Volume 3, Issue 2
A Conversation With Daniel Taylor, Managing Director of the Mobile Enterprise Alliance
We sat down this month with Daniel Taylor, Managing Director of the Mobile Enterprise Alliance. Daniel is a globetrotter. We appreciate him spending time with us on the heels of his keynote address at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France. The Mobile Enterprise Alliance ("MEA") is a global advocacy group promoting the business benefits of mobility to enterprise end users and decision makers. The MEA provides a vendor-neutral and technology-independent clearinghouse for information about all
things related to the mobile enterprise.
AP: You keynoted at 3GSM in Cannes recently. What trends did you see?
DT: There's finally a focus on the enterprise, and this is a very exciting sea change. When you have Rene Olbermann from T-Mobile and Jim Balsillie from RIM both saying that the enterprise is really important for the wireless operators, you have a trend.
I had a lot of people come to me to say that the MEA reflects their sentiments exactly and that they've been waiting for years for the industry to figure out that there's more to mobility than consumer-oriented devices and services. People are getting tired of downloadable ringtones and games, because they're now using mobility tools on a daily basis to truly enhance they way they work, and they want everything to work reliably, easily, efficiently and seamlessly – just as we expected when we were all sitting at our desks in the old days.
AP: How do these trends fit with the MEA's goals for the next 12-18 months?
DT: When we founded the MEA in the Spring of 2003, one of our initial goals was to build a category known as "Mobile Enterprise" and to be able to differentiate that concept. Today, "mobile enterprise" is a commonly used term that many people understand. I feel very good about that, because now we can focus on putting together a set of specifications for enterprise-class wireless services, mobile devices and mobile software. There's a lot of work ahead, and I'm glad to have the category defined. Next up is engaging more vendors and especially enterprise IT management.
AP: One of the key messages that the MEA is focused upon is "enterprise class". What do you mean by that?
DT: When we say "enterprise-class," we're talking about the fact that many of the mobile product offerings in the marketplace are essentially consumer-oriented products and services that have been repurposed for business applications. There are many vendors who focus on the fact that many workers often purchase their devices in a retail environment. But "enterprise-class" is more than removing the digital cameras from mobile phone handsets.
There is an underlying issue of the wireless services themselves, and many within the enterprise are looking for more back-end features and capabilities for billing, audit and service level agreements – capabilities that do not exist in consumer-oriented products and services available today.
AP: How does mobility software fit into this classification? What are some attributes of "enterprise-class" mobility software?
DT: The primary requirement for "enterprise-class" mobility software is that it functions within a mobile environment. As you know, many wireless networks have different performance characteristics than fixed networks. The primary difference is in latency, which has direct effects on application response time. In a highly latent network, enterprise applications must be able to accommodate longer response times, as well as maintain application state when the connection is lost.
Further, many of the enterprise software vendors are looking for a set of enterprise-class features from mobile devices. The network, the device and the application must all work together if we expect to see true enterprise mobility.
Aeroprise Index Of Wireless Activity
IOWA edged up 2.13% to 171.3 on the strength of wireless stock prices and a rash of press releases surrounding the 3GSM World Congress held earlier this month in Cannes, France. The industry is abuzz over ever more capable devices (check out this one), the spread of mobile communication to low income regions, and the prospect of further telecom consolidation which are setting the wireless agenda for '05 and beyond.
Upcoming Events
Aeroprise Webcast Feb. 24, 2005: Best Practices for Mobilizing Service Management Applications. All registered attendees will be eligible for a FREE BlackBerry. Click here to register.
Meet Aeroprise at the Help Desk Institute's Annual Conference & Expo
Venetian Hotel
Las Vegas, NV
March 6-10, 2005
Industry Buzz
Business Week: The Shifting Telecom Landscape
Newsday: First Cell Phone Virus Discovered In US, Now Seen In 12 Countries
Tip of the Month: Device Profiles
New devices are cropping up every day. Your boss likes her BlackBerry, you like your iPaq, your techs still carry plain old phones. With Aeroprise, make your favorite device an extension of your PC by mobilizing just what you need. When a new device is used, Aeroprise automatically pulls up the appropriate device profile and optimizes what it delivers based on what the device can support. Want to modify your device profiles?
Here's how: from the Administration Console select 'Device Profiles'. Find the profile that matches the new device. Create a new profile using the device identifier and update the parameters: specify the alert type, the screen size, etc. Then log back in from the new device and check out the device profile report. You'll see your new device matching your new profile.
Trivia Question: Replaced With A Gym Membership
Question: The recently-released Motorola RAZR phone weighs 3.35 ounces. What did the first cell phone (used in New York City in 1973) weigh?
(a) 30 ounces (b) 45 ounces (c) 60 ounces (d) 100 pounds
source: About.com
[answer in next month's newsletter]
Last month's question: How much was spent on wireless email in 2004?
(a) $125 million (b) $231 million (c) $378 million (d) more than $1 billion
Last month's answer:
(b) $231 million was spent on wireless email by 3.2 million users in 2004. This represents 60% growth over the previous year. According to the Radicati Group, that number will increase to $1.2 billion by 2008. You may not want your boss to know this but part of the attraction of wireless email is that wireless-enabled workers spent one additional hour per day working compared with their wireless-deprived co-workers in 2004.
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