Adam Sivell on Mobility

Adam Sivell is an IT professional from Australia who has worked on over 30 SAP and mobile projects in his career. His blog contains his thoughts on enterprise mobility with a detailed view on current and future trends in mobile computing.

The Enterprise Mobility Forum

EMF aims to build a community for those interested in the strategies behind managing mobility solutions within organizations. Blog posts, research, interviews, and community discussions are among the site’s helpful content.

CIO .com

CIO.com is one of the most high profile sites on this list. The site itself covers a range of enterprise topics – the link above is to their mobile section, and a quick search for “mobile enterprise” results in an even more specific list of posts. A must-read blog for top enterprise news and a plethora of other content.

The VAR Guy

The mysterious, no-name creator of this site is an IT journalist who “allegedly covered the birth of Windows NT, the rise of Cisco Systems, and just about every technology wave since the birth of LANs.” The site covers a range of topics: cloud computing, open source, mobile, and several more, and features some great guest posts from experts at SAP, Carbonite and VMware, to name a few.

InfoQ

InfoQ aims to facilitate the spread of knowledge and innovation in enterprise development by providing unbiased, practitioner-driven conferences, content, and online community. The site has an extensive collection of video presentations on a wide variety of topics.

CITEworld

CITEWorld covers topics related to BYOD policies, best practices, mobile device management and enterprise mobile apps.

Enterprise Mobile Hub

Produced by Computerworld, this site aims to build a community focused on, of course, mobility in the enterprise. The site’s packed with content, from infographics to whitepapers to good ol’ blog posts, plus has an active discussion board to which various mobile architect influencers contribute.

Afzal’s Blog

Afzal is a Technical Architect who blogs about issues that other architects may face and offers solutions based on his experiences. Topics he’s covered in the past include Salesforce, SSL/TLS, firewalls and proxies, and more.

EMatters by EAConsult

This is the blog of company Enterprise Applications Consulting. Posts cover enterprise trends and news in lengthy but thoughtful detail and opinion.

Enterprise Irregulars

A blog by a diverse group of practitioners, consultants, investors, journalists, analysts and full time bloggers who share a common passion –  enterprise technology and its application to business in the 21st century.

For more great stuff on enterprise mobility, check out our list of mobile architects and mobile strategists to follow on Twitter here.

Why we Love Beerdog

• As a 21st century version of your “beer passport,” the app accurately records brews you find and where you find ‘em in just two clicks. All you do is take a picture.

• It’s a visual, social and location-based app that highlights the unique beauty of craft beer labels.

• It’s a new, highly relevant communication channel between beer lovers, bars and brewers.

As an early pioneer of consumer services on mobile, Beerdog Founder and CEO, Kevin Bradshaw, has been in the mobile industry since 1997. To brainstorm a new project he reflected on what he loves most in life — cell phones, beer and games. He couldn’t think of a product that truly integrated all of these things successfully. Then he realized that he’d just come up with the big idea for his next business. He thinks Beerdog might just be the first great example of truly “hyperlocal” marketing via cellphones.

Users simply take a picture of a beer bottle, beer tap or packaging and the app automatically tags the beer and the venue where you’re drinking it. Then, users can share it with their followers within the app, as well as instantly posting to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram if desired. When looking for new brews to try, start the app, hit nearby and all the great beers and bars nearby will be highlighted.

An initial prototype for the app was built in the summer of 2011 by a group of engineers. Although successful, being 100% proprietary technology it was quite expensive to build and maintain. Kevin realized that in order to grow the business, efficiency was key. Eventually he discovered Backend as a Service and redesigned and coded the app with a single new partner, Joel Margolese, using Kinvey. Joel and Kevin run the business out of offices in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

“With Kinvey, the cost to scale is extremely low,” Kevin says. He estimates that using Kinvey will save between $150-$200K annually.

Beerdog is available for free on iOS. It’s been featured on AmericanCraftBeer.com, Boston.com and WickedLocal.com. Beerdog is also the “Official Beer App of Connecticut”.

