All posts in Mobile Machinations

Going where every iPhone has gone before – the enterprise

by Jim Hemmer on October 26, 2012 in Mobile Machinations with No comments

When the iPhone 5 was unveiled last month I made some comments on the device and Apple’s strategy that were covered by quite a few of the media outlets interested in industry reaction to the launch. 

I actually had a couple of different observations, but those that seemed to resonate the most were:

“The iPhone 5 has not been re-designed – it has been re-fitted. It was the same story with the new iPad when it launched earlier this year, and that’s going to raise more questions about Apple’s ability to innovate in the post-Jobs era. Even more so when you consider that the most significant update to the iPhone 5’s hardware—an increased screen size—looks like it’s straight out of Samsung’s playbook.” 

Incidentally, both Mobile Entertainment and Mobile Marketing jumped on that last sentence to criticize Apple’s litigious behavior towards Samsung – but that’s a blog post for another day.

The point I’d like to make here is that my observations on the launch weren’t wholly critical of Apple – I also released the following statement:

“With its larger screen, faster processor, and improved battery life, the iPhone 5’s success in the enterprise is all but assured. The iPhone 5 will only strengthen the BYOD culture created by the launch of the first iPhone back in 2007.”

The question is – do I stand by these remarks now that I’ve had a chance to get to know the device first-hand?

In short – yes, I do.

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Microsoft’s Move into Mobile

by Jim Hemmer on June 25, 2012 in Mobile Machinations with No comments

Last week Microsoft announced a new phone operating system that attempts to strengthen its foothold in enterprise mobility. It also highlights a trend that I’m hearing everyday when I speak with CIOs about how quickly enterprise mobility is changing the way their businesses operate. There are new players, products, solutions and an alphabet soup of issues, like BYOD and MDM, which CIOs must decipher and grapple with every day. Mobility is forcing CIOs to reassess everything in their purview – business data, applications, hardware, processes – and consider how an increasingly distributed workforce is putting undue stress on the company’s critical IT fabric. What’s the upshot? It’s the realization that nothing’s what it used to be, and everything must change.

One point in particular that caught my eye in this Wall Street Journal CIO Journal article was: “Microsoft has put more emphasis on business users with this refresh. In addition to on-device encryption, which CIOs crave for security reasons, Microsoft is also adding support for device management, internal line-of-business software, and a private marketplace for application distribution in the enterprise.”

It’s no secret that RIM’s dominance in the enterprise is on a precipitous decline due to Blackberry’s fall from grace. And Apple has been downright smug towards the enterprise buyer – probably since they can ride on the backs of consumers to get inside business. So, it’s no surprise that Microsoft sees an opportunity to exploit that gap and address some of these concerns for CIOs. If Microsoft can make all of these changes CIOs are facing less threatening, or more familiar, then they stand a good chance to seize some enterprise mobility market share. Generally speaking, Microsoft has greater dominance in the small or medium-sized enterprise market (versus the Fortune 1000), but it’s an enormous market and fairly untapped as they have fewer resources at-the-ready to tackle mobile.

The CIO Journal article begs another important question, “will device management or app management be subsumed under the device manufacturers like Apple, Google and now Microsoft?” Presently there are a slew of suppliers touting point solutions to solve these management issues for enterprises, so it will be interesting to see how much (or little) these ‘Big Three’ fully commit to the enterprise, rather than just the consumer market, which has thus far been their primary focus.

Do you think this makes Microsoft a major player in mobile?

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Young People & Mobile Innovation

by Jim Hemmer on November 15, 2010 in Mobile Machinations with No comments

One of my favorite phrases these days is ‘Mobile is Transformative.’ And I say it with unabashed enthusiasm. There’s no doubt about it – today mobility changes the ballgame, literally for everyone – whether in the enterprise or the consumer market. To be transformative, mobile apps need to demonstrate ‘innovation’ – which more often than not is going to require thinking outside the box.

What do I mean? Take a look, for example, at Antenna customer ING Direct USA’s new ‘Flip for Fun’ mobile application. Very cool! It combines today’s hot mobile devices with mobile banking and today’s social networking capabilities – all of which ING Direct aptly summarizes as ‘a branch in your pocket.’ It’s a great example not only of mobile innovation but also of how mobility is delivering the transformative experience I talk about. (I’ve included a quick video at the end of this blog post that focuses a bit more on this.)

