UberMobile

Here are a handful of partnerships, launches and momentum updates that show SAP’s seriousness about building a vibrant mobile ecosystem. Read the rest

It’s hard to impress me with statistics and factoids. I’m inundated by them all day, every day. But these new findings, courtesy of iPass’s latest Mobile Workforce Report, blew me away: Read the rest

The old SAP would never have been able to deploy apps in a matter of weeks, either for customers (via its Rapid Deployment Solutions group) – or for itself.

As Captain Kirk might’ve adlibbed, this is not your father’s SAP.

Earlier this spring, SAP released its first HANA-based mobile consumer app, Recalls Plus.

Recalls Plus has delivered more than 10,000 food, drug and toy alerts to concerned parents since its release.

SAP’s in-house developers used the popular HTML5 app development framework, PhoneGap, from Adobe Systems Inc., to accomplish this.

PhoneGap, as you might recall, was one of three frameworks that SAP announced in April would be integrated with SAP’s mobile platforms. Sencha and Appcelerator are the two others.

PhoneGap is known for its ease of development. One YouTube video by SAP mentor John Moy shows a PhoneGap app being built in just 5 minutes.

In our case, it took SAP five weeks to port the app written in iOS’s native Objective C code to HTML5-based code that can run on Android devices using PhoneGap.

That is still impressive, considering the translation work required, as well as the complexity of the data Recalls Plus relies upon.

Recalls Plus draws on data from four different U.S. government agencies that are stored and pulled from the fast SAP HANA data platform.

Download the Android version of Recalls Plus from Google Play here, or send the link to your parent friends.

If you want to meet the folks behind Recalls Plus, find them at the SAPPHIRE NOW conference in Orlando next week. They will be at the Mobility Campus giving demos, speaking at microforums and talking to influencers and any other interested attendees.

The world needs another piece of tech jargon like I need a hole in my head. Read the rest

Cleveland-based Safeguard Properties inspects and maintains more than a million foreclosed homes per month across the United States. It does so on behalf of their owners, primarily large banks and government agencies like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The huge number of foreclosures, as well as the slim margins in the inspection business, forces Safeguard to be more resourceful than competitors.

In August 2011, the privately-held company began piloting to its network of 8,000+ freelance inspectors a field service app called INSPI2 that runs on their personally-owned iPhones, iPads and Android devices.

The new app has several advantages over its predecessor, for both inspectors and Safeguard, said Bill Cook, a senior IT project manager at Safeguard. First, the app boosts the speed and accuracy of inspectors. One way is by pre-filling out the electronic forms based on existing data, as well as informing users when new, incorrect information they’ve entered in doesn’t reconcile with existing data.

“Even a 5% increase in accuracy can translate to significant speed and cost savings on back-end processing,” Cook said.

The app boosts speed by letting users attach photos of the home taken with iPhone or Android smartphone straight into the relevant part of the INSPI2 form.

The increases are especially strong for the substantial percentage of workers that were still documenting a house on site using paper forms and digital camera, and then entering data and uploading images into INSPI afterward via their laptops.

The app also creates driving routes for inspectors based on what homes they have been scheduled to work on that day. That also saves inspectors, some of whom will inspect 70 to 100 homes a day, a lot of time.

“Most of the users love it,” Cook said.

FASTER RESULTS, FASTER PAY

INSPI2 augments a Web site and client application that is still in use on laptops and PDA-type Windows Mobile devices. After just six months, it is already proving to be less expensive to support, with fewer calls per user to the help desk, said Cook.

The biggest boon of the new mobile app is in how much sooner that inspection results can be uploaded to Safeguard’s servers: a 50% reduction in time, says Cook, that he credits to the 3G capabilities of the iPhones and Android smartphones, unlike the PDAs and laptops which only have Wi-Fi.

This nearer-to-real-time data transmission lets Safeguard deliver results to clients faster, as well as allow inspectors – who are paid per inspection – to get their checks more quickly.

Though Safeguard has 1,000 full-time employees, it only has two mobile developers on staff. So it turned to a California-based consultancy, Appstem Media, to port INSPI from Windows Mobile to iOS and Android.

Appstem built INSPI2 using the Appcelerator Titanium development framework. Appcelerator, which last month announced that it would connect with the SAP Mobile Platform, was chosen because it supported native apps on multiple platforms as well as HTML5 mobile Web apps.

Appstem wrote most of the application, with Cook’s team doing the final 20%.

(Appcelerator executives including COO Sandeep Johri, vice-president of sales Trenton Truitt and vice-president of strategy Brent Maxwell, will be at the SAPPHIRE NOW conference in Orlando next week, including hosting a cocktail party on Monday May 14 at 6 pm at the Peabody Orlando hotel. Sign up here.)

Cook is pleased with the Appcelerator platform, though he notes that it took more work and time to get the Android app working as well as the iPhone. There has been a steady increase in the stability and capabilities of Appcelerator’s framework over the past year, he says.

With all of Safeguard’s inspectors on contract rather than full-time, the company can encourage, but not mandate, that inspectors switch from laptops to the iPhone app. Nevertheless, a growing number of Safeguard’s inspectors (360, or about 5%) are doing so voluntarily. About 57,000 inspections, or 7%, in April were conducted via INSPI2, said Cook.

