Smartphones will change the way IT is delivered

A reminder that the views expressed in this blog are my own.

As part of the preparation work for the IBM IT 2015 strategy I was collecting some information and came across this article from Gartner. The last highlight caught my attention.

“By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.”

Which of course got me to thinking about the consequences for this on the way in which IT is delivered as we get to this critical point of inflection in the industry. This is one of those game changers and the way an Enterprise reacts to this will be important for their Internet business channel as well as how they deliver their own internal IT capabilities to their employees (where that is actually allowed).

So why do I think it will change things ?

1) The real estate is different – and no matter how good a resolution that Apple or the others put on the device the limiting factor will always be what the human eye can see, comfortably – and yes this gets into the usability of what is presented, however I would suggest that there is a significant amount of work that will ne needed to bring most web sites, email systems etc. down to be reasonably useable on these devices.

The term I have seen used is “snacking” – on smartphones with the 4 inch screens what you will be doing is (mainly) viewing bit size chunks of information.

2) The connectivity to the device is (or can be) different. – The main modes of connectivity to these devices is via 3G, which in lots of places may barely get above the 512/128k of basic ADSL, and in the growing markets like India, China etc. even more so. As such you also need to ensure that you try not to put too much “stuff” down as part of your page as this is only going to delay the response time & annoy the users.

3) There are no standards for the devices at this time – we probably have all seen the push & shove between Apple & Adobe about Flash on iOS, Google, the developer of Android, sees no issue with, say java, then you add in the Symbian from Nokia & WebOS from (now) HP they all have a different view & perspective – if you take a look at the AdMob monthly statistics (May 2010 is the latest available since Google acquired the company) you can see that there are significant differences dependant on the market – as an example the predominance of Symbian in the India as compared to the mixed environment in the US where Symbian is very much a minor player.

So how does this play into the way an Enterprise delivers it’s internal IT ?

The key one that I will share with you is that for some sectors of your employees you will be asked (if you havn’t already) to deliver functions such as email, IM, & most of the common business tools on these devices. Any thought that you could control the types of devices your employees use is just going to create an organisational dystopia.

So what I would suggest is to have a structured approach to allowing devices to connect & be used. Be very clear on what are the minimum capabilities necessary before you will allow connectivity (you did the same for PC’s right ?), including the ability to verify their state (jail broken etc). Start with the most popular devices amongst your users & work through the issues systematically.

Whilst you are doing that you will need to get your applications ready to be usable on these devices. You may want to start with the basics – email/calendar/IM – as Blackberry did in this space 10 years ago. Use this to generate the use cases & business scenario’s that will help you to be able to figure out some way in which you can get all this change funded.

Thanks for Reading, and good luck.

Innovation is not easy

A reminder that the opinions stated in this blog post are my own.

You may have seen the recent announcement from Google that they have ceased development of “Wave”.

Some have seen this as a failure on behalf of Google, or a bad misstep.

This article from Mashable.com is an example on the lighter side of the commentary.

I see it otherwise.

If a company is to truly innovate then it is bound to go into areas which are high risk – no risk, no reward – and as such the only “failure” will be the failure to learn from any experiments or projects that do not get into production.

I have no issues with Google’s approach as they attempt to innovate, and yes they will sometime do it in the full view of the public (& media) and yes the will sometimes have to call an end to the work. Not every company can afford to do this, but given Google’s current revenue per employee, stock price & profitability, who would want to argue with them about it ?

Google shouldn’t be criticised, they should be congratulated, because they have recognised that Wave is not viable. I expect that Google they will do a lessons learnt, include some good code & function in other projects & move on to spend their innovation $$’s elsewhere.

Thanks for reading