Mobile 2.0 Is Ready for Business

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP WHITE PAPER

The Seven Laws of Mobile Enterprise Applications

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

MOBILE 2 0 2

MOBILE AND WIRELESS: NEW BUSINESS PARADIGMS 2

» Globalization and Wireless Adoption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

» Impact of Social and Cultural Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

MOBILE DEVICES: THE NEW PRIMARY COMPUTING ENDPOINT 3

THE SEVEN LAWS OF MOBILE ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS 4

» Law 1: Mobile Applications Must Be Presence Aware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

» Law 2: Mobile Applications Must Be Role Based and User Configurable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

» Law 3: Mobile Applications Must Be Device Independent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

» Law 4: Mobile Applications Must Interoperate with Other Mobile Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

» Law 5: Mobile Applications Must Not Require Changes to the Underlying Applications . . . . . . . . . 6

» Law 6: Mobile Applications Must Be Capable of Being Administered without Wireless Domain Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

» Law 7: Mobile Applications Must Create Real Value in Days without Programming . . . . . . . . . . . 7

THE SEVEN LAWS IN PERSPECTIVE 7

» What Mobile Devices Do Better than PCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

BEST PRACTICES FOR MOBILIZING BUSINESS APPLICATIONS 8

» Document Your Vision and Collect Baseline Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

» Make Mobility a Part of Everything You Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

» Collaborate with Network Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

» Less Is More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

» Learn from the Mobile Adoption Lifecycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

CONCLUSION 11

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INTRODUCTIONMany of history’s great innovations arrived too soon. Henry Ford’s Model T was a two-speed without a driver-side door that

couldn’t make it up a hill without a full tank of gas. Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone could only call one pre-designated

number, came with a single opening for both speaking and listening, and had no dial tone, requiring the caller to whistle for an

operator.

Similarly, mobile applications arrived, to great fanfare, before they were ready. We refer to this early period, around 1999 – 2007,

as Mobile 1.0. The promise of mobile applications was well understood long before Mobile 1.0, but when these apps first arrived,

they were no less cumbersome and incomplete than the Model T or telephone in the early twentieth century. They were slow,

simple, and designed for particular devices. In fact, most mobile apps were built for the Palm platform because it was the only

Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with significant market share — and all non-PDA devices, including cell phones, either didn’t

support external software or, if they did, had such limited memory that no real applications could be loaded anyway.

Most early applications were consumer-focused and performed basic tasks, such as tracking travel expenses, storing grocery

lists, and managing birthday reminders. These simple applications were available on simple devices, which most often had

no wireless connection. Devices that did have a wireless connection, such as the Palm VII or WAP-enabled cell phones, were

rendered all but unusable by slow, unreliable, and expensive data networks. Even the tech-savvy, early adopters received little

value because the community of wireless users was too small.

Businesses typically avoided mobile applications during the Mobile 1.0 period because they didn’t meet even the most basic

price-performance requirements for devices, networks, or applications. And when they did, the user experience was poor. As

with most early technology adoption lifecycles, the promise (or hype) of mobile apps created demand from both businesses and

consumers, but also caused frustration and disappointment when it became clear the gap between promise and reality was

significant.

After about a decade of dramatic wireless technology improvements and rapidly changing socio-cultural trends favoring an

increasingly mobile lifestyle — from Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and App Store to Google’s Android and Market — we’re now closer

than ever to fulfilling the promise of Mobile 1.0: an evolution we call Mobile 2.0.

CATEGORY MOBILE 1 0 MOBILE 2 0

Devices » Short battery life » Unstable OS » Many platforms

» Long battery life » Stable OS » Clear standards

Networks » Slow » Unreliable » Expensive » Limited coverage

» Fast » Reliable » Affordable » Ubiquitous coverage

Applications Optimized for device or network or backend Optimized for device and network and backend

Resources Many questions, few answers Blogs, newsgroups, events, case studies

User Priorities Mobilize tools Mobilize business

Table 1. Mobile 1.0 vs. Mobile 2.0

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MOBILE 2.0Mobile 2.0 has a distinguishing characteristic, which is the shift from PCs (either desktop or laptop) to mobile handheld devices

as our primary computing devices. With Mobile 2.0, PCs will be used only for computing tasks that can’t be performed on

handhelds. And mobile devices will be used more for data than for voice.