Exhibit A:  We’re in the late 90s. The web is growing, fast, and the enterprise CIO needed a cost-efficient way to launch and operate new websites. The web application server was the main catalyst that drove Linux in the enterprise – an open source operating system, running an open source application server — the killer use case that drove Linux adoption.

Exhibit B:  Fast forward to the mid 2000s.  This time around, the CIO’s problem is that he’s in need of more servers to host new apps. Rather than a “one server, one application” approach, hardware virtualization allowed enterprise IT to run multiple virtual server instances on one beefy piece of hardware.  Server consolidation and the need to increase usage of server capacity, became the killer use case that drove adoption of virtualization in the enterprise.

Exhibit C:  CIOs in enterprises are in need of a server that is accessible immediately; something that is self-service and reduces CapEx, OpEx, lead-time of server procurement and maintenance.  These crucial needs are met by Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in the cloud, providing file-based storage, virtual machines, VLANs, and more in a self-service model.

Three use cases and business drivers enabled Linux, virtualization and IaaS to achieve enterprise market penetration.  But, what is the “hair on fire” problem that CIOs have now that would drive them to use a Platform as a Service offering?

In our experience, mobile is increasingly driving the adoption of cloud in the enterprise.  Every CIO or CTO we talk to has “mobile” as a strategic initiative that they need to launch and get right in this fiscal year.  They see that they can achieve their mobility goals by leveraging cloud infrastructure, since mobility is an innovation project, and what better way to launch an innovation project than using something innovative like ‘the cloud’.

Enterprises use a Backend as a Service (BaaS) platform to tie various cloud and on-premise backend and authentication systems down to multiple native and hybrid mobile libraries. BaaS solutions are also increasingly being used to “mobilize” ISV software.  In addition, enterprises need a PaaS platform to host code that securely integrates their mobile apps to their organizations’ data and authentication systems, thereby improving the productivity of mobile developers within the enterprise. The PaaS platform is also used to run custom business logic code to incorporate advanced contextual capabilities into the mobile app, like image transcoding, rules-based alerts and voice recognition.

For PaaS platforms to gain adoption in the enterprise, the clear-and-present use case is Enterprise Mobility.  However, most PaaS platforms like AppFog don’t have compelling mobile offerings.  Kinvey is starting to partner with PaaS offerings like Google App Engine to bring the world of PaaS and BaaS together.

Savvis to Buy AppFog

Savvis, a data center operator, has alleged plans to buy Platform as a Service provider AppFog. The announcement is expected to officially be made on Monday. VMware vSphere and vCloud Director partner with Savvis, and so AppFog could give Savvis a well-known PaaS brand of its own. Barb Darrow of Gigaom writes: “Given this news, it looks like AppFog technology will be more tightly wedded to Savvis/VMware infrastructure, but no one’s saying.” -

Google Buys Waze for ≈ $1 Billion

After much speculation, Google officially acquires navigation/location app Waze for around $1 billion (official price has not yet been announced). Waze will remain a standalone app, but its technology will add some key features in Google’s map app, including one of its most popular attributes: traffic updates in real-time from people on the road. Waze, in turn, will be enhanced with Google’s search capabilities. The primary value for Google is the data Waze provides on location of drivers. Geolocation data can be key for contextual in-app advertising opportunities. With Google’s powerful search technology and Waze’s rich location data, the companies plan to “outsmart traffic together.”

Yahoo acquires photo app developer GhostBird Software

Yahoo is on a very expensive shopping spree. One of its latest purchases is GhostBird Software, a photo app developer that has created KitCam and PhotoForge, one of the first full-featured mobile photo editors. The move is undoubtedly in hopes of strengthening Flickr for mobile, suggesting a more advanced Flickr app is on the way. GhostBird’s existing apps will be removed from the App Store, and no more updates will be made, though previous owners of the apps will be able to re-download them through iCloud. While the acquisition could be great for enhancing Flickr, avid users of PhotoForge or KitCam weren’t so keen on the news:

HP + Google = IT in a Box

Hewlett Packard and Google have teamed up to offer small businesses what they’re calling “SMB IT in a Box.” Essentially, it’s a bundle of software and hardware sold to companies that can be used in place of Microsoft Office. HP will package and resell Google Apps For Business management tools with its PCs, printers and other IT gear. Evidence of an HP / Google relationship has also been found in the mobile sector – HP is selling a Chromebook and an Android tablet, which run on Google’s operating systems. It will be interesting to see what else the two companies collaborate on in the future, and whether or not the “IT in a Box” offering puts any sort of dent in Microsoft’s far lead in the office software market.

