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Volume 2, Issue 9
Here's Looking At You! Send us a picture of you using Aeroprise and we'll send you a limited-edition Aeroprise polo shirt. Ask The Experts: Q&A With Aeroprise CTO Peter Bishop We continue our conversations with experts in mobility. This month we sat down with Dr. Peter Bishop, CTO of Aeroprise and a 26-year veteran of enterprise software and mobile technology. Dr. Bishop holds a PhD. in Computer Science from MIT. Q: How are mobile applications different from desktop applications?
PB: One significant difference is that mobile devices are most productive when used with "urgent" and "actionable" information. Mobile devices have much richer "attention getting" capabilities than desktops or even laptops do. Software that really understands these strengths makes mobile devices more powerful than PCs. It takes most of our customers a little while to realize that and when they do they're always surprised at all of the things their phones and PDAs can do well. Q: How do you make anything useful fit on a little device? PB: It's easy to create lightweight applications for small-screen devices. It's hard to do it in a way that scales beyond a few users. Here's the challenge: we're used to having one version of every application for everyone. If you don't need certain functionality it's easy to ignore. Pivot tables in Excel or footnotes in Word are good examples. When you're using a mobile application, that paradigm doesn't work at all. About 5% of the desktop application is critical to every employee - the tricky part is figuring out which 5% is critical for each user. It's different for everyone and if you treat all employees the same way the mobile applications aren't useful for anyone. Our Personalization Engine solves that problem. It actually lets each user control their mobile application so they just get their 5%. Administrators still determine what users can and can't do but that little bit of flexibility makes all the difference. Q: What are some of the other challenges of developing software for mobile devices? PB: Screen real estate is the most obvious one but bandwidth constraints, processing power, and sporadic connectivity are also challenges. We solve the first by auto-recognizing the network type so we understand how much bandwidth we have to work with. The second we address by tailoring the mobile application to the device using what we call Automatic Device Optimization. The third we address by keeping changes made while offline in persistent storage. The user experience needs to be the same whether or not there is a wireless signal. This is particularly necessary for devices that operate in batch mode, that is they only communicate with Aeroprise via sync cradle. Q: Can you elaborate on Automatic Device Optimization? PB: A reality of mobile device technology is that new mobile devices hit the market daily. It is essential that mobile enterprise solutions support today's devices as well as devices that aren't here yet. Automatic Device Optimization ("ADO") is the Aeroprise technology that "learns" about devices as they access Aeroprise and builds profiles for them that take into account things like their screen size, resolution, network type, and alerting capabilities. All of the information about the devices that have logged in is available through the Administration Console. This self-learning behavior future-proofs Aeroprise for our customers. The Aeroprise template language and integrated IDE are also available to administrators who need the ability to build on what ADO delivers. Q: How do you handle wireless security? PB: Security really held back our industry for a period of time. We're proud of the work we've done to alleviate problems faced by many companies in our space. Many of our customers are government agencies that have very strict security policies. We've spent enormous amounts of time developing security methodologies that suit their needs. Our Wireless Virtual Private Network employs two-factor authentication to restrict access to
Q: Can you tell us about some of the new products Aeroprise has under wraps? PB: Our customers drive our product development. They really do. If there's something you need that you don't see supported today make sure to schedule time with me or someone on my team. That said, you'll see new adapter technologies that support a broader range of applications more easily and you'll see the emergence of new adaptive behavior components integrated into our Mobile Gateway to support both device recognition and personalization. I'll also be making a Technology Whitepaper available shortly that will go into more detail about future directions. We're hard at work on our 4.0 release. We anticipate it will be beta-ready later this year. Q: What does the future hold for mobile technology? PB: History has a way of repeating itself. Metaphorically speaking, we saw the same transition happen from mainframes to PCs that we saw from thick clients to thin clients that we're seeing from desktop to mobile apps. This latest transition is inevitable when you look at the way work processes have evolved. 80% of knowledge workers will spend all or most of their time away from a desktop PC by 2008. We're seeing technology changing every day to support that shift. My team and I are working closely with leading hardware vendors to make this transition smooth. Every day the lines that divide what you can do at and away from your desk are blurring. I'd love to hear about your vision for the future of mobile solutions. Feel free to contact me at bishop at aeroprise.com. Aeroprise Index Of Wireless Activity The Aeroprise Index of Wireless Activity, IOWA, increased 5.4% in September on higher-than-normal volume of news stories about mobile solutions. This flurry of activity was in part due to the release of second quarter statistics by Gartner that reveal strong growth in year-over-year handset shipments (see this month's trivia question) with significant inroads being made by Sony Ericsson and LG. Upcoming Events Silicon Valley Bank Private Company Showcase San Mateo, CA October 6, 2004 UK Remedy User Group London, England October 26, 2004 CTIA Wireless IT 2004 San Francisco, CA October 25-27, 2004 Aeroprise in the News Mobile Enterprise Magazine: "We’ve standardized on Aeroprise to extend our Service Management applications to BlackBerry handhelds. We deployed the whole system within a few days. We’re now able to reduce support costs while improving the level of service we provide." -Jeff Hoots, Nemours Industry Buzz NewsFactor: Mobile Enterprise Report: Cell Phone Sales Soar Tip of the Month: Who's On? In today's increasingly complex IT environment, collaboration is more important than ever. Problems aren't resolved in a vacuum and the need for reduced resolution time and improved customer service is greater now than ever. Wouldn't it be ideal if your technicians could leverage each other's collective knowledge to resolve critical issues quicker and increase first-contact resolution rates? Try this: From your Aeroprise Main Menu click "Who's On?" You'll see a list of everyone on your team who is currently available. Click on any name and you'll place a voice call to that team member's mobile number. Hang up and you're back in Aeroprise where you started with the ability to close the ticket, search for more information, or anything else you could do from your desktop. How's that for real-time collaboration? Trivia Question: Wireless Handset Shipments Soar Question: 156.4 million wireless handsets were shipped during the April-June period of this year. What percentage increase does this represent vs. the same period last year? (a) 5% (b) 35%% (c) 39% (d) 85% (e) 95% source: Gartner [answer in next month's newsletter] Last month's question: According to the Yankee Group's July 2004 enterprise mobility survey, what percentage of large U.S. businesses will deploy a wireless wide-area data solution by mid-2006? (a) 10% (b) 15% (c) 49% (d) 55% (e) 65% Last month's answer: According to the Yankee Group, (d) 55% of large U.S. businesses will deploy a wireless wide-area data solution by mid-2006. The survey fails to report that the ones that will derive the largest competitive advantage from mobility will deploy solutions long before then. Resources Aeroprise Newsletter Archives Aeroprise Newsletter Signup Mobilizing Your Applications: A Primer Aeroprise online demo Aeroprise customer case studies Aeroprise Partner Portal Questions o: +1(866)809-9102 f: +1(650)404-1185 information@aeroprise.com If you'd prefer not to receive future Aeroprise updates please click here. We never share subscriber information with anyone. |