What are some of the indications that show that Mobile 2.0 is on the rise?

» There are more than five billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide. » In many countries, there are now more mobile devices than people. In Estonia and the United Arab Emirates, for example,

there are twice as many mobile phones as residents, according to the International Telecommunications Union.1 » Growth of data-equipped mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, exceeds feature phone sales by a factor of four to

one, according to most analysts. » Mobile telecom revenues will reach $1.1 trillion by 2015, with 40 percent of carrier revenue coming from data services.2

» As of 2011, 90 percent of the world’s population lives within wireless coverage.3

What is driving the continued transition from Mobile 1.0 to 2.0? Primarily, two forces:

1. New ways of doing business are emerging, giving competitive advantage to mobile employees.

2. The 1.0 technology-centric approach to mobile application design is yielding to the 2.0 user-centric approach.

The first force is covered in the next section, with a focus on IT service management organizations, followed by a discussion

around the second force. This paper concludes with best practices for mobilizing enterprise applications and highlights current

trends foreshadowing what’s ahead in Mobile 3.0.

MOBILE AND WIRELESS: NEW BUSINESS PARADIGMS In this age of mobile social media and dueling iPhone, Android, iPad, and BlackBerry media campaigns, few among us disagree

that phones are for more than just talking. Consider this: More than 250 million active users access Facebook through mobile

devices across 200 mobile operators in 60 countries.4

The power of wireless to catalyze groups and individuals to act, eliminate barriers to communication, and change behavior

is unprecedented. Many social, cultural, and geopolitical trends are increasing its ability to bridge physical and social spaces

every day.

GLOBALIZATION AND WIRELESS ADOPTION Consider how the following social and cultural trends are changing the way mobile technology influences and permeates our

lives:

According to U.S. government statistics, the global population is growing daily by about 200,000 people, or roughly the size of

Boise, Idaho. That is leading to the inevitable suburbanization of population centers, which leads to longer commutes and the

virtualization of the traditional office. Spending less time in the office and more time commuting means increased dependence

on mobile technology. In fact, laptops outsold PCs all the way back in 2005, and today more than 90 of the top 100 US-based

companies allow employees to telecommute. These trends will compound in the years ahead as reliable, cost-effective mobile

infrastructure reduces traditional barriers to geographic expansion for companies. According to Thomas Friedman’s The World

is Flat: “New wireless technologies … are the übersteroids that make us, and all the new forms of collaboration, mobile, so that

now we can manipulate, share, and shape our digital content from anywhere, with anyone.”5

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_penetration_rate

2 Soaring Mobile Data Revenue Makes Case for Managed Services,” billingworld.com, April 7, 2011

3 http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/20/infographic-a-look-at-the-size-and-shape-of-the-geosocial-universe-in-2011/

4 http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

5 Friedman, Thomas, The World Is Flat, A Brief History of the 21st Century, by Thomas Friedman, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006, page 195.

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IMPACT OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL TRENDSServers have been virtual for some time. Now

employees and their work tools are as well. What

does this mean for the future of IT? It is incumbent on

corporate support organizations to realign themselves

with the changing needs of the business. There was a

time when IT existed to maintain continuity and did so by

insisting on uniformity. In an era of public infrastructure

(such as Wi-Fi and WiMAX, home and remote workers,

and new mobile computing devices), uniformity is

out and IT must evolve to be as agile as the teams it

supports.

This poses a new challenge for developers of information

technology systems and processes. Computing

devices are no longer stationary and predictable. They

are sporadically connected to networks, have tiny

screens, and most importantly, are always on and

always physically close to users. That means the task

of designing applications is more complicated than

ever. But there are also new exciting opportunities to

make them more effective because the time and space

between the point where information resides and where

it is consumed is being reduced to nothing.

Enlightened system owners are embracing these

opportunities today. To truly optimize applications, they

should first be designed for use on mobile devices.

Whatever handhelds can’t support should then be made

available on PCs. This turns conventional software

wisdom on its ear, but it is a shift all developers must

make to be relevant in the decades to come.

