the horns. Mobility applica-tions become a strategic initiative, not just of the busi-

ness unit, but the company as a whole. Because themajority of applications are not mobile-ready, an archi-tecture is set in place to support the whole enterpriseand be expandable to other lines of business. Ratherthan function-specific solutions, a more open frame-work based on middleware offers the flexibility tochange the end-user application and interfaces to back-end systems as needed without dispensing blank checksto consultants. And policies relating to device selection,hardware and application support, and security settingsare hammered out long before the solution goes live.

This second generation of mobile applications andassociated maturation of enterprise mobility require-ments has led to some consolidation in an attempt tomore synergistically address some vendors’ feature gaps.Most significantly, middleware market leader iAnywhere,a subsidiary of database-vendor Sybase, purchased Xcel-lenet’s Afaria for its device management and security,AvantGo for its end-user data and news delivery andExtended Systems for its e-mail and development tools.Nokia purchased mobile sync vendor Intellisync, andmobile e-mail vendor Good Technology has purchase JPMobile for its device-management capabilities. While noequipment provider, carrier or vendor is a one-stop shop,these events confirm that customers are seeking a morecomplete mobility solution. —Frank Bulk

H O W W E G O T H E R E

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