How does rise in Mobile Cloud services aid in delivering Digital experience?

Topic: How does rise in Mobile Cloud services aid in delivering Digital experience?

Folks! This week I’d like to focus on increasingly vital role of cloud in delivering mobile content, engagements and Mobile services. With all of my client engagements  I find that a solution design around Mobile Solutions includes:

a.    Eco system integration – Includes things like Mobile OS, APIs and notification eco systems, etc.

b.    Cloud integration – MbaaS, Cloud Services, APIs, and invocation of other Mobile services.

c.    Enterprise Integration – Includes integration with existing middleware and legacy systems.

In my previous posts I discussed “Digital Strategy” as a conversation starter. Where I  questions ours and our clients’ understanding of a “Digital Strategy”.  Do our clients’ understand what it is? Do we understand what is a  “Digital Strategy”?  Investment into IT strategy be it in Cloud, Big Data, Business analytics and even enterprise mobile platforms can be construed as Digital Strategy, but it is far from  what it ought to be. Designing a solution for an integrated digital platform implies designing for a new agile application infrastructure that is ready for new workloads. Such a design assumes thinking around a new era of business, client interaction and simple transaction, be it selling, commerce, client care will be pervasive, much like how we interaction with our connection in social media (on-line or in person), it is context aware, relevant and pervasive!

I have been discussing the focus on Digital Strategy since December 2013, and I think that our industry is at an inflection point, that any meaningful transformative solution design will include Mobile and Cloud. I also think that value proposition of the Cloud computing itself it transforming. Cloud, in it’s infancy offered value with server consolidation and extended capacity, and as cloud matures, so does it’s value proposition. Cloud models today tout not only application development and delivery, but also a platform to develop composable services to rapidly deliver application. This model enables business to quickly to test new market or respond to dynamic market place and deliver accelerated business value.

Now that we have discussed the value and emergence of Mobile-Cloud services that aid in application delivery, I would like to revisit some common terms and define a taxonomy for our discussion.

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)

Let us see how the Market place is shaping up:

There are at least 20 ( Mostly start-up) companies (and growing) that now focus on BaaS in one form or another, some notable examples include -

Stackmob, Parse, Kinvey, Apple's iCloud, RhoMobile, Appcelerator (Cocoafish), FeedHenry Astrum Space, Scotty App, Webmynd, YorAPI, CloudyRec, Applicasa, QuickBlox, mobDB, Netmera, Kumulos, CodeCloud.io, Sencha.io,Tiggzi and Zipline Games

Large companies that could move into this space very easily, including IBM, Amazon with its AWS products, Microsoft with its Azure Cloud, Google with App Engine, and Rackspace.

Now most of these cloud services provide some, if not  all of the features  below such as :

• User profiles with social login support for Facebook and Twitter
• Custom data objects and storage
• Analytics and metrics
• Push notification support
• Rich location data
• APIs for Mobile Applications
• Location based services integrations
• Other services such as DBaaS, IDaaS etc.

Mobile Trends driving Cloud Adoption

Mobile computing driven trends may tip the scale in driving the cloud patterns to new heights. In my client discussions, below are a few trends that are driving the cloud based services delivery and consumption for Mobile Application.

-Software and Data Ownership

-Burden of System Management

-Continually evolving Mobile Eco-system

-Ephemeral nature of Mobile Application landscape

-Changing mindset around investment and consumerization of Mobile platforms

-Social ’ization’ of Mobile APIs  

and more…

The idea is a fundamental understanding of how we position our mobile Solution that is :

a.    Meaningful,

b.    Relevant AND

c.    Cost effective.

I would like to stress these three simple characteristic from a Mobile Solution design perspective, because the symbiotic relationship between mobile and cloud goes above and beyond data storage and environment provisioning. Mobile device, which are limited by on device compute capability ( memory, CPU, power etc), can leverage Cloud to extend compute capacity. Mobile Cloud allows for access and synchronization of data, improves scalability by optimizing content, and collaboration,  - all securely and with an enterprise context – Delivering a superior Digital experience.

