enterprise mobility 2.0

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Implementing a mobile project is no small task. The ever- growing choice of devices available, the complexity of back-end integration and the rapid evolution of mobile technologies can make it look like a daunting challenge to the most experienced of project managers. Since Appear helped pioneer the mobile workforce revolution back in 2001, we have been assisting major corporations to pilot and roll-out their mobile solutions. From these assignments we have highlighted these key takeaways. ENTERPRISE MOBILITY 2.0 Cloud Based, Cross-Platform and Context-Aware An Appear White Paper

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It discusses how to get the most out of smartphones and tablets in a fast changing consumer device driven “BYOD” environment and also explores some of the challenges of implementing enterprise mobility – explaining some of the new approaches that a mobility platform can bring.

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Page 1: Enterprise mobility 2.0

Implementing a mobile project

is no small task. The ever-

growing choice of devices

available, the complexity of

back-end integration and the

rapid evolution of mobile

technologies can make it look

like a daunting challenge to the

most experienced of project

managers.

Since Appear helped pioneer the

mobile workforce revolution

back in 2001, we have been

assisting major corporations to

pilot and roll-out their mobile

solutions. From these

assignments we have

highlighted these key

takeaways.

ENTERPRISE

MOBILITY 2.0 Cloud Based, Cross-Platform and

Context-Aware

An Appear White Paper

Page 2: Enterprise mobility 2.0

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INTRODUCTION

The revolution brought about by smartphones and tablets offer more choice, better

technology and lower prices to the enterprise, thus allowing the support of new and

innovative applications that boost productivity, improve service levels and lower TCO.

But this consumerization of the enterprise mobility market has left companies scrambling

for steady ground, as the market for consumer devices is significantly larger and more

dynamic than historically the case with the industrial grade rugged devices.

In only the last few years, we have seen BlackBerry go from dominating the enterprise

market to becoming a niche player with an uncertain future, while iOS took over briefly

before yielding to the broader market reach of Android, though facing fragmentation

challenges. We have seen WebOS fail to take off, MeeGo reincarnate as Tizen, and the

first device running FireFox OS. We are starting to see Windows Phone gain market share,

and yet a mixed reception of Windows 8 tablets. After smartphones and tablets, we see

the rise of new wearable form factors like glasses and wrist watches that can support new

use cases. It likely won’t end there.

This illustrates why it has become increasingly

challenging for enterprises to come up with a long

term mobility strategy for their business. Clearly

betting on any specific hardware platform has

become a significant risk for continuity and

competitiveness. However, there is sufficient data

now to spot a few trends and best practices to benefit from.

We are also seeing the rise of cloud offerings that help reduce upfront investments and

operational cost significantly. This has been a trend for a while with SaaS offerings like

SalesForce and Office 365, but mobility has

accelerated this development further because

the anywhere and anytime access that cloud

offers is especially relevant for mobile users.

This has led to additional cloud offerings aimed

specifically at enterprise mobility, e.g. MBaaS.

But not all enterprise mobility initiatives have been equally successful. Usability issues,

privacy concerns, lack of agility or expertise, all can lead to expensive failures.

Enterprise Mobility poses unique challenges regarding battery life, connectivity, usability,

life cycle management, screen real estate,

security, cost and continuity.

In addition, every vertical industry has its own

unique challenges, due to the nature of the

work, environment, regulations and the technical literacy of its people.

Let’s have a closer look at some of these challenges and risks and how a mobility platform

could help you address them today, while preparing you for what is yet to come.

”Betting on any specific

hardware platform has

become a significant risk

for continuity”

”The anywhere and anytime

access that cloud offers is

especially relevant for

mobile users”

”Enterprise mobility poses

unique challenges”

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BATTERY LIFE

Employees need to be able to complete an entire work shift on a single battery charge, as

most consumer devices do not offer battery

replacement options.

Battery stamina does however not only depend

on its capacity but also on consumption. While

mobile devices all implement advanced power

savings features, much of the savings depend on usage and application efficiency. The

biggest consumers are generally screen backlight, wireless radio (Wifi, 3G/4G) and CPU.

