Mobility in Travel and Entertainment - Shipping and Cruise Lines - Industry Imperatives

Team,

 This week I will focus on  an interesting set of use cases I discussed with a ship builder and Ship operator and some innovative IBMers. Below is a  Summary of discussion I have had last week.

I have discussed in the past on reasons why Our customers invest in Mobility, let us revisit that:

So looking at the reasons on why our clients and enterprise will invest into mobility is broadly categorized into 3 areas:

1.     To Monetize – Simply put, a Mobile application/platform will generate new revenues, and becomes strategic go to market strategy. Example  retail, cruise lines etc.

Constituents – B2C and B2B in some cases.

2.     To make people productive – This includes ensue that employees in office and field, be is sales or oil rigs can do their job and add to efficiency factor.

Constituents: B2E or B2F(ield)

3.     To provide better customer service – This category, the enterprise may not be able to monetize or have direct impact on bottom line, but need to provide a channel that is in tune with times. This is simply cost of doing business. At times it is hard to put numbers behind good customer service.

Constituents: B2C or even B2E

Now looking at Shipping Industry we have 3 Players:

 In the section below I explore the various players, their motivation to invest into mobility and collaborative platform where each players can provide a value add capability that will enable the other to either exploit the platform capability or build upon it.

1.     Ship Builders

Ship Builders are the one that build ships that are used by the Ship Operators such as cruise liners, and other defense installations.  Ship builders have a consideration including on-board network planning, bandwidth estimation, application frameworks and re-tooling and maintenance.

Motivation:

a.     Provide Value add:  by providing infrastructure such as an access points, messaging infrastructure, and other infrastructure on the ship.

b.     Provide an environment: which enabled the operators to “bring their application” and a drop in scenario. This is value add to operators but the software ownership is ship builders burden.

c.     Data ownership: this implies that the ship builders own the data, and while many operators may not agree to this model the ship builder will be now responsible to support application design, development, deployment, management of the infrastructure and introduce a “Bring your Application” model”. This model implies a transformation that includes a data induced business model.

Technical Considerations:

a.     Network Infrastructure planning

b.     Messaging and Application infrastructure

c.     Long term maintenance and technology Re-tooling

2.     Ship Operators

Ship operators are the entities that operate ships such as cruise liners, defense installations such as Navy and other Merchant Navy organization, which carry freight. In case of defense installations such as Navy and other Merchant Navy organization the demands for security and application may differ and may be limited by regulation and policies but the ubiquity of mobile application remain.

Motivation:

a.     New Marketing channels: The ship operators have an avenue to exploit an untapped opportunity to connect with on board guests in real time. Some new marketing opportunity include on board network to enable person-to-person connectivity, On board service and ad-hoc offers, on-board location based services, real time messaging of on-board events and a channel to introduce partner services such as a content and concessions.

b.     Better customer services: Mobile specific services such as a on board real time messaging will allow for better crowd control and management, events notification and suggestive analytics. This also include Emergency services such as an alerts, location-navigation and on-board security services.

c.     Business services integration: Due to availability of on board network and in-roads into the mobile device via a Mobile application various business services such as content by a content provider (DirectTV/Amazon/Netflix etc), Games, coupons and promotions by the contracted concessions on-board.

 Technical Considerations:

a.     Application and Middleware Considerations

b.     Application Store infrastructure

c.     Integration – existing billing systems, back end system and analytics platforms.

Example:

a. Enabling employees -- Use of Mobile device as a POS systems -- Point of sales system  on the ship. -- this includes integration of Company issued ruggedized devices with an APP and on board point f sale system. The device can wither have a  swipe option or be specially ordered with credit card or key swipe feature.

The business drivers here are  costs saving of POS maintenance and dynamic updates to these with MDM ( mobile device management) integration, since the device is issued by the company.

b. Use of Mobile device for person to person communication -- this include on board app store  provided app store and on board connectivity. Two components here -- on board network this is provided by closely connected access points that helps with basic 802.11 type connectivity -- think of this as self contained network system. And Application to provide VOIP ( Voice Over IP) capability to make person to person ( UA to UA) call based on registration  --- this functionality to be enabled by SIP services ( Session initiation protocol) which exploits the 802.11 network.