 Last week at MWC – Mobile World Congress and IBM Pulse – 2 leading industry conference – Mobile(MWC) and Cloud (Pulse), IBM made a few significant announcements. These announcements are indicative of IBMs leadership and commitment to the “Third Platform” – which is a converged Mobile and Cloud platform.

IBM Specific Announcements:

From an IBM SWG  perspective, IBM announced  enhancements to

a.    Blueworks Live, BPM on Cloud, and Cast Iron Live;

b.    Betas of PureApplication Service on SoftLayer and Patterns on SoftLayer;

c.    New offerings such as Mobile Push and Engage and IBM MobileFirst Cloud Services/MBaaS;

d.    Betas of Mobile Services, Internet of Things

e.    and more!

So I would like to spend some time discussing there announcements, and discuss how Mobile applications and solutions can exploit these new ( and improved) enterprise enablement capabilities:

IBM BlueMix – As I read and play with this, I think BlueMix attempts to provide a Hybrid PaaS and Saas model, where some middleware platforms and capabilities are available and some are exposed as APIs, that can be composed to form mobile services, integration services, data services, dev ops services, a full set of services that enable me now to build my next generation of application.

IBM BlueMix is designed to be an open cloud platform built on Pivotal's Cloud Foundry. IBM also made its software suite available on BlueMix – BlueMix Catalog and BlueMix Offers ( MbaaS beta) is a good example to explore. So in short BlueMix provides following ramp up features:

a.    Run apps in any language

b.    Build on open standards (OpenStack – Cloud Foundry)

c.    Provides integration services to system of record

d.    Designed for Mobile

e.    Rapidly delivering composable services

f.     Provides DevOps services for integrated dev experience

IBM Softlayer – Another cool acquisition, which is a IaaS provider and competes directly with Amazon and Azure ( Microsoft), etc. Many of IBMs own SaaS delivery models are finding their way to be hosted on Softlayer. So just because our own SaaS ( new and emerging) offerings that are hosted on SoftLayer, it is fair to label Softlayer as Hybrid IaaS-SaaS ? I tend not to classify them as a  Hybrid IaaS-SaaS, because SaaS offerings are mere consumers of the IaaS models offered by Softlayer.

Cloudant – Cloudant adds a rich set of DBaaS capability to IBMs Cloud portfolio with  Mobile application design as it’s focus. Cloudant's DBaaS allows mobile and Web developers to access mobile data with NoSQL technology.

In conclusion - Let us take time to understand the trends, drivers and technology that support agile mobile application models. Mobile and Cloud as technology platform  will continue to evolve on their own, but the new generation mobile application will drive the synergies to form a converged “Third Platform” with one goal - Delivering a superior, personalized and contextual Digital experience.

Reference:

1.    http://www.forrester.com/Systems+Of+Automation+Will+Enrich+Customer+Engagement/fulltext/-/E-RES111384?objectid=RES111384&cmpid=mkt:ema:forrresearchalert

2.    http://www.forrester.com/Brief+Services+Supplant+Mobile+Middleware/fulltext/-/E-RES114022?objectid=RES114022&cmpid=mkt:ema:forrresearchalert

3.    http://readwrite.com/2012/04/17/mobile-backend-as-a-service-ec#awesm=~ox9lLwmuegSD6f

4.    http://www.forrester.com/Two+Paths+To+The+Ideal+Digital+Experience+Delivery+Organization/fulltext/-/E-RES113601?objectid=RES113601&cmpid=mkt:ema:forrresearchalert

5.    http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/watson-hq.html

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

9.    Third Platform- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_platform

IBM MobileFirst - Agile Application Infrastructure New Paradigm for new Workloads

http://www.slideshare.net/ngaur/mobile-first-agileapplicationinfrastructure03062014
Slides Posted - http://www.slideshare.net/ngaur/mobile-first-agileapplicationinfrastructure03062014

