Dealing with the ‘Unintended Consequences’ of Mobile application -- From "Moment of Truth" to "Moment of Engagement"

I realized that mobility conversation should not always be about the usual concepts such as platform support, cross-platform deployment, application store, device capabilities and so on. I think we should take this conversation from a client i.e. device specific discussion to a more strategic and core infrastructure discussion, because Mobile applications are not created in a vacuum. Let me explain:

1. Consider Mobile not simply another set of devices for IT to manage with a “fit to screen” application…but many of our clients should see it as a new model for engagement.
2. Many industries especially Retail, Insurance and health care are manically focused on Mobilizing not just their application but also their ‘engagement’ with partners, clients, employees etc.
3. So this just cannot be as simple as positioning a tool, a consulting services or a platform to solve that problem, it has to be more than that. We have to think about the ‘Unintended Consequences’ of this new system of engagement. These the ‘Unintended Consequences’ include but are not limited to:

a. Multichannel approach – How do now manager infrastructure/data/analytics etc. from this channel and put it in right context?
b. Middleware infrastructure, security infrastructure, network infrastructure – Can my current model handle and suited for new set of requirements. Security is big here, more on this later.
c. Exponential growth in request/response Volume and Transactions – We at IBM understand this better than anyone; after all we have been solving this problem over 3 decades or more. But this time is the volume bigger than ever before… I think so!
d. My overall design, development and other system management processes --- How do I incorporate the system management components of these new system that I will need to bring on line monitor/manage them and ensure that is included a robust design to handle and grow linearly.
e. And so on…

My point is we cannot attack the issues with just with MEAP/MADP tools. I also think that there are times when we get engaged in “feature fights” instead of focusing on larger strategic issues.

I also think that Industry specific knowledge may be vital in understanding our core issues and addressing solutions. Let me explain with an example, - Mobile Payment for example has been in news lately. Mobile Payments is an interesting area, as it impacts commerce that very life line of that “Moment of Engagement” that we speak of.

Allow me to paint a picture:
1. One Billion consumers will have a smart Phone by 2016 ( source: Forrester Research). US alone will have 257 million smartphones and 126 million tablets --- think of these many POS ( point of sale) systems
2. Retailers, entertainment, infotainment, Travel industry and many more want that piece of action and real estate of the smart device.
3. These transactions need to be fast, secure, and with minimal or no FCIs – failed customer interactions.
4. The Industry also wants it to be cost effective by not paying the various intermediaries such as PayPal, Google wallets, Apple Passbook (soon to come), and more.. PLUS the cost of payment transactions charged by Visa/MasterCard of the world. Many industries are looking to form a consortium to address this cost. The trend is started by ‘Retail Industry” they have recently form “MCX”(you should Google it!) A consortium to deal with just billions of dollar in commissions and fees. If this takes off then I would imagine airlines. Entertainment etc. may want to embark on either same journey or consortium.
5. The last “2 feet” problem – which is the interaction/speed between the device and end user.
I think – we should focus on strategic imperatives and not spend time in focusing on features because. Besides features in mobile space is very volatile.

From project perspective : We need to all understand features such as security, scalability and mobile application design imperatives. Because I can address the problem with a solution not with a feature. For instance I can discuss on device encryption, application authenticity testing, federated security policy integration for Security. We can device a strategy to ensure that we separate the application logic with integration logic and application push during install rather than “over the air’ transfer, speed up the response lookup with multi-tier caching.. And so on. All to address the Unintended Consequences’ we discussed earlier.
Strategically: We should shift our old school thoughts from “Moment of Truth” ( if you remember the SAS use case) and focus on “Moment of Engagement”
Tactically : We should shift from “feature fight” to a addressing a solution for “Unintended Consequences” problem.

Thoughts?

:)
Nitin

Establishing Mobile CoE

I. Statement of Purpose

The intent of this post is to documents a few thoughts and provide a prescriptive approach and consideration towards establishing a Mobile CoE. This document is also to serve as a Body of Knowledge (BoK) that includes objectives, tasks and various other business and technology related topics in context of Mobile design. This document is just a draft on guidelines. The final charter of any CoE is task and responsibility of the core members of CoE.

II. Intent of a CoE:

Center of Excellence (CoE) is essentially a team of people that promote collaboration and using best practices around a specific focus area to drive business results. The CoE is a team of like-minded people from various organizational backgrounds with skill and organizational execution authority to focus on mobile related projects, in following ways:

1. Support: For their area of focus, CoE’s should offer support to the business lines and IT. This may be through consensus building and providing subject matter expertise.