Business Drivers -  Application sales will generate new revenues and negate the need to maintain way phones which is "in-cabin" communication system. Also provide avenues to absorb other mobile services.

Caveats: Costs - the most expensive part was the "on-board" network  and the Infrastructure to enable this application framework.

3.     Partner Services (Business Partners)

These are business partners that offer services in partnership with Ship operators. This includes on-board vendors, concessions and on-board service providers that are providing or have an avenue to provide services on ships. Some examples include but are not limited to  vendors such as a entertainment and content providers, concessions, gambling and like services.

Motivation:

a.     Integration with On-board service orchestration: this includes partner offers capitalizing on impulse purchase behavior and captive consumer audience.

b.     Real time offer management: Based on triggers such as a crowd density, promotional considerations and combo offers, gamification and rewards, entertainment and engagement with activity and on-board mobile messaging infrastructure.

c.     Access to Mobile and other e-services: Ability to provide services such as an e-mail (disconnected mode) and other e-services such as voice (over IP) and integration with satellite services (for fee service). Other online services include  “circle of friends communication”, person to person communication and suggestive analytics with services, offers, activities and reservations.

Technical Considerations:

a.     Application and Middleware Considerations

b.     Partner Gateway Services

c.     Integration – existing billing systems, back end system and analytics platforms

 Have  a a Great week!

:)

Nitin

Some interesting "Black Friday" Retail and Mobile Stats!!

 Wish you all had a great Thanksgiving break... I have been watching this space for several years, here are a few interesting facts... I am sharing these because I have used this in the past with client conversations and building of business case.

Source of all this : IBM Digital Analytics!

-- Online Sales Set New Record: Thanksgiving Day online sales grew 19.7 percent year-over-year followed by Black Friday, with sales increasing 19 percent over 2012. Average order value for Black Friday was $135.27, up 2.2 percent year-over-year.
-- Top Five Cities for Online Shopping: New York City took the top spot for online sales on Black Friday. Rounding out the top five were Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Chicago.
-- Mobile Shopping Soars: Mobile traffic grew to 39.7 percent of all online traffic, an increase of 34 percent over Black Friday 2012. Mobile sales were also strong, reaching 21.8 percent of total online sales, an increase of nearly 43 percent year-over-year.
-- Smartphones Browse, Tablets Buy: Smartphones drove 24.9 percent of all online traffic on Black Friday compared to tablets at 14.2 percent, making it the browsing device of choice. Tablets drove 14.4 percent of all online sales, double that of smartphones, which accounted for 7.2 percent of all online sales. On average, tablet users spent $132.75 per order compared to smartphone users who spent $115.63, a difference of 15 percent.
-- iOS vs. Android: On average, iOS users spent $127.92 per order on Black Friday compared to $105.20 per order for Android users. iOS traffic reached 28.2 percent of all online traffic, compared to 11.4 percent for Android. iOS sales reached 18.1 percent of all online sales, compared to 3.5 percent for Android.
-- Retailers "Push" Promotions to Mobile Shoppers: On average, retailers sent 37 percent more push notifications - the alert messages and popup notifications from apps installed on your mobile device - during the two day period over Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday when compared to daily averages over the past two months. Average daily retail app installations also grew by 23 percent using the same comparison. Retailers sent more notifications on Thanksgiving Day than Black Friday.
-- The Social Influence - Facebook vs. Pinterest: On average, holiday shoppers referred from Pinterest on Black Friday spent 77 percent more per order than shoppers referred from Facebook. Facebook average order value was $52.30 versus Pinterest average order value which was $92.51. However, Facebook referrals converted sales at nearly four times the rate of Pinterest.

Have a great weekend!

:)
Nitin

Cloud, Mobile, MBaaS… How do we make sense of it all.

Folks,

this post will be a long one...

 This week I spend a lot of time on this topic with several clients and I sense that our client have a notion around positioning Mobile application and services in cloud context. I have always believed that for us to success we ought to have an adaptive and multi prong cloud strategy when it comes to mobile. So this week I will attempt to discuss the evolution of mobile-cloud landscape.