IBM MobileFirst: Defining a Digital Strategy Communicating to Understand

http://www.slideshare.net/ngaur/ibm-mobile-first-digitalstrategydc1
Slides Posted : http://www.slideshare.net/ngaur/ibm-mobile-first-digitalstrategydc1

‘Converged Engagement’ Platform – This is all SMAC Talk! (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud)

‘Converged Engagement’ Platform – This is all SMAC Talk! (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) 

Folks,

Past few weeks have been interesting, I got to learn so much from my peers at TechSpark (IBM Internal Event) several client engagements and workshop.  In this weeks post I’d like to continue our previous discussion around Digital Strategy, Cloud and Mobile. I see this come up in many Mobile or Digital Strategy discussions as an enterprise faces an interesting challenge to address the confluence in a meaningful way and harness of promise of ‘converged Engagement’ Platform while exploiting the individual investments made into Cloud, Social, Mobile and Big Data Analytics platform.

           

Let us look at a few examples that will help me set stage for our discussion:

Looking at companies like StackMob (Paypal), FatFRACTAL, Parse (Facebook), Kinvey, Kii  and Mobile Applications on AWS and many more provide a framework and environment  that does the following:

a.    Provides a subscription based SaaS model  for all engagement types. – This is not only attractive from a price point but also provides predictive pricing models.

b.    Decouples the Mobile client and MBaaS – Mobile Backend as a service – There by providing the flexibility  on developer choice and different levels of enterprise integration

c.     Provide  a Marketplace --- this enables partner interaction and cross-marketing opportunities

d.    Mobile Specific Services --- Push, Analytics, Data Sync services, Push API, GeoLocation  etc.

e.    Application Architecture Neutrality – Multi device Support via SDK, HTML hosting and Custom Code Support etc.

f.      Enterprise QoS Features – Deploy and Management Platform Services, Access Control, Authentication and IDaaS – Identity as a Service support

g.    External Ecosystem Integration – Provide Authentication  support from popular social media ( B2C Apps), and related analytics.

This  makes we wonder on the Mobile Trends that are tipping the scale when it comes to cloud services adoption

-Software and Data Ownership

-Burden of System Management

-Continually evolving Mobile Eco-system

-Ephemeral nature of Mobile Application landscape

-Changing mindset around investment and consumerization of Mobile platforms

-Social ’ization’ of Mobile APIs 

Question that I now ponder upon - Is  Social, Mobile, Analytics  and Cloud (SMAC) different  part of an enterprise  Digital strategy?   Or is all ONE thing and  should we just call it some thing! 

So I am going to label it - ‘Converged Engagement’ Platform ( this is SMAC Talk!).

This thinking  IMHO will not only enable us to position our products better but enforced understanding in the marketplace arms us with the advantages AND  challenges ( yes even MBaaS have their own set of challenges—which we will discuss in due course of time) posed by these new and emerging frameworks and competitors alike. 

            Many of these new and emerging players in Mobile/cloud space are hosting their environment on AWS/EC2 and Rackspace like cloud environment and utilizing the capabilities such as  S3 and Cloud storage with NO-SQL like database such as a Mongo/Couch etc. Where each of the components such as Storage, Access Controls, Analytics etc are exposed as APIs – By Cloud Providers, Market Place  offerings is also exposed as APIs and enables a capability for partner to advertise their service as APIs --- So we are looking  at a Converged model where Mobility is a conduit for exploiting services enabled by Cloud, exposed by API management making a ‘composite Mobile App’ utilizing ‘Modular services’ – to attain a  ‘Converged Engagement’ Platform.

             So how do we connect with our enterprise customers that we have helped over decades with their enterprise application strategy.?

 How do we compete with this new and emerging landscape that may seem to have cost advantage and advantage of new ( at times low cost Talent)?