Cook has also started Appstem working on a list of improvements for INSPI2, including: improved routing including geocoding to verify that inspectors are at the right home, a native UI for tablet versions of the app, better camera integration so that users can take and tag photos faster, and real-time notifications of contractors via text messages.

“These changes will give us real bang for the buck,” Cook said. “We expect a huge jump in adoption of the app at our annual vendor conference this summer once we take it out of ‘pilot’ mode.”

Safeguard is also looking into building other apps for its REO and Property Preservation service lines, which provide services such as securing a property, debris removal, property maintenance, and rehabilitation on behalf of mortgage holders, Cook said.

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The quarterly Enterprise Mobile newsletter that I edit has moved from Sybase to SAP. You may view the latest issue here or sign up to subscribe here.

Who suffers more when an employee loses his or her unprotected iPad, the large enterprise or a small business? In absolute dollars, probably the big company. An executive or salesperson could have tens of thousands of confidential customer records worth hundreds of millions of dollars of business stored on a tablet or smartphone.

Read the rest

Take this 100% un-serious quiz, excerpted from the Mobility Manifesto e-book, to see if your company is driving down Mobilization Road – or flying into the Danger Zone.

1. Do you have a smartphone or a tablet for work?
Yes, a smartphone. (+5)
Yes, a tablet. (+5)
Yes, both. (+10)
No, neither. (+1)

2. If smartphone, how smart is it?
It won the Scripps National Spelling Bee. (+5)
Smarter than your genius cousin. (+5)
Do you mean smart as in intelligent, or smart as in stylish? (+10)
Not smart. I need an upgrade. (+1)

3. Can you get your company e-mail on your device/s?
Of course. (+10)
Of course not. It’s against company policy. (+5)
(Ahem.) No. (+1)
Did someone tell you to ask me that? (-1)

4. And IT is aware of all this?
Yes. (+10)
What they don’t know won’t hurt them. (+1)
Hold on a sec while I go wake them up and ask. (-1)

5. Hypothetically speaking, if IT doesn’t know, what would they do if they found out?
Fire me. (-1)
Tighten down the screws on the company network. (+5)
Shrug. (+1)
Help me set it up the right way. (+10)

6. Can you access enterprise apps from your mobile device/s?
That’s what makes it/them so useful. (+10)
Ha! That’ll be the day. (+1)
If by “access” you mean “look at, like a child outside the window of a candy store” then yes. If you mean “actually use,” then no. (+5)
Again, did someone tell you to ask me this? (-1)

7. Who owns your device/s?
I do. (+10)
My company does. (+5)
Are you going to tell IT about the e-mail thing? (-1)

8. If you own it/them, does your company pick up any of the costs?
No, the cheapskates. (-1)
Yes, they cover some or all of the purchase price. (+1)
Yes, they cover some or all of the monthly service fee. (+5)
Yes, they pay for the whole enchilada. (+10)

9. If you own it, did you get to choose the device you wanted, or did you have to pick from a list?
My choice (+10)
Picked exactly what I wanted from a list. (+5)
Picked the least of several evils from a list. (+1)
I got what I wanted, and then pretended like
I didn’t know there was a list. (-1)

10. At your company, who can bring their own device?
No one. (+1)
Anyone with the chutzpah to flout official policy. (-1)
Just the suits. (+5)
Everybody: delivery truck drivers, CEO, admins. (+10)

11. How often do you have to change the password on your device/s?
Password protection is for wimps. (+1)
Whenever the things lock me out and force me to. (+10)
Never. I use the same PIN for my voicemail, ATM card and phone, and if I ever changed it, I’d be completely incapacitated. (+5)

12. Does your company have a mobile governance policy?
A what? (+1)
Yeah, but I’ve never read it. (+5)
Yes, I got a copy when IT set my phone and tablet up on the company mobile device management platform. (+10)

13. What does “remote wipe capability” mean?
Do not use that kind of language in the workplace! (+1)
When the touch screen gets really dirty, you can clean it from across the room? (+1)
I’m pretty sure it’s something to do with security. (+5)
IT can permanently erase everything on my phone if I lose it. (+10)

14. What’s an enterprise app store?
Beats me. (+1)
Someplace where I can download Angry Birds for free. (+5)
Is this a Star Trek reference? (-1)
That company web site where I download all the apps I need to do my job. (+10)

15. On a business trip, you leave your phone in a cab. You:
Swear. Loudly. (+1)
Threaten the dispatcher bodily harm if they can’t deliver it to you before your plane leaves. (-1)
Use Find My Phone to locate it. (+5)
Email IT from my tablet and tell them to lock it immediately. (+10)

16. From the following list, select all the places where you’ve done work from your mobile.
A coffeeshop. (+5)
The airport. (+5)
The beach. (+1)
In bed. And they wonder why we don’t use video chat. (+10)
The dog park. (+5)
My in-laws’. (+1)
The golf course. (+5)

17. Do you email, instant message or text your colleagues when you’re in the same room?
Never. Face-to-face interaction is always more satisfying. (+1)
You’re just mad that you can’t text as fast as me. (+5)
Just making sure everyone is included, and has conversations in writing for future reference. (+10)

18. When your device goes on the fritz, you:

“Accidentally” break it so you can get a new one on the company’s dime. (-1)
Turn it off and back on again, which usually clears up the problem. (+10)
Call help desk. They always help. (+5)
Call help desk over and over again until they show up at my desk, because they ignore me otherwise. (+1)

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Tally Your Score

Above 160: Exemplary
Your company is so hip to mobility, we’d like it to be our case study.

