And I agree. Today, mobility and the Internet of Things are considered an entirely different ecosystem – one with its own security solutions, its own network, and its own applications. In ten years, mobility will be as common and pervasive as the Internet. Mobility and cloud computing will be the foundation of all IT services. Industry analysts won’t be discussing the decline of PCs anymore, while IT leaders will be supporting multiple devices per person and managing data from a multitude of sensor-enabled equipment.

Up next: an accelerating move to mobile

Over the next several years, new mobile operating systems and devices will force companies to change how applications and business processes are designed. Employees and customers are demanding real-time, on-demand access to applications on mobile devices. CIOs must find a way to mobile-enable business applications and processes, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), in a way that is usable on mobile devices. Businesses must also find a way to support customers accessing pertinent information on the go. Future mobile applications must be device-aware, location-aware and network aware.

Mobility and cloud computing will change how applications and processes are constructed. Employees will be able to securely authenticate to corporate services on multiple device such as a desk phone in a client’s office or a screen at the hotel. Work will become increasingly location independent. However, the biggest change will be the move to context-aware application and services.  Contextual data from connected devices will be merged with data from various sources such as internal corporate apps and Web-accessible data to build better services. We can see examples of this today with products like GE’s RtOI or Streetline’s ParkSight and Parker Mobile App. Future contextual services will deliver an employee or customer the proper information at the moment of need. Companies will reshape their business models, increase collaboration, and improve customer relationships with new contextual services. In ten years we’ll stop talking about mobile and focus on the business value these technologies provide.

How will mobile and cloud change your business? How are you preparing for the future?

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

Hepplemann spoke of the third industrial revolution as the digitization of products. The digitization of products means a product takes on a full digital existence before it’s ever built. Ruh discussed how the industrial industries, such as aviation, locomotives, and gas turbines are moving from analog to digital businesses. Over the next decade, Huff claims the Internet will create shifts in the industrial business that are on par with the transformations we’ve seen in other industries. He says machines will become intelligent, machines will get connected, and software will be available to analyze the information.

Rise of smart products

Hepplemann predicted the continuing rise of smart products. In smart products, the product is more about the software rather than hardware. The software can be upgraded after the product is produced. For example, in your car there are between 50 and 100 computer chips that run software every time you start your car. If your car doesn’t work, there is a 50-50 chance it is due to a problem with the software controlling the engine, suspension, ABS, or entertainment. Cars are now upgradable.

Integrating sensor data, cloud computing, analytics

According to GE’s Huff, integrating new technologies, such as sensor data, with cloud computing and analytics could help industries deliver new efficiencies with existing processes. For example, the airline industry spends $200 billion a year in fuel. Developing a new aircraft engine takes years, but having the ability to tune the engine and give the pilot insight into how to operate the engine can create huge savings. Even a 1% change would equate to $2B a year in savings. In every industry, GE sees that there are five to twenty key levers, such as fuel efficiency, and that if the industry could experience a 1 to 5 percent change it would equal tens of billions of dollars in savings.

Huff notes there are great opportunities, but there are also challenges. One sensor on a GE gas turbine generates 500 gigabytes of data per day and there are 20 sensors on each turbine. GE has 12,000 turbines globally, and its challenge is how to collect and manage this volume of data. GE would also like to perform real-time analysis on the data to decide if a piece of equipment is reaching a critical failure point, such as a blade breaking.

A time of change

We are at a time of unprecedented change in technology. Each layer of the infrastructure stack is being transformed. Increasingly, there is difference between a product and a service in the digital age. Many items that would have been considered products are now sold as services. Salesforce.com and mobile devices are excellent examples of this. A mobile device without connectivity and without applications is largely useless. However, when connectivity and applications are used with mobile devices, the device transforms into a product of services.

Software upgradable products, machine-to-machine communications, and insightful analytics will be the underpinnings of any successful business going forward.

How will you use machine-to-machine communications within your business? Please leave a comment here or connect with me on Twitter at @MaribelLopez.

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

Increasingly, the world of mobile is focused on apps. The enterprise market has finally caught app fever. Andrew Dailey from MGI research moderated a panel that included experts from across the industry. Executives from Airwatch, Appcelerator, AnyPresence, MobileIron, SAP Labs, and SOASTA were present to provide commentary on how “Mobile App Development Meets the Cloud.”

I believe these two trends are fundamentally tied at the hip.  Cloud computing compliments mobile development by providing easy and scalable methods for application development and testing. Today, entire application development platforms can also be purchased in the cloud.