That’s it for this week’s App Ecosystem Update, covering mobile technologies, app development, and trends in the space. Please follow us on Twitter, subscribe via RSS, and stay tuned for future updates from the Kinvey team!

Red Hat IaaS Overview & Roadmap

Wednesday, June 12 from 3:40-4:40pm, Application and Platform Infrastructure track,  Room 302

In this session, Andrew Cathrow, a Senior Virtualization Product Manager at Red Hat, and Ayal Baron, a Software Engineering Manager at Red Hat, will present an overview of Red Hat’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat OpenStack. Session attendees will learn how these offerings provide a common set of services and infrastructures for both traditional datacenter workloads and modern.

Mobile & Rich Client Smack Down

Wednesday, June 12 at 6:00-6:50pm, Bird of a Feather track, Room 301

In this session, industry experts from Red Hat, W3C, and the community will show why their technologies are the present and future of mobile and rich client applications. They will discuss high-level concerns like trends in client technology frameworks and core enterprise concerns like security, off-line support, and data synchronization. This isn’t a sit-and-listen kind of session; you sign up for a 5 minute slot to push your favorite choice. Come with your questions and comments about directions, best practices, what you have struggled with, etc. Special treats will be awarded to audience members.

Mobile Makes Your Enterprise Go Boom (The Good and the Bad Kind)

Thursday, June 13 at 2:30-3:30pm, Application Development Track, Room 208

Jay Balunas, Mobile Platform Architect at Red Hat will explore the latest in enterprise mobile development. What determines the outcome of a “good boom”, or a “bad boom” may be trickier than you think. Enterprises are burdened (or blessed) with new requirements for their developers and their infrastructures. Attendees will learn how to plan ahead and minimize risk. The discussion will cover options for applications and infrastructures, such as on-premise or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), mobile, web, hybrid, and native, and even integration options for existing services.

Rethinking Mobile & Web Applications with Errai

Thursday, June 13 at 3:40-4:40pm, Application Development track, Room 208

JavaScript, HTML5 and mobile were the hottest trends of 2012 and are only getting bigger. JavaScript is viewed as the go-to solution for creating web applications that work for both desktop and mobile, but it has limitations that leave teams stranded. Red Hat Software Engineers, Lincoln Baxter III and Christian Sadilekwill demonstrate how to use native Java syntax in the browser to create fully dynamic, interactive, client or client-server applications using HTML5 templating, data-binding, and other programming models.

OpenStack Architecture

Thursday, June 13 at 3:40-4:40pm, Cloud Readiness track, Room 310

Red Hat Software Engineer Russell Bryant will expand upon the 10,000-foot view provided in the OpenStack introductory session. He’ll dive into lower-level architectural concepts. Russell will discuss each of the integrated OpenStack projects included in Red Hat OpenStack 2.1, including: Nova, Glance, Swift, Horizon, Keystone, Heat, Ceilometer, and OpenStack Networking.

Their next lesson is a bit of a deeper dive into the Action Bar. Learn about different usage methods, including  getActionBar, onCreateOptionsMenu, OnOptionsItemSelected, and Fragments in the video below. 

Stay tuned – we’ll be posting videos from the class regularly so you can learn from our Android experts without moving an inch. If you have any questions or feedback about this video lesson, let us know in the comments below!

Thanks for your time; we hope you learned a little something about Kinvey. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to tweet us or shoot us an email at Support@kinvey.com.

Last month I attended Forrester’s Forum for CIOs and Enterprise Architecture Professionals in Washington, DC.  The goal of the Forum was to provide guidance and inspiration for IT leaders as they seek to “architect tomorrow’s business outcomes”.  Given the many conversations we have every day with prospects and customers that are attempting to figure out their mobile strategy, my goal in attending the conference was very much to learn – how are leading organizations developing future-proofed mobile strategies and delivering value to their customers in a scalable, cost-efficient, and secure way?