The things we deal with every day – hardware and software – are but small pieces of the innovation story. Sometimes we need to make out of the box innovation investments and experiments of a different nature – by tapping directly into the power of human innovation. Recently the Antenna team put in place just such an innovation experiment, by unwrapping what we refer to as the Antenna AppTank Institute  – a specific effort to take a deep dive into the use of mobility as seen through the eyes of college students who are both heavy mobile users as well as folks that are just now entering the workforce.

As it turns out, we’ve learned a number of very interesting things through our AppTank experiment. We brought in six AppTank interns – college students who fit our profile as described above, and who were also able to provide HTML and Javascript development skills, and relied on them to give us a glimpse into how young people think about and use mobility as part of what they do every day – whether at work or at play.

The ROI on our investment has been good and was well worth the effort – we’ve gained a good deal of new insight into building mobile apps that is valuable enough to us to deem it ‘proprietary to our business.’ And we’ve developed some very tangible new ideas for what we, as a company, need to bring to our professional mobile services teams who design and build our mobile applications. I’m already looking forward to our next AppTank session – the Class of 2011, which we’ll most likely put into place very early next summer.

I know what you are thinking at this point – is there anything I can actually reveal?

Sure – young people will be an unruly bunch – they don’t yet know what they don’t know – everything is possible, and nothing is impossible. But it is exactly this unruly perspective, when captured and applied to mobile possibilities – whether the scenario was one of their unbridled free thinking, or one of pondering on a business issue we specifically gave them to work on – which unlocks the innovation. We saw as well that unlocking innovation also greatly increases motivation. Keep in mind that we weren’t only looking at ideas for using mobile technology; we were also looking for how young people will be motivated to put that innovation to actual business use.

What else? Young people think in the moment – and this is precisely what mobility allows us to capture. Along those lines, think of real time social networking as it can apply to your business processes. It is critical to the young people that are now entering the workforce. And make sure that your mobile app plans include targeted testing through the eyes of your younger employees.

I’ll leave you with those thoughts – trust me, they are game changers – or rather, they’re transformative!

∞

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The Power of Mobility is the Power to Deploy Happiness

by Jim Hemmer on October 10, 2010 in Mobile Machinations with No comments

Over the last ten months or so I and the entire team at Antenna have been engaged in attempting to capture the essence of mobility – particularly as mobility applies to the enterprise. We’ve also had to view enterprise mobility through the distinct lens of consumer use, consumers being the primary driving force behind the enormously rapid growth of both smartphones and mobile usage.

Here’s a quick fact to demonstrate the power of the consumer when it comes to today’s mobility. Amazon announced late last week that over the course of the preceding 12 months the company sold $1 billion worth of goods directly through mobile devices.

That is one very substantial revenue number! Can anyone doubt that mobility is transformative and that it is already transforming business in strategic new ways?

At Antenna we’ve long preached the power of the mobile app – or more accurately we’ve spent years evangelizing the notion that the mobile app is the key to delivering on a mobile experience that will captivate your work force, your customers, and your customers’ customers. As the Amazon revenue number points out, we’ve now finally reached a state of mobility that no longer requires evangelizing but rather now requires delivering. And this is very exciting indeed.

Is the mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) or mobile consumer application platform (MCAP) – both of which Antenna delivers state of the art capabilities on, the most critical piece of mobility going forward?

As tempting to me as it is to say yes, the truth is quite different. Sure – security, reliability and scalability to potentially millions of users are all functions of the platform. But that isn’t nearly enough.

The real power of mobility manifests itself directly through the power of the mobile app, and the interactions that take place directly between users and their mobile devices. We call this AppThink. Beautifully built apps that capture the user’s imagination, that take advantage of rich UIs, that deliver the ability to delight users – these are the essential keys to successful mobile deployments. At Antenna we summarize all of this by simply saying that everything mobile is driven by the power to ‘deploy happiness.’

Mobility becomes a story not about technology, but rather about people – that is its essence. At Antenna this notion permeates everything we do with mobility. If you have a moment, check out what we refer to as our manifesto.