IMHO -  IBM MobileFirst Portfolio combined with our Application Infrastructure Portfolio and Softlayer enabled cloud services portfolio gives us enough ammunition to compete. But we need a better understanding, surgical strategy to better compete and provide a compelling value to our clients. I  also realized that our tradition competitors such Oracles, VMWare and Open Source Software (OSS)  are not the only primary threat but we now operate in an environment that is rapidly changing and evolving.

           

I will reiterate this, we ought to spend more time in understanding why our client invest in Mobility, or for that matter ‘Converged Engagement Platform’

a. Monetize

b. Enhance People Productivity

c. Better Customer Service

d. Others.. Cost of doing business/stay relevant etc.

I think when competing with surgical ability and solution centric approach – we provide more than fluid and ephemeral services framework. I do think context is vital.

Have a great Week ahead!

:)

Nitin

 Some Notable References:

1.    https://marketplace.stackmob.com/

2.    https://www.parse.com/products

3.    http://www.kinvey.com/enterprise/features

4.    http://www.cloudentr.com/

5.    http://en.kii.com/

6.    http://fatfractal.com/

7.    http://aws.amazon.com/mobile/

What is a ‘Digital Strategy’? Unlocking the ‘Enterprise Potential’ - Taking a different view with MobileFirst in 2014

Folks,

This has indeed been a busy year, with new product launches, new acquisitions, and new business models seems like every company is trying to reinvent itself and in process claiming innovation, thought leadership and market leadership. To this, I spend sometime in pondering over  what’s next? Does a new mobile app, which is cool, and has generated a buzz and that albeit may extend an existing business process – validate the claim on “innovation”? Or mere product rejuvenation? Will this trend continue in 2014? I would like to share some thoughts on my last post of 2013, thereby, reflecting on 2013 and pondering on what is to come in 2014. I think our conversation ought to be much different in 2014 – especially on Innovation landscape.

I’d like to start with “Digital Strategy” as a conversation starter? Do our clients understand what it is? Do we understand what is a  “Digital Strategy”?  Investment into IT strategy be it in Cloud, Big Data, Business analytics and even enterprise mobile platforms can be construed as Digital Strategy but it is NOT! Let me explain. The new era of business, client interaction and simple transaction, be it selling, commerce, client care will be pervasive, much like how we interaction with our connection in social media (on-line or in person), it is context aware, relevant and pervasive! This means an enterprise strategy that relies on various data points from various sources about the:

a.     person (customer/employee),

b.     Things (inventory, item, UPC) and

c.     Place (Location)

i.e. -->Intelligent, instrumented and Interconnected.

Much like a Smarter Planet campaign launched by IBM about 5 or so year ago.  This type of permeating ‘interaction of systems’ requires an overhaul of the “systems Thinking” from an IT Strategy to a “Digital Strategy”. IT Strategy suggested a model that treated technology in isolation, project based deployment that has evolved into a Services oriented design. Digital Strategy on the other hand focuses on  harnessing all-encompassing amalgamation of individual technologies such as a cloud, big data, Mobile, Business analytics etc, to provides us with a unified and contextual view of an Object (person, things, place). An enterprise should thus “focus their strategy on digital transactions based on automating and substituting physical resources for digital will only feel digital. Such digital substitution strategies create virtual copies of the real world, creating e-channels, e-stores and other e-surrogates for physical processes”¹.  How much of this “Digital Strategy” do our client’s capitalize on?  How much of an ‘enterprise potential’ can this unlock for our clients? --- Something to ponder upon!

Now, Mobility/Mobile Application as a medium is most certainly disruptive to the enterprise computing platforms, as it imposes several technical challenges (such as scalability, security and new computing models) which can be expensive and time consuming to be meaningful, but Mobility/Mobile application also provides organizations, small and large alike, to exploit the possibilities presented by this new digital model with relative speed – this is possible due to community defined standards (Frameworks, standards etc), data source in public domain (social media) and shifting the computing (processing)focus ( and data entry) to the end consumer. So this is fundamental shift in consumer driven computing, processing (and data) model.  I think this trend will continue to dominate in 2014 and beyond and we simply need to understand and find avenues to adapt and exploit this shift as it related to an enterprise digital strategy.