One of the resounding themes I took away from the conference is that many IT leaders aren’t even sure where to begin when putting together a mobile strategy; they simply don’t know what questions to ask. They are already doing their best to figure out how to make sense of and then (securely!) leverage “cloud”, “big data”, and “social”, let alone mobile.  BYOD is a well-known challenge without a single optimal solution.  Architects in particular understand that SOA won’t cut it in the mobile world but they’re not sure what alternatives even exist.  And while many companies can imagine the value there would be in “mobilizing” their ERP or CRM, the web experience for these solutions typically leaves so much to be desired that a beautiful mobile experience doesn’t even present itself as a remotely realistic option.

To this daunting challenge, Forrester presents an insightfully straightforward prescription: the best mobile apps, especially in the enterprise, are those that are custom built to a business process.  Or, put another way, the best apps focus on a business outcome (i.e. sales enablement, expense submission and tracking, mobile helpdesk) instead of simply “mobilizing” an existing web app.  Businesses don’t need new technology platforms, they need solutions (mobile or otherwise) that help their employees delight customers and more efficiently drive revenue, that enable their partners to more effectively go to market, and that more effectively deliver to customers the information and services they need.  Simply providing a (clunky) mobile web experience for existing business applications is not the answer. “Architecting tomorrow’s business outcomes” requires – to borrow from Salesforce.com – becoming a “customer company”, which means that IT needs to start by asking what their customers need and delivering solutions from there.

Our eBook, “The 7 Most Critical Questions to Ask When Planning Your Mobile Strategy”, is our own contribution to the cause.  In it, we have outlined best practices around which questions organizations should be asking when planning a mobile strategy, and how the answers to those questions can drive the development of an effective mobile strategy. Download the free eBook here.

Act 1:   Entrepreneurs see a problem emerging and start new companies to fix it.

Act 2:  Giant tech companies gradually awaken to the gap in their offerings.  First they discount it.  Then they study it.  Then they decide to build, buy, or partner to bolster their juggernauts.

This familiar theater is playing out in the Backend as a Service (BaaS) industry.  In Act 1, start-ups like Kinvey saw that inefficiencies in backend development were impeding app development.  Specifically, developers had to write the same backend code, over and over, for every mobile app they published.  Different developers would write these components in different ways, so recycling code was difficult.  So the BaaS industry emerged to create a “middleware for mobile” — unifying the code, making it available to developers in neatly ordered, standardized libraries, that scaled well in the cloud.

In Act 2, a new set of performers — base-level infrastructure players, like IaaS and PaaS giants — have taken the stage.  Whether through partnerships (Rackspace), product development (Google, Salesforce), or acquisition (Intel, Facebook), they are making carefully orchestrated moves on both sides of the curtain. Yet when it comes to the “built” solutions, we agree with GigaOm, which said the pure-play BaaS providers “offer broader feature sets and support for numerous mobile platforms.” But the broader message — that the larger infrastructure players are considering mobile backend services to be a strategic overlay on top of PaaS — is a critical realization for the industry.  Said another way, PaaS can extend the functionality of BaaS. And to this end, Google has, quite literally, doubled down on its commitment by first announcing its own Android-specific BaaS for lightweight consumer apps, and then partnering with Kinvey to provide a solution for those developing sophisticated, cross-platform consumer apps and secure, data-intensive enterprise apps.

On Monday, Google announced their Mobile Backend Starter product, based on Google App Engine, which provides a viable BaaS option for many Android applications.  Then, two days later, Google expanded their offerings by partnering with Kinvey to provide a full-featured BaaS platform for enterprises to securely mobilize their ISV applications and legacy data.  Together the companies will provide enterprise developers with access to advanced BaaS features including security, online-offline caching, as well as a simplified way to run complex code on Google App Engine’s Platform as a Service.

We are thrilled to be part of this fast-moving drama. And we’re eager to see the curtains open for Act 3.   What do you think we’ll see next?