I will start with cloud discussion to set the stage. So what is a cloud-computing platform? Is it simply automated provisioning systems coupled with a resource virtualization, where the workload is policy driven, and resources over committed and any resource contention handled by policy driven resolution? As it turns out technologies that provide provisioning, virtualization and policy enforcement form the building blocks of a true cloud computing platform, but not any one technology is a cloud offering in and of it self. The efficiency goals of cloud are not only towards costs savings but also are defined by the business requirement usually driven by external market forces and availability of various enabling technologies.  

Cloud computing as a platform is amalgamation of such enabling technologies. While the concept of cloud computing is not new, efforts such as net (work) computing and various hardware and software virtualization technologies in the past have attempted to address the need for ‘unlimited' resource pool capable of handling varying workloads. Let's explore what this means. A true cloud platform provides an illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand. The notion of on demand infinite computing resources requires a systemic approach that includes sense and response subsystems, with a tie into a system level monitoring subsystems which is front ended by a rich user interface and all tied together by a robust governance sub system. These sub systems can be further classified as a complete and inseparable components of a cloud computing platform. Cloud computing is a new consumption and delivery model nudged by consumer demand and continual growth in internet services. 

Cloud computing exhibits the following 6 key characteristics:

a.       Elastic Environment

b.      Provisioning Automation

c.       Extreme Scalability

d.      Advanced Virtualization

e.       Standards based delivery

f.       Usage based equitable chargeback

The terms described below have evolved to provide a structure and concept consumption around Cloud paradigms:

IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service (Essentially HW + OS + Other Network services)

PaaS – Platform as a Service (IaaS + Platform technologies such as Middleware/Directory services etc)

SaaS – Software as a Service (Bring your Mouse and yes.. your brains.… and provision and configure/consume services)

Now let  us surface the Mobile computing driven trends that may tip the scale in driving the cloud patterns to new heights. But before we discuss these trends and technologies we need to understand drivers responsible for the resurgence in cloud consumption… all driven by Mobile computing and it’s derivatives.

a.    Software and Data Ownership –There is  a complex relationship between the data ownership and software ownership. Clients want to own the data and not the software ( due to licensing costs and maintenance). This leads to interesting conversation around traditional hosting/resource provisioning and ability of an enterprise to just create Mobile application services and provide an integration point to the enterprise.  This model allows the enterprise to control data access and ownership and yet keep up with the modern trends in the industry at relative low costs without extensive capital investments into software ownership. Think of this more like a “Software rental”, a concept that  lends itself to Hoteling or multi-tenancy.

b.     Burden of System Management – With IT systems and managers driving for efficient consolidation  adding another tier of system management to address Mobility can be a daunting task, besides monitoring and analysis of critical business objectives gets the time share. So the notion of provisioning, managing and monitoring system like Mobile device management, MBaaS services ( Mobile Backend as a  service) is preferred to be managed and maintained in cloud.

c.    Continually evolving Mobile Eco-system – Our clients have, in the past, spend time and money to harden the  infrastructure and handle the evolution  in middleware Infrastructure and platforms. There is little or no appetite to deal with a much rapid force of changes with in Mobile Eco system that has direct impact on the existing infrastructure. The assumption here is that the cloud based services will keep up with eco system evolution such as notification systems, MobileOSs, and new and emerging mobile-social integration points ( such as OpenAuth, Social updates and notification and API economy) and enterprise get to use and keep up wit the changes by association. Thought to ponder  upon here is how do Mobile Infrastructure Cloud service provide keep up with this rapid change? What are their challenges?

d.    Ephemeral nature of Mobile Application landscape – As discussed earlier rapid shift in the mobile landscape driven primarily by the MobileOS vendors and Mobile services ( NFC, Payment, Notifications etc), many client hesitate in locking in an on premise platform as many question the ability of these vendor provided platforms to keep up with the changes in marketplace.

e.    Changing mindset around investment and consumerization of Mobile platforms – As our clients are still in process of  defining their ROI expectations and as business evolve to adapt to Mobile way of doing business, there is clear lack of leadership and the idea of disengaging or switching providers not only makes business sense but also addresses the long term capital justification concerns. Mobility in cloud seems a more palatable and economically viable option. Unless there is a  defined business value or a ROI around ownership of mobile platforms, this will be  a “rent vs. buy” discussion.

f.     Social ’ization’ of Mobile APIs – With emergence of Mobile API services offered by the social media eco system, and other vendors like Twillio, Google etc clients have eased into “service virtualization’ concepts and are more comfortable with cloud based models. After all many B2C application rely on this emerging and burgeoning API economy.