The first step is therefore to choose the right device for the job, by performing some field

testing on them with real-world work usage patterns.

Regardless of the chosen hardware, and the performance power it may have, by ensuring

that heavy operations are offloaded to the server, a mobility platform can help save on

battery and support more cost effective hardware specifications.

Efficient file synchronization and integration connectors that allow for server side

optimization of backend data, can significantly reduce the amount of data having to travel

“across the wire” between mobile applications and backend systems, thus saving on

wireless transmissions that significantly impact power consumption.

It is also important that event driven mechanisms, including push messaging rather than

polling, are utilized to minimize unnecessary CPU cycles while ensuring fast

synchronization of relevant data, even when the device is in standby modus.

And finally, contextual information could be used to exchange only data relevant to a

particular application, user, task or moment.

This includes eliminating steps in a workflow

that are irrelevant or can be completed

automatically with contextual information,

thus simplifying and reducing the number of

device interactions required to compete a

task. This would mean time and power savings on all aspects of device usage.

CONNECTIVITY

The consumerization of the enterprise market also means many enterprise deployments

are starting to use public 3G/4G networks as their primary or only method of

connectivity.

Aside from the security impact, for the foreseeable future there will remain many areas

where mobile network coverage is suboptimal or absent, such as in buildings, elevators,

”Most consumer devices do

not offer battery

replacement options”

”This would mean time and

power savings on all aspects

of device usage”

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tunnels or remote sites. For public network operated devices it is therefore common for

connections to drop many times throughout the day.

Nothing is more frustrating and wasteful for employees than having to enter a large

amount of data, while serving a waiting customer, and receive connectivity related errors

or even loss of that data.

Indeed, many mobile applications become

instantly useless as soon as connectivity drops.

But it is not only about the complete absence

of connectivity. It’s also about performance as

the actual bandwidth available for cellular 3G/4G networks can vary between 0% and

roughly 60% of what is theoretically possible, due to signal quality or network load.

There are several ways in which an enterprise mobility platform can help applications

offer a more consistent, reliable and responsive user experience, despite inconsistent

network performance.

By implementing efficient background file synchronization, the mobile platform will have

more time to send less data. This will optimize the use of available bandwidth significantly

while keeping the applications responsive.

With Offline application support, the mobile

platform can enable applications to continue

working as usual even in the temporary absence

of connectivity. It can do so by performing

requested operations on local data, while

synchronizing the changes to the backend

whenever possible.

Think of data collection activities like incident reports, time reports, sales transactions,

download of files, etc. Applications could just “fire and forget”, and move on to the next

task, while relying on the platform to complete those transaction with the back end as

soon as possible.

This requires the mobility platform to implement a certain transaction model that

guarantees the integrity and security of the data while it is stored on the device,

processes the transactions in the proper order, mitigates any synchronization issues with

the backend and offers applications the option to track the status of these transactions

through notifications.

To further optimize the reliability and

performance of applications, context

information could be leveraged to

anticipate the dependency on resources

ahead of time. By initiating a pre-fetch of

required data briefly before it is needed,

the time window for successful retrieval could be significantly increased, making it less

prone to local dead spots or reduced bandwidth. In addition it would significantly boost

”Many applications become

instantly useless as soon as

connectivity drops”

”Context information could be

leveraged to anticipate the

dependency on resources

ahead of time”

”Enable applications to

continue working as usual

even in the temporary

absence of connectivity”

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user perceived performance as the data will have already been cached locally on the

device the moment it is requested.

As Wi-Fi remains heavily used in enterprise

environments and increasingly in public spaces,

enterprise mobility platforms must ensure that

switching between different connectivity methods

is seamless and transparent to applications, active

file transfers and authenticated sessions.

USABILITY

Usability is important to enterprise mobility, as it impacts user adoption, productivity and

satisfaction levels. It can affect data quality and even employee health (RSI).

Not only are enterprise applications expected to offer a reliable and consistent user

experience, they are expected to do so with the same levels of accessibility and usability

as consumer applications.

Gone are the days that enterprise applications could get away with clunky user interfaces

that cramped up as much information on that tiny screen as possible, while still being

able to operate it with a stylus.