While there were numerous insights from the panel, I found the discussion on designing applications to be particularly insightful. Many enterprise customers are building mobile apps, but these companies are using concepts that worked in the PC era. The next generation of app development is particularly challenging for enterprise application design. In the consumer world, software companies built micro apps that performed one of two functions flawlessly. These applications could remain micro applications or the application developer could build additional functionality based on reviews and requests.

Consumer applications are upgraded frequently based on user feedback, a change in the version of an operating system or a change in design tools. Applications are rarely considered finished. Iterative design is norm for consumer applications. In fact, there’s even the concept of a disposable app in the consumer landscape. Tom Lounibos, the CEO of Soasta, discussed how a company built an application to launch a product. The application lasted for only 24 hours, but Soasta said the company believed it was worth building to support product sales.

Most of these concepts haven’t translated into enterprise mobile application design today. Enterprise designers want to build applications that are feature rich and will last many years. In fact, many of our existing enterprise applications took years to customize and deploy. In the cloud, applications can be updated daily. In enterprise IT, it could take up to 6 months or more to get an application updated. Consumer applications were adopted because these applications are easy to use and solved a need or desire. Consumers continue to use an application if the company fixes issues quickly and adds new features that are requested.

The question a developer should ask itself as he/she builds employee-facing applications is simple. What functions or workflows would the employee need or want to use on a mobile device? What single function would allow an employee to get the job done faster or easier? Start there.

I personally believe mobile application design represents the new era of application design.

What’s in the new era? First, the post PC application landscape will offer fewer features within an application. While it’s nice to have 500 functions within an application, enterprise applications are frequently cluttered, clunky, and unusable. New applications won’t be designed to support every use case.

Second, applications will be built with iteration in mind. Like consumer applications, developers will constantly add features and upgrade applications from microapps to richer mobile applications.

Third, some applications should be designed with obsolescence in mind. Today enterprise software is expected to last five to ten years because it runs our business. Many new mobile applications will be designed with a shorter lifespan in mind to support a specific line of business goal. For example, marketing could launch an app to support a product launch, sales could request a special catalog for the Christmas season, and field service could build an application to support construction for one project. Being a mobile first company requires new thinking around the design of both the applications and the business processes to support mobile.

What’s your greatest challenge with mobile application design today?

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

Phase one begins with a wave of productivity enhancements that lessen the time it takes an employee to complete a transaction and for it to flow throughout the organization. For example, a salesperson can submit a price discount request from  a customer’s location, and the sales manager can immediately view and approve the discount from a mobile device while on the road.

At Tablet West, many examples highlighted how companies of all sizes have successfully embraced phase one, and they are now beginning to use tablets to accelerate business processes.

Real estate agent closes more deals

For example, Cassie Maas, a realtor for Alain Pinel Realtors, illustrated how using a tablet has improved her ability to support clients. After replacing a heavy backpack of literature with her tablet, she demonstrated how easy it is to share disclosure documents with her clients, prepare multiple offers to improve her customer’s success in the bidding process, and efficiently plan routes to tour homes. By using a mobile tablet, she’s delivering better customer service by getting information into her client’s hands faster. She’s also closing deals more quickly and minimizing fuel expense by planning optimal routes for her tours.

Medical equipment sales embraces BYOD tablet

Chris Simmonds, Senior Director Marketing Services at Intuitive Surgical, discussed how tablets can enhance the sales experience by providing richer content, such as videos of the product in action. Today, eighty-five percent of the company’s sales staff is participating in a BYOD tablet program. Like the agents at Alain Pinel Realtors, Intuitive Surgical first used tablets to replace paper binders. Simmonds said they’ve created a new tablet application that replaces sales binders , which previously cost the company $60,000 apiece. With approximately 850 sales personnel, this change equates to jaw dropping savings over time because it is cheaper and easier to update and maintain this content digitally. The application also provides richer sales tools by integrating video.

Physicians rely on tablet apps

Daniel Kivatinos, co-founder of DrChrono, demonstrated an application that replaces paper for electronic medical records (EMR). It starts as a free EMR app but moves to a paid application once the doctor requires premium features. This app offers a great example of consumerization of IT. Before tablets, most software used by doctors was purchased by the hospital. Today, a doctor can purchase numerous work-related applications from a consumer mobile application store.

