Business without boundaries
The idea of controlling things
at a distance has always been attractive to
mankind. But how can we tackle the mobile
business arena in today’s technological hotbed?
05/05/2001
Alun Lewis sifts his way through the crop of current
mobile data and business applications
A medium once considered as the sole preserve of the human voice
is now being recognised as one able to carry information, messages and
commands of all types. It’s also going to be an increasingly non-human world.
Forget the old BBC motto of ‘Nation shall speak peace unto nation’ - in the
mobile communications world of tomorrow it’s more accurately going to be a
case of ‘and Intelligent Agent shall interrogate Smart Device,’ without the
owner of either being aware that a transaction is actually taking place.
Although much of the effort underway is still focused on improving
mainly human ways of communicating – the continuing saga of universal/unified
messaging – there is a developing emphasis on automating communications between
non-human applications and processes. The end result inevitably affects humans
in some ways but, for most of the time, the activity takes place behind the
inscrutable grey plastic and LED screens of terminal devices.
What we’re starting to see is the next phase of a process of interconnection
that really began to take off in the late 1970s and early 1980s as islands of
manufacturing and office automation started to be linked up in real time. The
fashionable phrases of the time were ‘just in time manufacturing’ and ‘the fly
by wire company,’ promising benefits that ranged from minimised stockholdings
to ‘build to order’ principles being applied to traditional ‘build to sell’
products such as cars. The stage we’re embarking on at the moment is extending
that system further through wireless connectivity, delivering services and
products with a significant part of the value chain being enabled by mobile devices.
Paul Gladden, Senior Partner with Arthur Andersen’s Technology, Media
and Telecommunications practice, sees ‘wireless data’ in its broadest sense
as dealing with three main issues: “Firstly, there’s the basic factor of
extending commercial reach to customers wherever they are when it comes to
offering services and products. Secondly, there’s the potential that wireless
has to create and support entirely new business models in the way that the
Internet has done for companies like e-Bay. Finally, there’s its overall ability
to help manage highly distributed processes and shorten business cycle times –
such as equipping sales forces with automated order enquiry and entry tools to
complete transactions on the spot.”
One of the first applications to start to make it out of the enterprise space
and into more mainstream mobile services has been the ever popular concept of
Unified Messaging/Universal Communications (UM/UC) – increasingly being seen as
a service that could also hold great opportunities for the Application Service
Provider market. A recent report from Ovum, ‘Next Generation Messaging,’ positions
the market as finally moving from infancy towards adolescence for both business
and private users. It also highlights the large amounts of time that enterprise
workers spend in dealing with messages of different types and contrasts this with
the lack of real world take up that these services have had in the business world.
The reasons? The cost and effort involved in implementing these on a corporate basis.
As a result, Ovum believes that the emergence of ASPs is transforming the
prospects for enterprise targeted Unified Messaging/Universal Communications by
delivering the necessary functionality through a network-based service, either
as an alternative or as a complement to existing corporate messaging systems.
John Delaney, Senior Consultant at Ovum and one of the report’s authors, puts
this into the context of broader applications by stressing the importance of
integration, especially where different types of terminal and associated interfaces
are going to be involved.
“The cry ‘Integrate This’ is going to be the challenge over the next few years,
starting with UM/UC,” he says. “If service providers are going to be able to
generate increased revenues, they will need an inherently convergent - and ‘sticky’
- interface. The end result is that a UM/UC strategy inevitably leads to a portal strategy.”
ARPU
Ovum believes that by 2006, enterprise-targeted UM/UC services will generate
substantially more revenue per user than individual-oriented services, accounting
for around 43% of all direct UM/UC revenues, estimated by Ovum as reaching around
$13 billion by that time.
This is a picture well understood by messaging application suppliers Teamphone,
as Geoffrey Paterson, Managing Director, explains: “Almost since it was first mooted
as a general concept, UM was both overhyped and misunderstood. Too many suppliers
focused on trying to keep up with their perceived competitors rather than on
understanding the real world needs of their potential customers. Not enough people
were asking why particular solutions should be applied and that, combined with the
then major costs of implementation, meant that the overall tangible benefits got lost.”
A lot of these issues look like they’re going to remain with us as the scope of
applications deliverable over mobile devices continues to widen and what was one
single market increasingly becomes a series of interconnected niches. “People often
seem to think of these kinds of services as centered around – and demanding – high
technology tools,” comments Andersen’s Gladden. “Closely linked to this is the waiting
game that’s still being played out as the market waits for 2.5 and 3G carrier
technologies to become reliable and robust enough to support mission critical
business applications. What these ultimately add up to are cultural as opposed to
technological factors deciding whether mobile applications should be adopted by a company.”