If users can’t swipe it, they won’t like it. And it makes perfect sense since these finger

operated interactions are far more intuitive.

Most popular web services are extended with mobile client applications on all major

platforms, allowing users the freedom and convenience to access these services anytime,

anywhere and on almost any device.

That the same level of flexibility and accessibility will benefit enterprises, is illustrated by

that fact that many employees reach for alternative devices, such as laptops or personal

smartphones, to complete their tasks after batteries in their corporate devices have died.

In fact, a Forrester’s Forrsights Workforce Employee Survey in Q4, 2011 among 9.900

information workers in 19 different countries, already revealed 74% used 2 or more

devices for work and 52% used 3 or more. Same survey

also revealed that 60% is used for both work and

personal purposes.

These numbers continue to rise, as more organizations

recognize the benefits of supporting a heterogeneous

fleet of devices. It not only allows different user groups to receive different devices that

are better suited for their particular tasks, but also multiple devices per user. In fact, most

organizations already complement their tablet deployment with smart phones for voice

communication and email, but do not yet leverage them beyond that.

”74% used 2 or more

devices for work”

Forrester

”Ensure that switching

between different

connectivity methods is

seamless and transparent”

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“ Most consumer devices do not

offer battery replacement

options

“ Most consumer devices do not

offer battery replacement

options

Part of the problem is that usability requirements and feature sets can be very different

on these devices, making multi-platform design and development complex and costly.

That is why many enterprise mobile applications still require large tablets to operate

conveniently, as they continue to display too much data and require too many user

interactions to complete a task. Even if the same could fit on a smaller screen, it would

make these applications hard to operate.

And of course not all applications, such as those operating barcode scanners, can run on

all devices. An inventory application that makes use of missing features, may fail to

launch and prevent access to the rest of the application functionality.

So user interface optimizations alone can only do so much. Not to forget that enterprise

applications can be very data intensive while data entry on most mobile devices remains

more cumbersome than using a full size hardware keyboard and mouse on an office PC.

A mobile platform with context-awareness can help applications much more easily and

consistently detect device features, tasks requirements, user preferences and other

environmental conditions, regardless of the source of these parameters.

It can enable applications to display only relevant data for a particular user at a particular

time, reducing the amount of “noise” that users must sift through to find what they need.

It can help reduce the number of steps a user must perform to complete a task, by more

intelligently anticipating and further

automating steps in a workflow.

Having employees spend less time typing,

searching, tapping and scrolling, means

more time is spent on the task at hand.

Less data to display or enter also means the available screen real-estate can support

larger font sizes or UI elements to improve legibility and (single hand) operation.

Context-support can greatly simplify the implementation of flexible and efficient

applications and is expected to become even more relevant with the upcoming wave of

wearable devices, like smart

glasses and watches.

These smaller devices are

expected to have a huge

impact on the enterprise

market, in areas like health

care, public safety, inspection

and B2C solutions, but will require smarter interfaces to humans and backend systems to

make optimal use of them.

The ease by which these new devices can be evaluated and adopted will greatly enhance

an organization’s competitive advantage.

”Reduce the number of steps a

user must perform to

complete a task”

” The need for context awareness in

mobile applications has increased with

the capabilities of mobile devices”

Gartner

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APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

The app revolution in the consumer space has led to hundreds of thousands of

applications for all sorts of purposes. Enterprises can benefit from a similar approach,

where, instead of single or few large monolithic stand-alone applications, multiple smaller

applications (or even so-called widgets) are built to support specific tasks. This modularity

greatly simplifies the development and maintenance of applications, while improving the

agility to support new business needs as they come.

For enterprise apps, we often see the same business data being needed by multiple

applications. Since about 50% of the cost associated with

the development of enterprise applications is spent on

integration efforts, it is critical that enterprise mobility

platforms reduce this effort and prevent its duplication for

each application, let alone for each hardware platform.

That brings us to the subject of cross platform development:

While generally native development is better optimized for the hardware it runs on, and

offers more responsive applications, cross-platform solutions ensure wider adoption,

faster development, more continuity, easier maintenance and significant cost savings.

