Mobile technology: keep tabs on tablets and other devices

a whitepaper from ComputerWeeklyCW +

With next generation mobile promising to provide fast internet right to the palm of your hand, organisations are working at break-neck speeds to roll out mobile apps and mobile com-

merce. In this seven-page guide for CIOs and senior IT professionals, we look at the up and coming technologies, the business opportunities and the barriers to adoption of mobile broadband services and mobile technology. As CIOs face increasing demands from end-users for access to mobile technologies, organisations are realising that mobile technologies can create profitable business opportunities.

Contents

Rocky road ahead for mobile market page 2

With market analyst Gartner predicting that by 2014 90% of organisations will be supporting corporate applications on personal devices, the impending tidal wave of mobile communications is exposing real hazards that CIOs must deal with.

Optimising mobile apps for business page 4

Forrester Research outlines the current state of mobile business process applications based on survey data and discussions with users and suppliers and warns that rushing to adopt the user experience of consumer apps is a risky business.

Tablets go down easily, but could damage network performance page 5

Tablets are offering business users and consumers a new way to access the web and applications. At the same time, smartphones are becoming pocket-sized desktop computers. This means users now have sophisticated mobile devices, capable of accessing and running enterprise applications.

Should IT departments support tablet devices in the enterprise? page 6

Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2013 80% of businesses will support their workforce using tablet devices such as the Apple iPad. So should enterprises be preparing to support and buy-in to the technology?

These articles were originally published in Computer Weekly magazine.

buyer’s guide

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buyer’s guide

The mobile landscape resem-bles the seabed moments before the tsunami hits: as the uptake wave sucks back

the water, it reveals the rocks and reefs that are normally hidden, and are dangerous only on contact.

The impending tidal wave of mo-bile communicating devices is expos-ing real hazards that CIOs must deal with.

Market analyst Gartner predicts that by 2013, 80% of businesses will support a workforce using tablets; that by 2014, 90% of organisations will support corporate applications on personal devices, and that by 2015, 10% of your online “friends” will be non-human.

These developments, even if only half true, will have profound effects on the way companies relate to their customers and staff, and therefore on the use of IT in the organisation.

Inadequate regulationCIOs need to be aware, indeed to worry, that the legislative and regula-tory environment that governs these relationships is running well behind the technology and its applications.

The greatest concerns relate to on-line copyright and intellectual prop-erty protection, as well as commer-cial freedom of speech. The anti-copyright piracy provisions in the Digital Economy Act were due for judicial review in February; Nominet will soon debate proposed changes to its terms and conditions that will allow the authorities to take down websites without a court order; regu-lators are increasingly willing to fine firms that breach data protection rules; and governments are increas-ingly anxious to lock down the internet following the Wikileaks dis-closures and the social networking-inspired change of governments in Tunisia and Egypt. Through it all run the Tigris and Euphrates of security and privacy.

All this does not yet include the full effects of “the internet of things”, which is largely predicated on mo-bile networks and is led by mobile devices.

The most visible effect so far of the

greater reluctance to use corporate kit, especially if it has less functional-ity. Finally, apps consumption is like-ly to overtake the PC software market, he says.

Windsor Holden, principal analyst at Juniper Research, says this is only the beginning. “Any device capable of carrying a SIM will have one,” he says.

Researchers are already using the location signals from mobile phones to monitor traffic flows and adjust traffic signals in real time.

In 2010 Nokia launched an in-building mapping system that helps visitors to find items in an exhibition hall or museum. Tie this in with an intelligent building evacuation sys-tem, such as that developed by BAE Systems under the Aladdin project, and the mobile becomes the virtual thread to lead potential victims out of the labyrinth.

Rocky road ahead for mobile marketDevice technology is advancing so fast that legislation and network infrastructure are falling behind. Ian Grant reports

Some researchers are thinking even further ahead. Mohamed Gaber, senior lecturer at the school of com-puting, University of Portsmouth, wants to crowd-source the spare processing power on mobiles for crime investigation and health man-agement applications.