Now that we discussed the drivers, I would like to take this discussion in understanding the Technical landscape that surrounds Mobile Cloud discussions. To grasp this concept I’d like to device a  classification system so we can understand the technical landscape.  Broadly speaking there are 3 models of Cloud engagement in Mobile context:

1. Traditional Cloud  - This  goes back to our IaaS,PaaS and SaaS model where our clients are thinking  :

a.  on premise and off premise or even Co-location

b. Provisioning Automation

c. Configuration Automation

e. HA (High availability) and DR ( Disaster Recovery)

f. Consumerization of IT and enterprise resource reuse

Imperatives:

This goes towards our traditional model of cloud based provisioning and consumption  of services. The ROI models are similar to that of previously used Middleware ROI models where “consolidation” and “ time to market” are primary drivers of cost efficiency. This also applies to clients and typically large enterprise clients which is either due to regulation or choice or business decision choice to maintain and control their own infrastructure – on or off premise or CoLo.

Some Terms, concepts to be familiar with:

1.OpenStack

2. CloudStack

3. Chef and Puppet

4. Cloud IDE

Some notable Companies to be aware of:

1.    IBM Smart Cloud

2.    Amazon  Cloud Services

3.    Rackspace

4.    Heroku

5.    Cloud Foundry

6.    Red Hat’s Open Shift

7.    Cloud9 IDE

Inference:

Focus here from a Mobile middleware, infrastructure and components is on provisioning, configuration automation and management of the various Mobile components. Platform ought to have the ability to be developed, deployed, and managed with full automation tooling integration with an ability to monitor all the components that are deployed.

2.  MBaas and API Management  -- I tend to classify these together. There is a  reason for this. MBaaS which is “Mobile  Back end as a Service” is a  emerging model to provide the app developers to interface the back end service such as a storage, data access, services access and other mobile specific services such as Push, social network services and SMS. API Management on the other hand is a mechanism to publish, share and meter the usage of yet another layer of service interface. In the Mobile API economy these go hand in hand. Think of these as not only an integration layer but also a tier to manage Mobile interaction with the enterprise.

Imperatives:

This is becoming increasingly common  concept in mobile parlance. We often use the term Mobile Middleware, and I think the term MBaaS will take prime seat in Enterprise Mobile discussion as  a service integration layer. The primary drivers behind this is the rapid rate of evolution, and crowding of competing and complimenting client technologies in marketplace is driving our clients toward a decision model that separates the client architecture from the server architecture and yet induce mobile specific interoperability. This interoperability relies on not only the understanding of the client technology but also the data structure. JavaScript is not only accessible but also easy to use which contributes to its ubiquitous use in mobile application. This allows for Mobile device to connect and fetch data. This data ( or service) can exists in cloud or on premise. As long the server architecture provides a Mobile friendly interface (JavaScript) and data structure (JSON). Use of JavaScript on server enables an enterprise to exploit and repurpose current web development skills to develop, deploy and manage the mobile middleware or MBaaS. Some notable companies  as LinkedIn, PayPal, Intuit, yahoo and eBay etc, are already validating the use and growth of MBaaS on Node.js. The possibilities are immense ranging from use of Node.js in the heart of the enterprise to the edge and periphery of the enterprise. The model is bound to grow in popularity due to the decoupled model that has a direct cost implication on the development and maintenance of the Mobile application infrastructure.

Inference:

The notion of decoupling the client ( application on the device) and server gaining momentum. This idea of decoupling implies that regardless of client technology ( Android, iOS-Xcode, MS – visual studio or JavaScript framework like jquery, Dojo Mobile, and sencha etc and other framework like HTML5 Cordova and Appcelerator etc) the server side technology should be independent and unaware of client and provide client a Mobile specific middleware services such as a Push, SMS, data and storage integration and access to other enterprise specific APIs.