135 – 159: Ahead of the Pack
Pat your IT department on the back. It sounds like your CIO is plugged in, and making a concerted effort to support mobile workers, but there’s still some room for improvement.

90 – 134: Steady as She Goes
Your company is on Mobilization Road, but has a way to go to wring out full benefits. A governance policy is probably in order, as are the security and administration features available in mobile management software.

50 – 89: Lagging Behind
Scoring somewhere between Clueless and Draconian, your company needs to get with the program. Password protection, secure company email and allowing more devices are good places to start.

Under 50: Accident Waiting to Happen
Your company is operating in the Mobility Danger Zone. It’s time for IT to recognize that Denial is more than a river in Egypt, and that company data is already at risk.

———-

This article is excerpted from the Mobility Manifesto. Find similar pieces when you download the e-book by visiting www.MobilityManifesto.com.

I’m gonna knock you out. Mama said knock you out…Gartner just released its Magic Quadrant report (read the full report for free here) on the best Mobile Application Development Platforms.

SAP - and pending acquisition, Syclo – knocked out the competition, taking 2 out of the top three spots in the Leader’s Quadrant (Antenna Software was the third).

It was a huge move up and to the right for Sybase/SAP from prior years. So rather than quietly humblebrag about it, I think it deserves its own bombastic theme song from rapper LL Cool J:

Over the competition, I’m towerin’…

SAP and Syclo placed ahead of big names such as Adobe, RIM, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, IBM…22 firms in all.

Though anyone glancing at the chart can see who Gartner picked as the real leader:

Don’t call it comeback. I been here for years…

The Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) has long been one of the leading Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAPs).

Similarly, Sybase 365′s Mobiliser Platform is also a very popular Mobile Consumer Application Platform (MCAP).

So why did SAP leap to the top this year? Because the market is moving the way we anticipated, and embracing our vision.

Enterprises are eschewing the chaos of multiple mobile app development platforms, which they are discovering to be as much of a headache as coping with multiple unmanaged mobile devices on their networks.

Instead of choosing a best-of-breed MCAP to build that B2C marketing app and a separate MEAP for the field service apps, firms are “increasingly” looking “for a single MADP that can address most, if not all, of their future projects across all scenarios,” Gartner says.

That’s what the SAP Mobile Platform announced April 10th offers. It already combines SUP with SAP’s vaunted back-end software (some via the Netweaver Gateway middleware), as well as SAP’s fast-growing fleet  of mobile business apps.

But very soon, the SAP Mobile Platform will integrate 365′s Mobiliser for mobile banking and other B2C apps, as well as popular Web development  platforms such as Adobe PhoneGap, Appcelerator and Sencha, and, eventually, the Syclo mobile business apps and platform that Gartner also ranks so highly.

Don’t ever compare me to the rest that’ll all get sliced and diced – Competition’s payin’ the price…

“SAP has one of the largest mobile development efforts, both in terms of devoted internal resources and partner management. Gartner observed partners actively integrating with SUP during 2011, and we anticipate that continuing in the long term,” wrote Gartner.

Moreover, SAP “has the most flexible application development environment, offering plug-ins for Eclipse and Visual Studio, as well as a proprietary studio…Sybase continues to have the broadest device support among all the multichannel vendors, and the strongest MDM offering, Afaria.”

Rockin our peers and puttin’ suckas in fear…

Meanwhile, “SUP has a widening support base” due to “significant market traction” and partners like Syclo and Sky Technologies integrating with SUP, wrote Gartner.

And the “Sybase 365 platform is scaling well in mobile banking, especially in emerging economies,” said Gartner. “It has a large global reach [and the] SAP’s mobile messaging offering is best-of-breed, with strong database/interface support, global reach, campaign management and prebuilt application modules.”

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Speaking of free analyst reports, Forrester Research just published a report entitled “Mobile is the New Face of Engagement.”

In it, analysts Ted Schadler and John C. McCarthy make the Big Argument that smartphone apps are developing contextual intelligence based on our location and other app usage.

That means that apps will proactively cater to us in a much more holistic and personalized way.

To me, it sounds like the early manifestations of what we may later label as the beginnings of Artificial Intelligence, albeit at the network, not single computer, level.

Whatever you call it, the shift will have major implications on enterprises, who need to step and create an Office of the Chief Mobility Officer to keep up on this enterprise strategy.

You can download the whitepaper here.

Are laid-off investment bankers taking programming classes? They should be, now that salaries for enterprise mobile developers and architects are matching and exceeding Wall Street pay scales.

Read the rest

Now I know what working at Apple must feel like. Read the rest