He is testing a scenario where po-lice officers capture the sensory infor-mation in a crime scene, such as fin-gerprints and digital images, on smartphones. Data is analysed locally on the officers’ networked phones and the results fused in real time.

“We have discovered we can get excellent results with as few as eight mobile phones used together, where each phone handles a maximum of 40% of the all the possible measure-ments,” Gaber says.

Most CIOs will shudder at the se-curity and potential data breach im-plications of such apps. But they may

CW Buyer’s guideMOBiLe TeCHNOLOgies

internet of things has been conges-tion in mobile networks following the launch of smartphones, and Ap-ple’s iPhone in particular. This is going to get worse. Smartphone own-ers use more apps and bandwidth than traditional phone users, and some analysts say 80% of phones sold this year will be smartphones.

Asymco, a Helsinki-based market analyst firm, says that in 2010 more than 60 apps were downloaded for every iOS device sold, up from 10 apps in 2008. Apple says its users have downloaded 10 billion apps.

Asymco analyst Horace Dediu draws three conclusions. Apps over-taking digital music both in units and data volumes was a watershed, he says. “Apps are a new medium: they will impact all other media,” he says.

As the number of apps attached to any single device rises, the user’s cost of switching rises, hence there will be

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buyer’s guidebe on the trivial side compared with retail apps.

Retail to drive innovationMarket researcher Foresee Results has shown that almost one-third of 10,000 e-tail shoppers had visited a retail website using their mobile phones. Two-thirds did so while in the retailer’s physical store. More than a quarter also looked at competi-tors’ websites to compare prices and offerings. It found the percentage that used their phones to buy goods quadrupled from 2% in 2008 to 8% in 2010.

“Shoppers who are highly satisfied with a mobile experience say they are 32% more likely to buy from that re-tailer online, and 31% more likely to buy offline, as well as being far more likely to return to the main website, recommend it and be loyal to the brand,” the analysts say.

Retail is likely to be the forum for intense innovation around mobile devices, turning shopping into the Minority Report experience via your phone’s location rather than (as sug-gested in the movie) by scanning your retinas.

That said, in January 2011 Intel said it was developing “anonymous video analytics”, which work with large, touchscreen in-store displays that can identify people by their gen-der and age. Intel has been develop-ing this Anonymous Impression Met-ric (AIM) platform since late 2010 when it bought a small Canadian dig-ital signage company called CognoVi-sion.

Kraft, one of the firms piloting the technology, hopes to use it to capture what is on a shopper’s grocery list, to push recipe suggestions based on their age and sex, and to let them share and “like” recipes on Facebook. But how much more convenient it would be all round if Kraft had ac-cess to the shopper’s mobile phone.

Flood of dataWhile retail is likely to prove fertile ground for innovation, sports and en-tertainment, especially video-based, provides the high volume mobile traffic at present.

In June 2009, Google reported that uploads to YouTube, its video distri-bution service, had leapt 400% a day, mainly as a result of the launch of the iPhone. These days the world up-loads 35 hours of video a minute to YouTube.

Skype’s new boss, Tony Bates, told the Financial Times in January 2011 that 40% of its traffic on the internet-based voice network was video. This is despite being banned by most mo-bile network operators. In terms of in-ternational traffic, Skype, with 45 bil-

lion minutes of traffic, is responsible for 73% of all international calls, much of it video.

According to Cisco, mobile video will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 131% from 2009 to 2014. This is already changing the traffic profile of mobile networks, af-fecting quality of service and the user experience, but also the network’s ca-pacity and cost structure.

All UK mobile network operators except 3 have “fair usage” clauses, and only last month T-Mobile an-nounced it was capping data traffic at 500Mb for new users. 3 reckons more than 90% of traffic on its network is data, and its current advertisements push “all you can eat” data.