2. Guidance: establishing Standards, methodologies, tools and knowledge repositories as a guideline to the support element.

3. Shared Learning: Through expertise, and organizational knowledge, team building and formalized roles are all ways to encourage shared learning and execution.

4. Measurements: CoEs should be able to demonstrate they are delivering the valued results to the business. The value can be in terms of providing support, expertise and therefore risk mitigation to Mobile related projects.

5. Governance: Allocating limited resources (money, people, etc.) across all their possible use is an important function of CoEs. COE should ensure organizations invest in the most valuable projects and create economies of scale for their service offering – Governance through support.

III. Understanding Mobile Platform Imperatives

Why is Mobile Important?

§ Over last year alone 3000% of WW mobile traffic ballooned. – Includes Voice and data

§ This space is expected to grow 40X over next 5 years

§ 11% of the world owns a tablet ( now we have 89% of 6+ billion and growing)

§ 90% of the world has access to the mobile networks ( well this amazed me as 90% of world does not have access to clean water and food, but has access to mobile network)

§ 2/3 of us get most of our news on mobile devices

§ 76% take pictures and video on mobile devices

§ in past 2 years mobile ready sites have grown from 150,000 to 3 million

§ 11 billion apps in 2010

§ On commerce front – this year $6.2 billion purchase were made from Mobil device --- compare that to $54.2 billion black Friday sales

§ If mobile users would be nation, it would be largest nation….. And I could go on…

What are the Business drivers and technical considerations?

§ New business models and paradigms

§ Social network! Obviously?

– Everyone wants to be on Facebook/LinkedIn etc

– Every solution is compared to scalability and availability like social networks

– Capitalize on ‘perceived’ new markets on social network.

§ Emerging Channels of commerce

– New breed of personal devices

– Speed of commerce

– Low tolerance for ‘slow’ experience

– New lines of currency – Zynga, SMS for money transfer?

§ Proliferation of ‘smart’ phones (AND Data!)

– Do everything but make phone calls (?)

– Exponential growth of these phones ( 35% of US population as an example)

– 128 million iPhones (about that many other phones)

– Emerging markets ( India, China, Brazil, Russia etc)

§ Globalization!!

– Single market for everything

– Everything is linked

§ Brand/Image Exposure – How U interact with my business.

IV. Mobile Design Points and middleware landscape

Enterprise Design Points:

§ Deliberate and Intentional engagement

§ Exposing back end services and data

§ Data transfer and data growth considerations

§ Bandwidth and TCP Socket chatter

§ MEAP or MCAP?

§ Enterprise Integration

§ Security – enterprise and endpoint security

§ Device and Platform support

§ Legal responsibilities – Application store, client data and resulting exposure

Technical Design Points:

§ 1.Enterprise application integration (tools and libraries

§ 2.Device integration and peripheral support

§ 3. Application client runtime

§ 4. Device/OS platform support

§ 5. Packaged mobile

§ 6. Hosting

§ 7. Architectural flexibility

(Source: Gartner Research Note G00211688)

V. What are these landscape changes driving?

Elasticity

• Rapid provisioning
• Configuration Automation
• Virtualization – HW (e.g. VMware/PowerVM) and Middleware (e.g. WVE)
• 
  

Scalability

• eXtreme Caching – improving speed and scalability
• Data/cache partitioning and co-location

Data awareness and real time processing

• Sense and response or even driven architectures (Fraud/Marketing/BI)
• Reduced processing – or off-loading to an efficient tier
• Moving data closest to application (relevant logic)

VI. Deconstructing the Mobile Platform

Most MEAP technology providers claim the following capabilities:

· SMS apps

· App Store – Client side application

· Middleware Server – Server side application

· Multi-device/Multi-Platform application support

· Sync Server

· Mobile Device Management (MDM)

· Data Mapping

· Push notification service

· Application Management

· Application Versioning

· Code generation

· Application template

· Industry Specific Application

Some Notable Features from some of the mobile platform include (But not limited to)

· Each app built runs on all major mobile operating systems and device types

· Real-time integration with CRM, BI, data warehouse, CMS, and other enterprise systems

· Built-in reporting and analytics capabilities

· Local data storage, secured for offline access to documents and information

· GPS, camera, mapping, rotation, and other native device features

· Code-free IDE enables rapid development and deployment of native and HTML5 hybrid apps

· Changes and updates managed in real time with no code generation or redeployment

· Enterprise-grade on-device and in-flight security protections

VII. MEAP Vendor/Platform Considerations:

1. Coding Skills requirement: Are native coding skills required to complete projects or make changes? Some MEAP vendors surprisingly do not complete the process of creating the mobile app for the target device. Manual programming and tweaking is required.