My takeaway from the conference is that businesses have definitely embraced tablets for the first phase of mobility. The next step is for organizations to look at how the business can improve or change business processes as they adopt applications. Application designers should consider how location, motion sensors, and data from other sensors could be used to change business processes. To learn more about how businesses are using tablets, you can view many of the presentations from Tablet West.

You can hear my comments on trends in the device landscape by viewing the video “The future of tablets: iPad and its competitors”.

How are you using tablets? Share your thoughts here or send me a message on Twitter at @MaribelLopez.

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

KNOX incorporates security enhanced (SE) Android developed by National Security Agency (NSA), and integrity management services implemented in both hardware and the Android framework. At the application layer, KNOX offers a container solution that separates business and personal use of a mobile device. The Samsung container and container strategies from other mobile management vendors, such as VMware and Good Technologies, are meant to provide robust security while allowing the consumer to use its personal applications as it normally would. Samsung’s container also helps IT and developers deploy applications quickly and securely because it requires zero change to the application source code.

The evolving world of security

It’s now fundamentally more difficult for corporations to protect corporate resources. The recent Sophos 2013 Security Threat Report said “Another trend we are seeing is the changing nature of the endpoint device, transforming organizations from a traditional homogeneous world of Windows systems to an environment of diverse platforms. Modern malware is effective at attacking new platforms and we are seeing rapid growth of malware targeting mobile devices. While malware for Android was just a lab example a few years ago, it has become a serious and growing threat. With this in mind, IT organizations should secure their Android devices against malware, data loss, and other threats”.

It makes sense for Samsung to take matters in its own hands and attempt to secure the Android operating system to stimulate business demand. It’s noteworthy that Samsung and Blackberry are discussing security at the device, operating system and application layer. Blackberry’s Balance and Samsung KNOX both allow IT to separate and secure corporate data from an employee’s personal data. The challenge for enterprises today is that they need to manage and secure more than Samsung and Blackberry devices. Enterprises will have a mixture of devices and will most likely select either a mobile device management or a mobile application management solution to help them support all major operating systems from a wide range of device manufacturers. However, it’s still important and necessary for all device manufacturers to directly focus on preventing security issues within mobile platforms.

What does KNOX mean for the mobile and the security industry?

My take is that the Samsung news represents the new reality of mobile security. It’s not enough for a IT to say “I’ll secure the device” and it’s not enough to say “I’ll just secure the content”. Security must be built into every layer of the communications from the device, through the cloud and into the corporation. Many customers I speak with are building Apple iOS strategies and are contemplating the future of Blackberry support. Businesses are also looking for a way to secure and manage the Android environment. KNOX provides one method for this but only if you are using Samsung devices. The reality is the device landscape will continue to be heterogenous and firms will need enterprise mobility management solutions that can handle the breadth of operating systems.

What should businesses do?

IT leaders should define what apps will be accessed on mobile devices, what kind of data will be stored on the device, as well as what regulations the business is required to support. CIOs need a comprehensive mobile-security solution that provides protection on four levels by preventing unauthorized access to:

1) The device and its data –including data on removable storage

2) Data as it transits the network,

3) The corporate network and

4) Securing the application and/or content if necessary.

IT leaders should look for mobile management solutions that support centrally defined and distributed security policies, device and removable-media encryption and two-factor authentication such as biometrics if deemed necessary. Solutions should also provide containers, app wrapping or some technique that allows IT to separate and manage corporate data on BYOD devices. While a company might choose lighter security constraints, it is important that the vendor a business selects offers a rich portfolio of security solutions in case the company’s needs change. Mobile is the new reality and mobile security solutions are evolving to meet this demand.

How are you securing mobile today and do you feel any safer? Post a comment here or send me a message on Twitter @MaribelLopez.

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

Lopez Research believes mobility management will continue to evolve over the next several years as BYOD and mobile application deployments become more commonplace. The industry will evolve into a rich set of functions, called enterprise mobility management, in at least three phases, which include:

1.    2007- 2012: Device-driven management. MDM delivered inventory management, device status and health, and help desk support. It offered rich security at a device level such as preventing unauthorized access to: 1) the device and its data – including data on removable storage 2) data as it transits the network and 3) the corporate network. Basic security features such as password enforcement, remote lock, and remote wipe are found in MDM. Mobile device management and mobile security vendors dominated this era. The focus was on the device, not the application or data. In some cases, security vendors and MDM vendors merged to provide more comprehensive suites.