Some examples and framework to Know are:

•Data Binding: Backbone, AngularJS, Node js. Dojo Observable

•Routing: dojo/router, Backbone, Node

•App Controllers: Backbone, AuraJS

•Sync: component/model, AngularJS services, Backbone Sync

Some companies to be aware of:

1.    Rackspace

2.    Strongloop (Loopback)

3.    StackMob

4.    Parse

5.    CloudMine

6.    ScottyApp

3. Emerging Mobile API Economy –These are services that provide services to Mobile application. Services such as sending messages to users, payment processing, track analytics, cloud data storage,  and cloud based governance etc. Some examples include-  Twilio, Google Digital wallets, Stripe, square, Uber, TaskRabbit, AdMob ( Google), box, etc.

Imperatives:

These technologies and services allow application to delegate a task such as a storage , authentication , payments etc and minimize the need for an expensive infrastructure and design work to accomplish the same. These service invocation can be a pay per use model or a “All you can eat” model.  The idea here is  to increase time to market, enhance developer productivity and reduce costs on specialized services with virtually zero cost of maintenance.

Inference:

Gartner predicts the revenue of these application service providers to rise to $25 Billion this year. This is a growing economy and an eco system and we will need to pay attention to this. While this may not fall under traditional sense of Cloud, this is a cloud based service delivery and consumption model.

Some notable Companies to be aware of:

1.    IBM API Management

2.    Mashery

3.    Apigee

4.    Google API

5.    Twilio

Conclusion:

So obviously there is a  lot  to consume and understand  around Cloud and mobility. In conclusion, I would say this - it is absolutely futile the working against these trends, instead we will need to understand where do we play and what is our place in this growing and changing eco system. We need to provide  “Design” thinking  to our clients from a business perspectives and lay the technical foundation needed to absorb the eco system changes and drive the business imperatives. What we need to address from a technical design perspective is the around data – it’s storage and retrieval – surrounded by enterprise quality of services such as security, scalability etc. From a Business perspective we ought to understand the drivers. The obvious business drivers are costs and time to market, but other drivers may include ( but not limited to) availability of skills, lifespan of the mobile initiative, legacy data and processing systems and current mobile and social presence, and so on.  Mobile is a natural extension of cloud, in the evolutionary computing paradigm cloud computing is not only essential for growth of Mobile computing but together they set the stage for the next era.

The question to ponder upon is – what is that next era? and how technology integrates wit the way we live?

  

Reference readings:

1.    StrogLoop – Loopbacl Node.js - http://strongloop.com/strongloop-suite/loopback/

2.    Twilio – commnication voice based API  http://www.twilio.com/

3.    Web API management - http://www.informationweek.com/whitepaper/Business-Intelligence/Business-Process-Management/web-api-management-new-rules-for-a-new-economy-wp1367342058?articleID=191708409&download=true&popup=true

4.    Mashery - http://www.mashery.com/

5.    Apigee - http://apigee.com/about/

6.    Rackspace Cloud Mobile Stack -http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/mobile-stacks/

7.    IBM Bluemix - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/ebusiness/jstart/bluemix/index.html

8.    Forrester MBaaS - http://blogs.forrester.com/michael_facemire/12-04-25-mobile_backend_as_a_service_the_new_lightweight_middleware

Here are a Few of my thoughts: on Role of Telco with Emerging Mobile eco-system

I have realized two things that are vital to understand:

1.    There is an  “External Eco System” that “Enterprise Mobile Application” need to consider – thing’s like Mobile services, Push Notification, application store, social –Mobile Integration and so on.  AND
2.    Every Mobile Initiative needs a “Platform” – that enables integration, and assembly line to create, host and integrate these Mobile Applications with the rest of the enterprise.

Every Enterprise need to understand and adapt Both -- Platform( to efficiently develop, integrate, manage and deploy) and Eco-system ( to adapt, play and be relevant).

Telco -- In mobile space have a special role. I draw an analogy of  the  shippers like UPS and FedEx who have transformed from a shipping business to a value chain business where they are now in business of computer repairs and logistics management ( order fulfillment and returns etc). I view Telco who are essentially application packet carriers  to provide "Mobile Application Logistics" services  to enterprise and transform their business from telecommunication related services to Application services. They would need not only a robust platform that keeps up with the eco system but also a platform what can integrate with enterprise (legacy or new platforms) and scalable service that is performant.

example : Connected vehicle project and other such projects will have to rely on Telco to provide networks not just smart devices but other "Things" and that data would have to be collected and send through "business system" (Like BPM etc) -- one needs to a mobile middleware to easily fit into this model like WebSphere and application server did a decade ago.