In today’s enterprise world, AppThink and the power to deploy happiness is what all Mobile Masters need to concern themselves with. Get with the power of the mobile app today and you will be well on your way to many successful mobile deployments.

Try it – I think you will see what real transformation is all about.

∞

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Talking Mobile M&A with The Deal

by Jim Hemmer on June 29, 2010 in Mobile Machinations with No comments

Recently I had the opportunity and pleasure to speak with one of the ubiquitous voices of technology M&A, The Deal’s Mary K. Flynn, who has had her fingers (or I should say cameras) on the pulse of technology M&A for quite some time. Discussion points included what deals we’re looking at as indicators of where the mobile market is going in the enterprise, what role consolidation will play in the market, and what’s next for us on the M&A front. These are all both interesting and critical industry issues – I hope the conversation spurs some thinking on the part of everyone at Mobile Masters.

I would love to hear from the Mobile Masters community – what do you think about mobile market consolidation? What should happen on a larger scale within the enterprise mobility vendor community? Post your comments and let us know

∞

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An insider’s take of the mobile M&A deal – Is it art? Is it science?

by Jim Hemmer on June 15, 2010 in Mobile Machinations with No comments

You may remember a book that came out in the early 1980s – Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine. The book focused on the machinations behind old time minicomputer vendor Data General and its intense efforts to get an important new machine out the door. As Wikipedia puts it: The book “chronicles the experiences of an engineering team racing to design a next generation computer under a blistering schedule and tremendous pressure…”

I mention this because pulling together M&A in this day and age, especially in the heated world of mobility, isn’t much different – a management team racing under a blistering schedule and tremendous pressure. Hence, “Mobile Machinations” is about the soul of a new deal — an opportunity to dig behind the scenes, behind the blistering schedule, behind the engineering, and behind the ‘emotions’ needed to make deals – whether M&A, business development, partnerships or sales – happen…and how to turn them into reality.

As Antenna’s CEO, I’ve been involved in four M&A deals since 2003. All of them have been acquisitions on our part. Each deal had very specific drivers behind it and different emotions as well.

One very interesting aspect of M&A has to do not so much with how a given deal affects the companies involved, but rather how a deal affects the market you are doing business in. The right deal can easily shape a market in dynamic and strategic ways that create entirely new business opportunities; a deal can simply deliver tactical benefits, such as eliminating competitive noise in the marketplace; or a deal can fundamentally change the way a company does business inside of its market – a more subtle way to think about market shaping.

More often than not, the companies involved in a deal are likely to have known each other for a fairly significant period of time. They can be hostile enemies or friendly competitors when squaring off against each other in the marketplace. There are always underlying emotions at play in the heat of competition. And there are certainly emotions at play when a possible deal scenario emerges. More often than not those emotions will likely make or break a deal.

Can you make a deal simply because of the pleasure it may give you to finally put the screws to a formerly hostile enemy? Do you simply make a deal because you’ve become good friends with a competitor you perhaps have grown to like? I can tell you firsthand – those emotions are absolutely there at the front end of any deal. And they are real.

Truth be told, most deals begin way before they actually occur usually based on the relationships between the CEOs of the respective firms. Having an existing relationship with a peer or competitor makes the process of a deal easier – not easy, but easier. As an example, Antenna’s recent acquisition of Vaultus was made easier based on the fact that I have known their CEO for many years and always made a connection whenever we were at an industry event. In addition I kept in regular contact with a key Board member. The first discussion of merging actually occurred 7 years ago!

So in addition to the actual science and accounting forensics that are necessary in a deal, a certain level of emotions – we can call it art – is necessary to provide that strictly unscientific ‘gut feeling’. My own emotions focus not on anything personal in nature, but directly on how I feel about how the deal will affect both the overt and subtle shaping of the marketplace. Do I feel confident that the marketplace will become more favorable? Or does an honest emotional assessment reveal an overriding nervousness about it?

Often times the best decisions are the decisions to walk away. While we have done a number of deals recently, it pales in comparison to the number of opportunities we have reviewed and turned away from. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s better to walk away – you need to trust your gut.

A management team racing under a blistering schedule and tremendous pressure…Will I play, or will I walk away? The combination of art and science is the only way I know.

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