Arming the mobile work force

From devices to UC to BI, Brian J Dooley, looks at how companies are beginning to pay more attention to the ever-increasing significance of mobility in New Zealand.

By Brian J Dooley, Auckland | Thursday, 20 October 2011
Mobility is one of the fastest developing areas in IT and telecommunications as smarter smartphones and emerging tablets converge with the cloud to create new visions of application deployment and communications. For resellers, this is an important opportunity to re-imagine the future. Mobility is becoming important, and it will have an effect across infrastructure, devices and applications (see my book-length report, The Definitive Analysis of Broadband Wireless Networks: WiMax, WiFi, LTE, and 4G Infrastructure, by Brian J. Dooley, MindCommerce, October 2011). In New Zealand, companies are beginning to pay more attention to this sector, and it will be an essential part of emerging enterprise technology.

Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) is responsible for popular devices that began with the introduction of the first BlackBerry solution in 1999. Most recently, RIM has launched the BlackBerry Torch 9800 and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in the New Zealand market.

“We have seen a lot of excitement in the New Zealand market following the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in August,” says RIM ANZ managing director Adele Beachley. ”We have seen great uptake by both consumer and enterprise users.”

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 combines the familiar keyboard with a full touch screen and the BlackBerry 6 operating system. The PlayBook is a multitasking tablet fuelled by a 1 GHz dual-core processor and an operating system which supports true symmetric multiprocessing. The PlayBook links with BlackBerry smartphones over Bluetooth.

“Globally, RIM has launched some exciting new smartphones including the BlackBerry Bold 9900 which will be coming soon to the New Zealand market,” says Beachley. ”The BlackBerry Bold 9900 is the next evolution of the BlackBerry Bold; it is a sleeker, slimmer take of the design, paired with best-in-class security, communications and business applications. The BlackBerry Bold 9900 also features the latest BlackBerry 7 operating system.”

BlackBerry 7, the latest RIM smartphone operating system features a number of advancements and new technologies reflecting the evolution of how mobile devices are being used. It is designed to deliver a faster and easier communication, multimedia and productivity experience for BlackBerry smartphone users. BlackBerry 7 allows users to connect in new ways through the use of augmented reality (AR), near field communication (NFC) and HD video recording. “This creates exciting opportunities for app developers, allowing them to offer apps with increased functionality and better user experience,” says Beachley. “The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet features an operating system built upon the reliable, secure and robust QNX Neutrino microkernel architecture. RIM has also launched two optional ‘app players’ for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet that provide an application run-time environment for BlackBerry Java apps and Android v2.3 apps.”

There are more than 40,000 apps to choose from in BlackBerry App World, and new ones added every day.

RIM enables companies to manage their mobile devices using BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). BES is designed for organisations that have an on-premise email server and require IT management. It provides end users with wireless access to business applications and advanced smartphone functionality. It also permits deployment and managing of applications, updates and setting control from a centralised location. Businesses can also use BlackBerry Management Centre which is a free, web-based service that provides a simple, more efficient way to manage and protect BlackBerry smartphones remotely.

“RIM continues to see strength in the New Zealand market and is excited to show its support,” says Beachley. “We are the official sponsor, and BlackBerry is the official handheld mobile device, of Rugby World Cup 2011. Our Blackberry smartphones and...apps allow RWC 2011 officials, referees and fans worldwide to communicate instantly and stay up to date with the World Cup games.”

RIM has provided rugby’s showcase tournament with the latest BlackBerry smartphone devices, as well as the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, to enhance operations by ensuring that the tournament and its fans remain connected. Rugby fans can also stay up to date with all the latest live match scores, video highlights and latest news through the delivery of a sophisticated, free-to-download official RWC app for BlackBerry users.

Among upcoming mobile software trends, one of the most important is toward truly portable business intelligence (BI). Christchurch-based Jade Software is pursuing this trend with its launch of JOOB Mobile earlier this year. Jade designs and develops next generation applications and builds high-performance data management technology. “JOOB Mobile is a mobile integration platform that enables businesses to leverage existing systems and connect them quickly, simply and securely to any mobile device,” says managing director Craig Richardson. “At its international launch at Microsoft’s Tech Ed North America the platform was nominated for best in show. Mobile integration platforms are becoming much more commonplace as businesses look to set up a framework to handle security, management and connection of business systems out to consumers and business users on their mobiles.”