Other example:
API management is extending into the software defined networking market to connect data infrastructure operations. Mobile computing on the rise will eventually converge with services exposed in software defined (networked) marketplaces and evolve into the ecosystem that Mobile application will learn to rely upon. We absolutely need to find synergies between our own offerings before we begin to event attempt play in the emerging open API marketplace. (Think IBM Worklight (and many of MobileFirst portfolio) and IBM API management) – MA (PI) aaS – Mobile API as a Service. This is what Companies like ATT and Deutsche Telekom are doing -- creating a eco system on worklight to create adapters or  API that can be consumed ( and eventually metered/billed etc) to provide access to Mobile specific services:

 (ATT: 1)AT&T tech talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vdQGG_wS74&feature=youtu.be 2) The URL for past recorded tech talks including this one:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mobile/mobile-techtalks/recorded.html

Deutsche Telecom

http://asmarterplanet.com/mobile-enterprise/blog/2013/09/small-businesses-get-a-mobile-boost-from-deutsche-telekom-ibm.html

http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2013/09/25/ibm-and-deutsche-telekom-partner-on-mobile-app-cloud-service/)


Why "Mobile Middleware":

I think we ought to work on "Discussion framework" - where we lay out the ecosystem , classify it and move on the 'solution' part of the discussion.  IMHO with this approach we maximize our time in understanding issues, collecting requirements and not a religious debate between frameworks and application types.

Note: Now, there are trade-offs when a client chooses all native (i.e. no code re-use, more development expense, etc) but I prefer to stay agnostic and guide and lead our clients into setting the right strategy for their "mobile" business and their individual apps

           Why Mobile Middleware or 'Mobile Platform" : I think since we are in enterprise space and will eventually have to address the enterprise integration challenges for mobile applications, I think it is vital we center this as a part of our discussion. Some Arguments I have used are as follows:

1.We want a completely agnostic approach to our clients that can do "native" , hybrid, or mobile web because the real value is in the platform, administration, up-keep, security, adapters, and integration layer we provide better than anyone else. - Integration

2.Mobile Middleware provides a layer of indirection, which allows for the back end services to be shifted without affecting the end point. - Flexibility

3.Ability to surgically enable and disable Application specific to a platform, administratively provide platform specific messages - Control.

4.Mobile Middleware also arms the enterprise to adapt and fit into to current Enterprise Security platform ( authentication, authorization and security policy enforcement etc) - Security

5.Mobile Middleware also provides an avenue to exploit existing services ( SOA Model) and since these services were design for Web Application, Mobile middleware allows for filtering and altering the content, prior to sending the response back to end use. - Flexibility, control and reuse and Optimization of existing enterprise services.

6.Mobile Specific Services - Unified push notification, SMS and devices specific notifications etc, provide an avenue to address these via platform.
and more….


Other Telco Industry related market observations:

1.    Verizon and Vodaphone – Capturing it’s own 45% market share and access to some EU markets, Verizon aims to capitalize on the network investment and boost it’s mobile services. Think of the ‘Infrastructure’ needed for expanded Mobile Services. I have always believed that TELCO will play a pivotal role in our Industry and Mobile space, and seeing boost in investment from all major Telco is not only encouraging but also indicative of an industry trend.


Additional Thoughts:
--> Maturity in M2M or M2X and ‘Connected’ vehicle is seen a trend that will change the way we live. Sprint /ATT/Verizon's of the world are gearing up to provision the bandwidth and special 4G LTE offering and GM/Chrysler/Fords are ramping up the  “Connected Vehicle’ offering. Industry see's this to be an $8b industry in 2014.
 
Google This:  M2m Multi-Operator alliance – include NTT Docomo, Etilsalat, Telefonica are promoting a common standard.  Real ‘Smart cars” – Fords AppLink lets driver do interesting things with Glympse app. GM announced 4G LTE technology in their cars, Volvo ‘Connected Vehicle cloud’, Toyota ‘Friend’ – trends indicating that Cars may be ultimate Mobile devices and possibilities for commerce, retail, automobile and other are immense



I am open to thoughts and Critique....

Have a great week!!

:)
Nitin