Many analysts believe this offer is not sustainable in the short to medi-um term, or until the networks get more capacity. The operators are try-ing to manage the rising flood of data in several ways: capping and charg-ing for it, restricting access to data-in-tense sites, choking available band-width at peak times, and, controversially, lobbying for a “two-tier internet”, segmented by willing-ness to pay for better quality of serv-ice and/or content.

Congestion may be a temporary problem. Ofcom plans to auction more radio frequencies in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands. This will add 100MHz of paired spectrum to the 165.8MHz of paired spectrum

already allocated. But the threat of legal action has delayed the release of the spectrum until about 2013, says Ofcom. This means that true 4G mo-bile networks, likely to offer up to 100Mbps connection speeds, will not be available in the UK until 2014.

In the meantime, Ofcom has of-fered the so-called 4G frequencies to the London Olympics committee free of charge. This will enable broadcast-ers to use data-intense wireless tele-vision cameras to get closer to the ac-tion, and to continue experiments with 3D TV, first trialled at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. It will also allow local mobile networks to get to grips with the new technology and applications.

February 2011 saw the usual tech-nology promises displayed at the Mo-bile World Congress in Barcelona, some of which might be deliverable applications by 2014. “Augmented reality” is likely to be a hot topic, says Juniper’s Holden. While definitions vary, this is taken to mean a data-en-hanced application based on where the smartphone is, or can see via its camera and/or scanner.

One demonstration application seen by Computer Weekly 18 months ago linked a photo of a French cathe-dral via Nokia’s Ovi Maps location service to a database on the history of the building, its opening times and entry prices. This was supplemented by advertisements for nearby restau-rants and bars. Clicking on the ads took you to menus and price lists, as well as discount offers.

One suspects that the land rushes of the 19th century could pale before the rush to grab some mobile real es-tate, and the economic rewards are likely to be even bigger. But that de-pends on the tide covering those leg-islative rocks and reefs noted above. Turning the increasingly mobile in-ternet into a collection of walled gar-dens is unlikely to produce a desira-ble result. ■

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buyer’s guide

Optimising mobile apps for businessCompanies are starting to grasp the opportunities of mobile business apps, writes Paul Hamerman of Forrester Research

FedEx uses a highly evolved proprietary model of mobile IT in its freight shipping

Despite the boom in con-sumer use of mobile tech-nology and the increased availability of mobile sites

and tools for customer engagement, internal business use remains lim-ited. E-mail has seen virtually ubiq-uitous deployment by the enterprises and SMEs Forrester surveyed in early 2010. Calendaring and contacts showed similarly high levels of adop-tion among respondents.

However, mobile apps for business processes that touch internal opera-tions and administration, as well as mobile employees, show far less up-take. Emergency response (24%), sales force automation (21%), cus-tomer-facing mobile applications (19%), and field service apps (18%) see some adoption, with lower levels of uptake related to asset manage-ment, inventory, logistics and supply chain. Based on the survey data and discussions with users and suppliers, the current state of mobile business process apps is as follows:l Custom development is predomi-nant, but off-the-shelf use is increas-ing. The bulk of mobile applications in use are custom-built for specific situations. Forrester survey data shows that, while some business applications are purchased from apps stores (27%) and as extensions to enterprise packages (for example CRM, 24%), the most frequent sce-nario is in-house development (38%) or development that’s contracted to external developers (25%). Mobile middleware platform use was only 5%, but packages and custom devel-opment based on these technologies is likely to increase rapidly.l Off-the-shelf package offerings are at an evolutionary stage. Numerous mobile packaged applications are on the market, from large suppliers such as Oracle and SAP, as well as from specialised software firms and plat-form ecosystems (for example, RIM). Interviews and demonstrations with enterprise applications suppliers suggest mobile adoption is at an early stage. The applications reviewed gen-erally offered limited functionality, restricted platform choice and evolv-