The once separate areas of mobile device management, consumer applications and enterprise specific apps are merging to a one platform model, according to Richardson. “We’re also seeing a large push towards advanced analytics and operational intelligence techniques to better understand and predict user behaviour,” he says. “None of the algorithms and techniques involved in advanced analytics and operational intelligence are entirely new. However, businesses now have the ability to better understand their users and consumers by gathering data like geo-location from smartphones. The combination of this valuable data with advanced intelligence techniques results in insight previously not possible. It’s an area we are investing heavily in with our JOOB Intelligence product.”

Jade’s platform supports Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7 natively, as well as having HTML5 capability. “The availability of cheaper Android handsets will put more smartphones in the hands of more employees and customers making it very hard for business to postpone full mobilisation,” says Richardson. “At the same time, iOS continually comes out as the platform of choice for the exec team, offering the best overall user experience. Windows Phone 7 and the upcoming Mango update have proven to be very easy to develop for and can enable businesses to get applications to market fast.”

In the mobile development space, Richardson sees the development of targeted “mash ups” of information as forming the new killer app. “We are also seeing a movement, in part fuelled by the trend towards BYOT, toward managing the app rather than the phone itself. We’ve placed heavy emphasis on making sure our platform has enterprise grade security throughout, building features such as a kill switch on our platform to shut down the app entirely, leaving the phone alone.”

The new range of processing power and screen size available with today’s devices is creating the possibility for a revolution in communications. Communications solutions developer Polycom is actively pursuing opportunities in this area. “When you consider a proliferation of mobile devices, availability of high speed wireless networks, and end user demand for more compelling communications, we think that the time has come for significant growth of a ‘mobile visual society’,” says Polycom ANZ director of unified communications, James Brennan. “As a leader in standards-based unified communications, Polycom is poised to be at the forefront of this sector.”

For years, Polycom has had software clients designed for laptop PCs that allow mobile workers to connect while on the road. Later this year, the company is launching the next wave of mobile video applications for tablet devices, including Apple and Android. The new applications will allow mobile users to experience high quality, standards-based video communication in a form that can be integrated with video conferencing systems deployed worldwide.

“While we currently work with the Apple and Android devices that are pervasive in the market today, we are also very excited about upcoming devices based on the latest Microsoft Windows Mobile software,” says Brennan.

In a recent Frost & Sullivan study on the unified communications market in New Zealand (August 2011), it was found that 30 percent of organisations were looking to deploy or trial a tablet device in the next 12 months.

“The adoption and usage of these devices provides a perfect platform for us to develop compelling best-of-breed unified communications applications,” says Brennan. “The computational power, screen resolution and camera quality are making these devices excellent platforms for such applications. Additionally with higher quality 3G and 4G networks, the bandwidth and network quality can support high quality, reliable video. Enterprise grade open standards will also be a key driver of these solutions. Open standards allow truly ubiquitous communication to any user on any device. The work being done by the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) will help drive the development and adoption of standards that will make video as simple as a phone call.”

Polycom supports its mobile applications through a cloud-based system called the Polycom RealPresence platform. The platform provides the software infrastructure for service providers and enterprise to enable highly scalable, manageable deployments of mobile video. It provides core services such as multipoint conferencing, directory services, recording, video on demand, and other services that allow organisations to build targeted and highly differentiated services around mobile video.

“In the future, we will see higher power tablets, camera improvements (especially in front facing cameras) making it easier for video conferencing and Windows Mobile devices,” says Brennan. “Also important is the ability to run video integrated UC clients on more and more portable PCs; Windows Phone 7 and 8 powered tablet computers will start to bridge the gap between the portability of a tablet and the usability of a laptop and we expect to see more options in this space in the coming year.”

As the usage of mobility devices expands, and video continues to proliferate, Brennan sees the next phase of development as deployment of specialised mobile video applications. “The growth of mobile devices will spur the demand for infrastructure platforms and services to support them,” he says. “ The money will not just be in the end devices or the client software. It will be in the cloud services that support them. If a reseller wants to work in deeper parts of the video arena that will hold strong against the reduction in margins due to end point commoditisation, then they should up skill in infrastructure as well.”

For resellers, education and training is crucial, and this ranges from product and marketing training to focused training related to key vertical markets. Collaboration among partners is also critical to ensure they can sell enterprise customers complete Unified Communications solutions that include mobility within their architecture.

“Mobility in New Zealand is stronger than ever,” says Brennan. “We have for a long time had more mobile phones than people and we are now moving into a world where there is an app for everything. This integrated future will see an increase in demand for smarter and better phones with Unified Communications on mobile devices, moving from a very functional consumer apps on to a core business application driven by vendors such as Polycom, Broadsoft and Microsoft that will supersede the current methods of communication.”