The leading trend in enterprise mobility is towards capturing the best of both worlds by

using a hybrid approach.

Gartner predicts that by 2016, more than 50% of all applications will be hybrid.

“The advantages of the hybrid

architecture, which combines the

portability of HTML5 Web apps

with a native container that

facilitates access to native device

features, will appeal to many

enterprises.” -- Gartner (2013)

But most hybrid platforms either offer a standard container with limited access to native

features, based on the lowest-common-denominator, or generate multiple platform

specific binaries that make the solution less portable and may complicate debugging and

application management across a heterogeneous fleet of devices.

A more complete and flexible hybrid approach would let developers not only build cross-

platform solutions on a standard set of native features, but also enable them to extend

this set of features with application modules and shared services that require native

performance, or additional platform specific features such as new sensors, barcode

scanners, bluetooth printers or other custom peripherals.

By implementing context-awareness, applications can easily detect and use these

optional features, while maintaining their cross platform functionality on other platforms

or customized containers that lack them.

”50% of the cost is

associated with

integration efforts”

”By 2016, more than 50% of all

applications will be hybrid”

Gartner

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2324917

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In addition, to get developers up to speed faster, and reduce vendor lock-in, an enterprise

mobility platform should build on and facilitate the use of standard frameworks and

development tools as much as possible. Allowing developers the freedom and flexibility

to use what they already know and like, will make them productive faster than having to

learn yet another set of proprietary tools that require extensive training.

And finally, an enterprise mobility platform should facilitate agile development processes

with a set of tools, roles and policies that ease the collaboration between developers and

stakeholders.

LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT

Traditionally, rolling out an upgrade to an application required major logistical operations,

possibly spanning several months of collecting, cradling or otherwise interrupting

operations while downloading and testing large file sets over slow networks.

If a major bug was found after deployment, that was somehow not caught in automated

or even field tests, the impact on operations was significant as the whole logistical

process had to be repeated.

To stay competitive, your mobility strategy needs to ensure that you stay ahead of rapid

changes in the market and adapt to new

business needs.

A reduction of cost and overhead can be

achieved by introducing more agility to

shorten the development, test and

deployment cycles.

Splitting enterprise needs into smaller modular applications will make it easier to add

new features and support new use cases and user groups, without growing the

complexity of individual applications too much over time.

But this approach needs to be complemented with a way to easily deploy and update

those applications in the field, as inability to do so will force longer test cycles and

increased maintenance overhead.

While public app stores have made it easier for consumers to discover, deploy and update

applications, enterprises will need finer control over who can discover these apps, and

not be faced with a possibly time consuming or unsuccessful approval process.

In addition to enabling users to discover optional apps themselves, an enterprise mobility

platform should allow enterprises to enable automatic discovery of certain mandatory or

contextually relevant applications and updates, such as critical bug fixes.

”Your mobility strategy needs

to ensure that you stay ahead

of rapid changes”

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It is however also critical that these automatic updates do not interrupt the operations of

individual users in the field. A mobility platform

could for example allow large updates to be

downloaded in off-hours, and applied only when

applications are not being actively used. In case

an application is in use, the platform could notify

the user of a pending update with a non-intrusive message.

Fortunately, hybrid platforms and modularization can ensure that individual applications

maintain a very small footprint, making their updates in the field more quick and efficient.

With lifecycles of consumer devices being generally shorter, and pricing ever more

competitive, enterprises should be prepared to migrate users to new platforms as

needed, either because there is no other option at that time, to support new use cases or

otherwise getting more value for money.

Because many users may find big changes disruptive to their daily routine, resistance to

such changes might prevent a successful rollout. By ensuring that mobile applications can

maintain their common look & feel across multiple platforms, hardware changes can be

decoupled from software changes, allowing enterprises to exercise finer control over the

overall change process and the impact on their users.

SECURITY

Initially, consumerization was met with fear rather than opportunity, at IT management

level. This led to investments in MDM tools that focused primarily on controlling and

disabling users and devices, rather than embracing and enabling them.