ing selling and pricing models.l User profiles are narrowly defined. In deploying mobile apps, the target audience must be carefully defined. The most common target for mobile applications are task workers, where a specialised mobile app or device provides clear value in automating a task. Examples of highly evolved pro-prietary uses include freight shipping (for example, FedEx and UPS) and car rental returns. Such targeted apps are typically controlled by IT and limited to a specific company-issued device, often rugged or custom-built.l Mobile users ultimately determine success. Pilots are essential. In roll-ing out a custom application for field sales, Sunbelt Rentals tried RIM and Microsoft platforms before settling on iPhone as the platform of choice. Us-ability limitations inherent in device form factors and platforms require careful usability design and testing.

Mobile business apps can enrich business processesWith mobile technology drawing so much attention today, the question facing business process professionals is less about where we are with mo-bile business apps but where we are going. In addition to extending enter-

prise applications to mobile devices, mobile applications will evolve to encompass end-to-end business proc-esses, for example, procure to pay and sales to delivery.

Match mobile business applications to user rolesWorkers fall into different classes or profiles, based on job roles and work locations, including office workers, managers, telecommuters, field sales and field services. Mobility clearly has value for workers who are fre-quently out of the office.

Mobilising existing enterprise ap-plications, by itself, will not create business process value scenarios that will motivate companies to invest in the technology. Mobile applications must take advantage of capabilities unique to the devices, as well as lev-eraging anytime/anywhere connec-tivity. Device capabilities driving higher business process value in-clude location presence, image and video capture, live videoconferenc-ing, social networking, bar code scan-ning and Bluetooth connectivity.

App suppliers jump on the mobile bandwagonMost enterprise applications suppliers

are working on packaged mobile app development. Mobile applications en-able suppliers to extend core business technologies to more users while cre-ating additional products and revenue growth opportunities. The market for mobile packaged applications also gets a boost from smaller independ-ent software suppliers that specialise in mobile technology, from start-ups to established mobile development platform suppliers such as Antenna Software and Pyxis Mobile.

Suppliers see mobile as a strategic imperative Enterprise applications suppliers appear to universally agree that mobile applications are strategically important, but enthusiasm varies. SAP, the market leader in enterprise applications, is one of the most proactive. SAP presented mobile as one of its top strategic imperatives, even before the Sybase acquisition. It is now using Sybase’s portfolio of mobile middleware assets to develop new offerings. Concur, Oracle, and Salesforce.com are also proactive in mobile. Many other business applica-tions suppliers, including ADP, Infor, Kenexa, Kronos, Lawson and Work-day, are in various stages of mobile app strategy and development

The excitement around mobile de-vices, such as the iPad and Android phones, and the explosion of innova-tive consumer mobile apps seeds the market for business apps, but success is not guaranteed. Rushing to adopt the user experience is risky. ■

This is an excerpt from the Forrester Research report Mobile Applications Will Empower Enterprise Business Processes by Paul Hamerman, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.http://blogs.forrester.com/paul_hamerman

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UK firms to make a splash at Mobile World Congress

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Tablets go down easily, but could damage network performanceThe Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona in 2011 heard that tablet devices and smartphones are making a big splash – but this very success could seriously affect network efficiency. Cliff Saran reports

technology, new forms of payments such as near field communication (NFC), and lots of applications.

“With devices becoming more and more capable, dual-core processors allow for a faster richer experience when it comes to gaming, HD video, browsing and graphic-intensive user interfaces,” she said.

With NFC being rolled out in more Android devices and supported by operators, Milanesi believes smart-phones will eventually become digit-al wallets.

But with users running more data-intensive services on their smart-phones, the mobile networks will come under increased pressure. Mag-nus Rehle, managing director of Greenwich Consulting Nordic said some network operators blocked con-tent providers unless they paid the networks to carry their content.