2. Native integration: Will we need to use the native debugger to test our applications? If the MEAP forces you to debug their deployment capabilities on a target device, then you that mean you are likely to be required to write code to fix any problems you find.

3. Multiplatform Support: Can my MEAP platform also create desktop, client server and web applications? Some MEAPs are mobile only and have little or no capabilities for supporting other types of applications. This lack of support means duplicate coding for those environments.

4. Control on Single Platform: Does the MEAP platform allow me to control the look and feel of the application so that I can develop with a native look and feel for each device? Will BlackBerry apps look like other BlackBerry apps? Will an iPhone app look and feel like an iPhone app? Etc.

5. Track record- back End Integration: Does the MEAP platform vendor have a solid track record of back-end integration? Do they have a complete set of integration tools to allow you to integrate enterprise IT systems, data and processes with your MEAP platform? Integration to backend systems is a crucial component of providing B2E, B2B, and B2C applications. Without a straightforward solution for integration, you may end up spending months of unnecessary development time trying to integrate your mobile apps to existing enterprise systems.

6. Multi-Lingual Support: Is the solution multilingual and can the vendor providing multilingual support? If you need a global solution, some vendors have limited reach in North America but not beyond.

7. Vendor Vision and Stability: How long have you been in business? Too many vendors are in startup mode with no guarantee that they will stick around.

8. Vendor Financial Stability: Will you provide financial statements showing your revenues, profitability, and cash on hand and debt position? If a vendor is unwilling to provide financial statements, then you are at significant risk that you may be dealing with a vendor that is on the brink of imminent financial failure.

9. Vendor Corporate Commitment: Does the MEAP vendor have a parent company whose objectives are different from those of the independent software vendor that it acquired? If the parent company acquired the MEAP platform to serve the needs of its larger client base, will that be at cross-purposes to your needs?

10. Enterprise Strategy and Integration: Does the MEAP vendor have a coherent strategy for enterprise systems, mobile apps and the cloud? Can the vendor ensure that all of these solutions can be based on the same service-oriented architecture (SOA)? Is the platform capable of compositing existing application logic from Java, .NET, SAP etc? And other environments? A good MEAP platform will be capable of leveraging all that you have today and have a coherent strategy for deploying solutions in all of the environments that you need to be in tomorrow. A vendor that can future-proof your efforts will ultimately be the smart choice for development of mobile apps.

Mobile is Global and Complex

Folks

This post is long overdue and delayed. Part of this delay is change and part of it is new learning. This week I will try and share with you all some of my observation on changes and viewpoints of clients and impact that pertains to our products sets and general area --- Application Middleware!

Let me Start with the hottest topic – Mobility

Mobility – It is global and complex – I was fortunate to travel to India and shadow a mobile executive and learn about what Mobility means in Asian context. As a part of learning I met a few clients and went to rural India as a part of market “test”. The experience was amazing, it is remarkable to see the commerce ecosystem that is dominated by SMS bases application/messages, and this is reaching remote parts of the country. The people see it as way to avoid long lines and yet obtain services by paying an intermediary for utilities, internet services, prepaid services etc. The many rural areas – which is about 80% of India, this mechanism is still effective where power or even hi-end infrastructure is still developing.

Also besides the technology there are other socio-Economic-political factors that play in positioning the solution we sell. For instance issues like network bandwidth, local regulations, and availability of frequencies to offer services which has a broader impact on solutions we propose. Again I met a few governmental entities that govern the network infrastructure in India and took time to have a deeper understanding of why the landscape of mobile application differs in wide usage. For instance the Data plans due to network availability is restricted, cost of smart phones is often ONLY afforded by the working professionals or elites, inexpensive feature phones becomes the norm due to cost, size, power availability and general acceptance by the population.

Inference: The Governments, the local conglomerates like Bharati-Airtel, BSNL etc include the discussion around the call volume and SMS volume in network planning. I imagine as data plans and network availability ramps up, these discussions will change in terms of how the service providers design their networks and that will lead to new ecosystem of service delivery.

thoughts?

:)

Nitin