I would also like to touch upon how these digital touch point’s fare in Mobility/Mobile Application paradigm. To this I would like to broadly classify touch points as follows. ( Please note this is broad category to explain the digitization not ONLY Mobility):

1.        User Specific data (Instrumented) – This includes all user specific data including user profile, preferences, user data owned (co-owned) by user in social media (public and private). This can be B2C or B2E depending on the context.

2.        Security (Intelligent) – This related to context and risk based access, user credentials, shared security domain and trusts (OAuth/SAML etc).

3.        Location specific data (Instrumented) – This relates to Location i.e. place specific data includes GPS coordinates, Cartesian coordinates, and in-building location via access points. This also include the location of transaction i.e. place of transaction execution, range, geo fencing etc.

4.        Enterprise Messaging (Interconnected) – This include bi-directional communication with users, things and places.  Messaging also include receiving messages from sensors, events, users and their devices.

5.        Enterprise Intelligence (Intelligent) – Enterprise intelligence refers to our digital strategy discussion. The ability for an enterprise to collectively harness, Analyze and digitize the invest into physical assets, IT systems and People.

Technically Speaking:

I. Mobile Security:  I think Mobile Security will be part of every true enterprise mobile conversation. With security breach at “Target Stores” during peak holidays season followed by media coverage has brought security into focus, and I think Mobile security should be on every CIO/CMO’s radar.  So I suggest we better understand the Mobile security landscape to better prepare for 2014

Broadly speaking we categorize Mobile security into 3 aspects:

1. Security (App and data) on Device: This includes everything on the device including (but not limited to):

a. B2E (in some cases B2B) -- MDM -- Device management such as a Device signature/device registration (trusted)/Jailbreak detection etc.

b. B2C - Application tampering/Malware related exploits/data on the device etc

Broad range of solution to address many of these facets:

(i) Containerization – Aim to address separation of work and play, secure containers or protected sandbox for secure and trusted (signed) application/data and resulting traffic security.

(ii) Securing the application -- Malware injection/tampering/Application auth tests/Data exfilteration -- AIM to make sure that the app and related data is secure. 

(iii) Securing the data on the device and prevent leakage --- goes back to on device data encryption, transport encryption (enforced by enterprise security), access control etc.

2. Security (Data) in Transit/ Transport

This is to ensure that data is securely transported AES/SSL/TLS -- mostly enforced by protocol over public network and enforcement is burden of the enterprise -- Tools such as a ISAM for Mobile (with integration with SIEM for reporting), Datapower - for AAA etc, Edge and reverse proxies etc.

Now this has been business as usual we now begin to see Mobile and context awareness requirements in the edge and a more intelligent ways to provide access control (OTP/MOTP etc)

3. Security (Data) in Enterprise:

This is also business as usual for many enterprises with securing enterprise application/services and data and access to it. Things like AAA, trust interceptors and role based enterprise security access with PAP/PDP/PEP concepts at play. Here also we now begin to see Mobile and context awareness requirements.

Reference:

1.        http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/11/digital-strategy-does-not-equa/.

2.        http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=an&subtype=ca&appname=gpateam&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS213-390

3.        http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/42752.wss

4.        http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20131218-906182.html

Thoughts on 2014:

Let us focus on conversation and design around Enterprise “Digital Strategy” which is pervasive and all encompassing. Mobility will certainly dominate “Digital Strategy” discussion, and mobility is not just Mobile application but includes M2M (Machine to Machine), sensor data and implicit interaction between systems that needs to be captures and analyzed. Above all I believe 2014 will kick off a new era in Digital Evolution – and we all have a tremendous opportunity to contribute and lead.

As Always I welcome critique and thoughts.

Have a Great Holiday Season, Merry Christmas and Happy New year – 2014!

:)

Nitin