“In evaluating the usefulness of particular types of mobile application it’s
vitally important to understand the overall context in which they will be used. To
take messaging as an example – this can’t be seen in isolation but it must be
considered as one component within a whole string of business processes. You’ve got
to be able to see the rationale behind the sending of particular messages. Is it an
enquiry, a browse, or the specific placement of an order that demands immediate action?
How much interaction is actually needed with centrally held systems or information?
What sort of processes can take place offline and what are the implications if a
connection goes down or the available bandwidth degrades? Getting clear definitions
for these sorts of parameters helps immeasurably in getting applications that bring
real business benefits. There may need to be a type of intelligent triage applied to
messages to ensure that truly vital information gets through.”
Flowthrough
Achieving efficient flowthrough of information is a concern now starting to
affect telecoms service providers themselves when it comes to managing the actual
processes of service creation, provision and assurance – as well as the increasingly
important issue of interconnection with other operators. The e-business world is all
too familiar with the type of company that has a wonderful customer Web site that
delivers orders and information to the business, but that requires re-keying of data
because of incompatibilities with core business systems.
Apart from the problems of deciding exactly where and how to implement applications
to support a wider business strategy, the addition of a distributed wireless environment
also brings with it the issue of how best to support the multiplicity of different
device platforms, standards and protocols that are currently flourishing. The buzzword
here is ‘device agnostic’ and a number of companies are already active in bridging
these divides.
One of them, mobile enterprise management company Mbrane, recently demonstrated
the operation of SAP on a smartphone over GPRS. Currently working closely with BT
Cellnet in the UK amongst others, Mbrane’s Touchpoint product is aimed at supporting
salesforces by enabling direct enquiries about stocks and allowing order entry.
Mbrane’s Simon Addis, Business Development Director, takes up the story: “While mobile
data has long been seen as some sort of executive toy, both operators and businesses
are now starting to appreciate the wider implications and advantages of what can be
achieved. Companies can extend the reach of their business systems out into the field
– that cuts latency throughout the whole order and fulfillment cycle. At Mbrane, we’re
focusing on the large corporate customer – from 500 or so users upwards – and positioning
ourselves as supporting convergence across a number of areas.”
“The crucial thing for businesses to understand about this type of mobile business
area is that they must take a holistic approach to the undertaking. The companies that
are really going to be the ones that benefit are not those that make their evaluations
purely in terms of product cost. Instead it’s a question of looking from a far broader
perspective at the return on investment that these sorts of systems can provide – both
in terms of cost savings against existing processes as well as longer term commercial
strategic issues to do with business development.”
“Any mobile application has to be sensitive to the uncertainties of the wireless
environment. That means understanding how best to connect legacy architectures and
systems through a radio interface that’s currently characterised by intermittent
connectivity, narrow bandwidth and asynchronicity. As an example of this, you have
to identify what particular applications actually require real time connectivity –
a great many can be run offline for some of the time, which naturally has big
implications for operating costs. Pragmatism has to rule! One recent development
that’s really going to help drive the market is the release of a new generation of
‘smart’ handsets from companies like Sagem and Siemens.”
Complementing this tack – and focusing heavily on supporting technology agnosticism
– is a relatively new company, Curious Networks. Founded by ex-Andersen Consulting
(now Accenture) employees, Curious Networks began by focusing on human interface
display and interaction issues, taking a user-centric approach to understand how
best to support this new environment. As David Cutler, one of the company’s founders
and now CEO, explains: “What we’ve tried to create with our approach is a ‘write once,
display anywhere’ ability. To handle the sort of multi-channel activity that’s
necessary for mobile applications we’ve developed MAXML – multi-channel access XML.
This is a patent-pending, XML-based language that’s intended to take the time and
difficulty out of writing code for both wireless and non-wireless Internet access
devices. Developers simply write in MAXML once and the application is instantly
accessible across all devices. This eliminates the need for developers to learn
all the numerous and emerging markup languages such as WML, HDML, Voice XML,
WAP and Palm’s. We’ve also just launched Continuum, our presentation server
package to support enterprise-wide deployment.”
“We’ve already got a number of users out there. One European bank is currently
using MAXML to develop a mortgage information and enquiry system while another company
is looking to support an outsourced/virtual concierge service with the technology.
The multiplicity of devices and the breadth of applications that are going to have
to be supported mean that it’s simply not good enough to take the brute force approach
and ‘smash’ a web page to extract content.”
And that’s really where some of the true magic of this new environment comes in –
giving users the power to transmute their commands, irrespective of whatever
particular medium or device they’re operating through. Without the approach taken
by companies like Mbrane and Curious, we’d all be consigned to our own small niches,
limited by device specificity and lacking the benefits that come from economy of
scale. Now there seems a real chance that we can let our systems do all the hard
work while we concentrate on actually doing the business.
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