2.     2011- 2014: Application management and containerization. In this era, MDM vendors offered centralized management for mass deployment of applications, over-the-air (OTA) updates, and certificate support. Mobile application management vendors entered the scene to focus on delivering enterprise application stores and managing the ability to add, configure, update, or remove apps. MAM vendors didn’t offer the detailed device management of MDM, but MDM vendors made attempts to offer richer MAM-like products. The focus in the industry shifted to how to secure corporate data while enabling employees to maintain and use all of their personal data and applications. Virtualization vendors and MAM vendors offered new security solutions that are based on sandboxes, containers, and app wrapping to separate, secure, and manage corporate data, all without changing how employees use their personal devices. Industry consolidation accelerated as vendors came to understand the importance of EMM and looked to fill product gaps.

3.     2014 and beyond: Contextual Enterprise Mobility Management. In 2014 and beyond, EMM will build on the solutions of the past but focus on delivering content protection with contextual management based on attributes such as location, role, time of day, and type of content. Security will be present at all layers from the device through the application. The corporation will select which functions the business wants in an EMM. Some will opt for an EMM that spans the device through the application while others will take a lighter approach that focuses on apps. Wireless LAN vendors will enter the market to link network context into application management. More partnerships will form between focused vendors such as MAM, MDM, and WLAN vendors. The market will experience further consolidation as IT looks to minimize the number of management consoles it uses. The focus of the EMM market will shift to managing employee interactions and applications over multiple devices.

How do you see enterprise mobility management evolving to support the business? What features would you like software vendors to develop? Leave me a comment here or send me a message @MaribelLopez on Twitter.

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

In his video, Laberis posed a question that is key to understanding how to build future systems when he asked, “Are we designing for device and location independence?” This is what a mobile enterprise should be designing for. Work is no longer a place. Work is a state of activity that is increasingly device and location independent.

In 2013, most businesses are defining which applications and business processes should be mobile-enabled. Many legacy applications and systems of record, such as supply chain, human resources, and financial applications, will need to be extended to mobile devices. Businesses have three choices for mobile-enabling these applications. First, the company can see if its vendor provides a mobile version of the application. Second, IT can build mobile applications that link back to portions of the data within the legacy applications. In this case, the CIO or CTO must decide if the app should be an application that is designed to run on a specific mobile operating system or if it will be designed to operate using HTML-5 web technology. Third, the CIO should evaluate Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions in areas such as human resources, expense management, payroll and customer relationship management. These cloud services can provide device and location independent services today for companies of all sizes. While SaaS isn’t applicable for highly customized applications such as ERP, many businesses have found SaaS solutions are a reasonable alternative for more standardized applications such as human resources (SaaS examples include Workday and Oracle’s Taleo) and expense reporting (SaaS examples include Concur and Expensify).

Cloud computing can also be used to help develop and test mobile applications within the enterprise as well as between the enterprise and its partners. Start-ups through large enterprises are using scalable cloud resources to simulate production environments and test high volume usage. In some cases, our research shows cloud-based architectures can shrink the time to deploy a test environment by up to 90%. Thus, a cloud-enabled mobile strategy could include having at least a portion of the corporation’s data stored and processed in the cloud, cloud resident mobile application test and development environments, and SaaS applications. When mobile and cloud are combined, there are endless opportunities to improve and transform business processes.

How will your business integrate cloud computing and mobile? I’d love to hear your thoughts before I attend Cloud Connect in April.

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

• Acceptance and extension

Today, most businesses have accepted the concept that business processes need to be mobilized and that the business must have a mobile strategy to interact with its customers. In this phase, a business will simply rework many of its existing solutions to operate in the mobile domain. Companies will seek out mobile versions of existing applications or adapt these applications to operate on mobile devices. In many cases, firms start by replacing volumes of paper or paper-based processes with mobile apps.

• Enhancement

In the second phase, a business tries to add new features to existing services to enhance the experience. For example, this could be adding location into customer relationship management or adding mobile point-of-sale in a retail environment.

• Transformation

During this phase, businesses create new experiences and build different business processes. Mobile apps will automate workflows, streamline content discovery, and build knowledge iteratively over time as employees and customers use an application. For example, a mobile logistics process could enable a delivery person to run a report at a customer’s location that shows all previous deliveries and calculate how long it will be before the client needs another delivery. This process could also be used to help the logistics manager understand how long the delivery person was at a customer’s location versus driving between sites.