He said Google and Apple were having a material effect on traffic

Tablets are offering business users and consumers a new way to access the web and applications. At the same

time, smartphones are becoming pocket-sized desktop computers. This means users now have sophis-ticated mobile devices, capable of accessing and running enterprise ap-plications.

In a blog post prior to the Mobile World Congress conference in Barce-lona, Carolina Milanesi, research vice-president at Gartner, said that smartphone devices would be offer-ing dual-core chipsets, 3D technolo-gy, improved touch-based user inter-faces, faster networks on LTE

CW Buyer’s guidemobile technology

Tesco rolls out convergence

UK startups at MWC 2011

with Android and iPhone. In addi-tion, some mobile providers wanted to sell 3D video content to mobile users. This would put huge de-mands on network operators’ capac-ity.

Future applications could include e-health and e-education, and loca-tion-based services such as “connect-ed cars”, he said. These would add to network capacity problems.

Rehle said the capital requirements for supplying high-capacity mobile networks were huge. He suggested governments which had still to auc-tion the 4G spectrum should consid-er the Swedish model.

The Swedish government gave up some of the revenue it might have re-ceived from the auction in return for a faster roll-out of 4G networks and more sustainable industry players. “That said, there must be strong com-petition to keep costs down for users,” he added. ■

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buyer’s guide

Should IT departments support tablet devices in the enterprise?Following the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, another flurry of mobile devices are set to flood the market. Jenny Williams investigates whether IT departments should swallow the tablet

Research firm Gartner pre-dicts that by 2013 80% of businesses will support their workforce using tablet

devices such as the Apple iPad. So should enterprises be preparing to support and buy-in to the technology?

Every major PC manufacturer has added at least one tablet device to its mobile portfolio. In February 2011 HP launched its TouchPad tablet, to tie in with Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The device will run on the company’s WebOS operating system.

“Today we’re embarking on a new era of webOS with the goal of linking a wide family of HP products through the best mobile experience available,” said Jon Rubinstein, general manager at HP’s Palm global business unit.

Tablets for specific tasksEszter Morvay, research manager at IDC, is sceptical about enterprise adoption of tablet devices. “The main difference between the consumer and enterprise is the multiplication of devices for one person. In business, people only have one device. Smart-phones are already adding complex-ity for IT departments, they won’t in-vest in more devices than they need,” says Morvay.

“Right now, companies are still look-ing at PC renewals. For many compa-nies, tablets cannot be mainstream de-vices, only secondary,” she says.

But tablets will affect notebook sales. “People purchasing notebooks will be looking at media tablets as more convenient,” says Morvay.

She expects notebooks and tablets will both have a place in the mobile market. However, as the devices are now equally expensive, more tablets will be sold than notebooks. Morvay adds that tablets will only be useful for specific verticals, such as field and construction workers. “Tablets are not the answer to everything,” she says.

Dell is confident IT departments

will continue purchasing desktop and laptop computers for business users, despite growing demand for tablets and consumer devices.

Kirk Schell, Dell’s executive director of business product marketing, said, “We don’t see tablets as replacing PCs but as being supplementary.”

Strong PC salesDell is adding to its tablet portfolio with the upcoming Latitude XT3 tablet and expected 10in slate device running Windows 7.

But, according to recent research by Deloitte, companies will purchase 10 million tablet devices in 2011, meaning 25% of all tablets will be sold to enterprises.

Other analysts point to a coming bat-tle between the mobile devices. Rob Bamforth, analyst at Quocirca, believes tablets will erode traditional PC sales. “In the future, we won’t have the need for one PC-type device but a fleet of consumption devices.”

He predicts tablets will cause a “fundamental shift” in the way em-ployees work by removing the limita-tions of technology. “If we liberate employees from having to sit down, they can still access information without being tied to a particular place. It will be a long-liberated ap-proach in many working environ-ments,” he says.