Security is absolutely critical to enterprise mobility, and the invasion of personal devices

into the enterprise domain has raised valid concerns. But a good enterprise mobility

strategy cannot be based on a general sense of insecurity and uncertainty. Enterprises

must investigate the real threats to their business. A good enterprise mobility strategy is

characterized by maximizing business value, while ensuring the most valuable business

assets, its data, is kept secure. That should be the primary responsibility of the mobility

platform.

This understanding is especially key to supporting BYOD. Remarkably enough, this

concept is not new. Your bank has long understood that they must be able to offer a great

e-banking experience, without requiring you to

only use bank issued laptops or letting them

take full control of your personal devices.

Certainly any attempt to do so, would make the

”it’s critical that automatic

updates do not interrupt

operations in the field”

”Remarkably enough, this

concept is not new”

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number of satisfied customers significantly drop, making this valuable service

unsustainable. Much can be learned from its similarities with enterprise mobility.

But there are also differences. While banks have more to fear from phishing or skimming

practices, enterprises have to worry more about the loss or theft of these devices that

allow access to sensitive data.

The best approach is to assume that mobile devices are by definition always insecure. The

focus of enterprise mobility should therefore be to implement a secure environment on

an otherwise insecure platform, rather

than trying to secure the entire platform

itself. In other words, enterprise security

is about data, not devices.

This can be accomplished by using a secure enterprise container application that holds all

enterprise data, and can only be accessed by authorized users and applications within

that container.

This container should implement encrypted storage and transmission, and offer flexible,

secure and extendible multi-step authentication mechanisms that can be centrally

managed, ideally integrated with existing corporate directory services.

This flexibility will allow enterprises to not only find the best balance between usability

and the sensitivity of the data that needs to be secured, but also ensure new and

improved authentication mechanisms can be implemented when necessary, such as NFC

readers, biometric scanners or anything else, without it having to impact existing

applications or integrations.

In addition, enterprise mobility solutions should minimize the number of integration

points. Ideally, the only way both users and

applications can access enterprise data, is

through the secure container. And the only

way the container can access backend

systems, is through a single secure tunnel to

the cloud platform. This will greatly simplify

management, monitoring and configuration of corporate policies and firewalls.

And in case devices are lost or stolen, it should be easy for users and enterprises to locate

these devices and remote wipe all sensitive data. However, it is important to privacy

regulations and user adoption, that without the consent of the end user, enterprises

should only be able to wipe corporate data.

”Enterprise security is about data,

not devices”

”The only way both users and

applications can access

enterprise data, is through

the secure container”

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CONTINUITY

A good enterprise mobility strategy will support business continuity over a longer period

of time.

This does not mean that you should

prevent the use of vendor specific features

that can help your business save money

and keep you competitive, but it does

mean that if the need arises, there should

be a feasible and cost effective vendor platform migration strategy.

The first strategy is to ensure the use of open standards such as HTML5, to reduce lock in

on any particular platform or vendor.

The second strategy is to reduce the

amount of code required to build

functional applications. After all, what

hasn’t been implemented doesn’t

need to be migrated or written off.

The third strategy is to ensure full ownership of applications and backend data.

With a public cloud platform, the latter can be easily achieved if the platform allows a

hybrid cloud approach, where your backend applications and data, as well as the

connectors to them, can be implemented and hosted on premise or private cloud.

CONCLUSION

While defining an effective enterprise mobility strategy can be a daunting task, we hope that

the awareness of some of the main challenges and their potential solutions, as outlined in this

document, can assist enterprises to a successful deployment.

The challenges are however not only technical. A successful mobility strategy requires synergy

between vendors, integrators and power users, who not only understand mobility, but also

the challenges specific to your business.

”What hasn’t been implemented,

doesn’t need to be migrated”

”A good enterprise mobility

strategy will support business

continuity over a longer

period of time”

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ABOUT APPEAR

As an enterprise mobility software pioneer since 2001, Appear has developed extensive

experience and expertise with innovative award-winning context-aware enterprise

mobility solutions deployed in areas such as public transport, dealing with every aspect of

mobility in the most literal sense of the word.

Appear Networks Systems AB, Kista Science Tower, 164 51 Kista, Sweden

Phone: +46(0)854591370 Web: www.appearnetworks.com

contact [email protected]