Transitioning techniques

I’ve also discovered that many companies I’ve interviewed get stuck as the business attempts to transition from phase one to phase two. Most businesses simply stop at recreating existing experiences and processes. What a business should do is build a mobile strategy that focuses on delivering new value or enhancing the company’s value proposition. A company should be thinking about how the business can use mobile to make the everyday lives of its employees and customers better. What is their goal? For example: Is it fast access to inventory data? Is it the ability to approve a vacation or an expense report while on the go? Is it the ability to place an order from their smartphone?

Assuming the business understands what its employees and customers want, it should look at how the unique attributes of mobility can improve existing processes. Location is an obvious first choice. For example, how can location knowledge change what we communicate to our customers and employees? Push notifications can be used to send targeted information at the point of need. Second, can we use location to automate processes such as delivery to a client site or timekeeping in the workplace? Third, how can we use location to optimize our worker productivity? In the case of field service and transportation, a business could use location to deliver better routes to save time and fuel. In the case of retail, a grocer could use location to improve “in the aisle” customer care.

Location is just one element of context that businesses can use to improve business processes. Businesses can also look at time of day, motion, and social networking context for additional ways to improve business processes. In 2013,

I encourage you to think broadly about what “mobilizing the business” can mean. How will you use mobile to transform business processes?

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

It’s no surprise that in our last survey of 257 IT leaders, mobility was one of the top two concerns for 2013. While the types of concerns haven’t changed much year over year, the rank of the concerns seem to change every six to twelve months with the rapid shifts in technology. In our last survey, mobilizing the business moved up to the number two slot. It was in fourth place three years ago. Why isn’t mobility the number one concern?  CIOs continue to manage a conflict of enabling innovation while creating operational efficiencies. Innovation doesn’t come easily when CIOs have to –on average –spend 80 percent of their budget on maintenance. Hence, virtualization helps businesses create efficiencies while mobile help firms build innovation.

Recent market research surveys show that between 50-75 percent of firms are allowing BYOD. The Lopez Research Q4 2012 Benchmark found that 64-percent of organizations were in favor of allowing BYOD. In 2012, almost 80 percent of the firms we interviewed that were allowing BYOD were only offering email contacts and calendar access. In 2013, every enterprise we speak with is building or buying enterprise mobile applications. I believe IT will drive innovation by combining mobile, big data and analytics to deliver new insights in near real-time. At any rate, it will be an exciting year in enterprise mobile app development.

What are you mobilizing this year? Will you build or buy enterprise mobile apps?

Maribel Lopez is the CEO and mobile market strategist for Lopez Research, a market research and strategy consulting firm that specializes in communications technologies with a heavy emphasis on the disruptive nature of mobile technologies. AT&T has sponsored this blog post.

1.  IT must embrace external competition

Consumerization of technology has disrupted many roles and industries, not just the IT role. Consumerization has brought Disney’s CIO and CTO roles closer together. The CTO role was frequently considered as consumer-facing and future-driven, while IT was known for operational excellence. In this new world, both roles are focused on understanding how consumers use technology and what impact this will have on the business. Existing business processes frequently isolate a company from its potential and current customers. For example, many large companies that didn’t allow iPhones found it difficult to understand how these devices could change the computing landscape. Startups embrace new technologies and behavioral patterns to build what we call breakthrough innovative ideas. Mr. Smith believes you must embrace external forces to thrive internally.

2. Use acquisition as a source of innovation

Start-ups may be innovative but they frequently lack the distribution channel and processes to bring these innovations to market. Smith noted that acquisitions are a strategy employed by many firms, including Disney to fuel internal innovation. The company recently paid $4 billion to acquire Lucasfilm, which follows Disney’s very successful acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel. While he didn’t offer specifics on this, I believe large enterprises acquire innovation because it’s difficult to create development environments that operate independently from the main company goals.

3. Organizations must embrace internal competition

He mentioned that the next big thing wouldn’t necessarily come from the existing IT solutions a company currently uses. IT must be willing to try competing platforms. Smith said the finance department won’t necessarily embrace the idea of inefficiency, but it’s needed for businesses to achieve breakthrough ideas. For example, Disney has multiple internal animation platforms that are competing for lead platform. Smith claims this will enable the company to select the best solution for innovation.

What’s next in innovation? Smith said all businesses have missed the mark when applying location services today. New location-based services will be the next big opportunity in 2013.

What do you think? Are location services it? Can businesses drive innovation with competing technology platforms? Please share your thoughts here and with me on Twitter @MaribelLopez.