Bamforth thinks many employees will want to use consumer tablet de-

Although a great success with consumers, tablet devices such as the iPad have yet to find a role as a business tool

“Companies are still looking at PC renewals. For many, tablets cannot be a mainstream device, only secondary”

mobile computing

CW Buyer’s guidemobile technology

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buyer’s guide

vices within the business environ-ment. “Organisations must manage that; securing, maintaining assets and ensuring productivity as well as not discouraging employees.”

He recognises that tablets are still consumption devices and lack creation tools for images, video and text as well as the ability to manage, store and dis-tribute content. But tablets could help enterprise video conferencing become a lot easier and more mobile.

Content creation gapAsus say its Eee Slate EP121 is de-signed to fill the content-creation gap. John Swatton, marketing manag-er at Asus told Computer Weekly that most tablets are geared towards con-tent consumption but the EP121 is a productivity tool to be used on the go. It uses Intel’s dual-core i5 proces-sor architecture and runs Microsoft Windows operating system.

Asus has launched a range of other tablet devices, including the Eee Pad Slider and Eee Pad Transformer, which run on Google’s Android OS. Additional devices will be an-nounced later in 2011.

Swatton says the high expectations for tablet devices are being driven by manufacturers.

“The anticipated volume of tablets was 20 million units for this year,” says Swatton. “After the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the fore-cast was revised to between 40 and 80 million tablets.

“But 40 million units is only one sixth of the laptops sold globally. Lap-tops are still important. But we want customers to be able to consume con-tent on the go if they don’t require the specification of a laptop.”

Erosion of the notebookBut some manufacturers are willing to admit tablets will hit the sales fig-ures of other products.

Lenovo recently announced its

LePad slate device running the Goog-le Android operating system. A com-merical version of the slate, which can also become a laptop with Win-dows OS when docked in a U1-based docking station, will be available later this year.

Adrian Horne, Lenovo Western Eu-rope communications manager, told Computer Weekly, “Standalone tablet usage remains very much a con-sumption device with little genuine creation capability on a daily basis.

“As a result, tablets are more sup-porting devices to traditional PCs, es-pecially in the workplace. It is ex-pected that tablets will erode the netbook segment rather than tradi-tional laptops, although there could be some overlap in the strictly con-sumer segment,” he adds.

Bobby Watkins, MD for Acer UK, says that as the number two provider of notebooks globally, the company believes there is space for tablets, notebooks and netbooks in the mo-bile market.

Watkins says the tablet is key to Acer’s strategy and overall aim to lead in the mobile PC market.

“Some people have predicted the death of the notebook after the

growth of tablets in 2011. But people use devices for different reasons and we’re investing in all three: tablets, notebooks and netbooks.”

Acer launched its dual-screen lap-top device, the Iconia, to rival Ap-ple’s iPad at the end of last year. It plans to launch eight tablets with seven-inch and 10-inch screens by April , including a Microsoft Win-dows 7 professional tablet in March.

Acer is also investing in the business-to-business arena as a growth opportu-nity. Watkins says Acer anticipates a lot of IT people opting for the Windows 7 tablets to avoid having to add new oper-ating system infrastructure.

“There are a lot of choices and messages hitting the market in mo-bile,” says Watkins. He believes that the companies making mobile core to its business will be the only players left fighting for marketshare when the industry disruption dies down.

“We don’t see tablets as a substi-tute for any part of the business. Tab-lets will be explosive,” he adds.

Tablets are still dividing analyst opinion. Some think the portable de-vices have limited use in the enter-prise except for specific field-based

roles. Others believe tablets are creat-ing a shift in the way technology sup-ports employees and IT departments would do well to recognise its poten-tial use within business.

As manufacturers continue to put tablets at the core of their product portfolios, IT departments will need to identify ways of supporting an in-creasingly mobile workforce with employee-owned, if not enterprise-bought, devices. ■

Case study: How remote staff make use of tablets

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PC makers such as Lenovo, Dell and Acer have followed Apple’s lead with their iPad rivals

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