This pattern isn’t new. During the Renaissance, scribes

were forced by Gutenberg’s printing press to reinvent

themselves. In the Industrial Revolution, Watt’s steam

engine forced farmers to do the same. More recently,

shifts to open source software and Software as a Service (SaaS) have reshaped traditional ideas about how

applications are developed and the traditional role of the software developer.

MOBILE DEVICES: THE NEW PRIMARY COMPUTING ENDPOINT With these tectonic shifts happening, and with all indications pointing toward increasing dependence on mobile

communication, it is reasonable to expect that any software application, Web-based or otherwise, will soon

be available on all handheld devices. However, while the consumer market has just about reached this point,

enterprise mobility is still evolving. Two things are holding back widespread adoption:

1. Not all applications designed for PCs will fit on tiny handheld screens.

2. Even if they did, many of them are too cumbersome to use.

In fact, nearly every business application that has been mobilized to date, with the exception of productivity tools,

has been summarily relegated to the technology waste heap for just those reasons.

Given how PC-based applications were developed, it would be unreasonable to have expected anything different.

Like the adage about “everything looks like a nail when all you have is a hammer,” PC developers naturally built

THE MOBILE DATA EVOLUTION

1999-2001 » Mainly voice-only devices are available » Palm VII and Handspring disappoint early adopters » Alphabet soup of second-tier networks exist » Carriers sell data by KB » WAP disillusions users

2002—2004 » BlackBerry and Treo consolidate smartphone

market » 2.5G and 3G networks are available » Mobile carriers offer fixed-price data plans » Wireless email market surges » J2ME dominates enterprise data platform

2005-2009 » Smartphones overtake pagers and feature phones

in the enterprise » High-speed data networks differentiate carriers » SMS search and GPS mapping introduce users to

mobile data » Major analyst firms initiate coverage of mobile

application makers » Enterprise IT budgets now include both mobile voice

and data expenses

2010-2012 » Applications are differentiated by the strength of

their mobile solutions » Mobility is the primary mode for application usage » Mobile solutions replace paper-based processes » Data-ready mobile devices enter businesses » Handsets and network services are commoditized » Market hype peaks

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mobile apps with PC design principles and user behavior in mind. That is obviously the wrong approach, and it

failed. It’s analogous to the development of early telephones in the first decade of the twentieth century. They

had no keypads and only one speaker because they were designed by newspaper publishers to allow users to

hear news stories. It was pioneers, such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, who developed the

predecessors to the phones we use today.

The right approach follows this basic fundamental principle: good mobile applications are better than their

PC counterparts because they are context sensitive, aware of who is using them, and organized so the most

essential features are the most accessible – that is, they focus on what is gained rather than what is lost. Here

is an overview of the tenets of effective mobile software design, collectively the Seven Laws of Mobile

Enterprise Applications.

THE SEVEN LAWS OF MOBILE ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS

LAW 1: MOBILE APPLICATIONS MUST BE PRESENCE AWARE Unlike the simple, flat, tethered PC experience, mobile devices are always at your side and participate, actively or

passively, in all your activities. They are always connected to the Internet, store vital details about you, including

your schedule and personal network, and have surprising amounts of idle computing power. Mobile devices

become smarter than PCs when that information is used in the context of where you are and what you’re doing.

For example, by understanding what issues you’re currently working and how you prioritize them, they can:

» Push specific, relevant alerts to you — status updates, knowledge-base entries, and related issues » Recommend nearby team members who are available to assist you » Recommend and retrieve information from other applications, such as a configuration management

database (CMDB) or ERP system, regardless of whether or not they were pre-configured for wireless viewing » Hide or show appropriate fields so you only download what you need and only see what matters » Recommend nearby resources, including depots and warehouses, with the part you need or best times for

service work based on location and facility schedules » Optimize your route based on what you need to accomplish and any possible constraints, such as hours of

operation and traffic or weather delays

LAW 2: MOBILE APPLICATIONS MUST BE ROLE BASED AND USER CONFIGURABLE Over the years, enterprise software applications, including IT service management systems, have become

bloated with unnecessary features and now invariably follow the 90-10 rule: 90 percent of users rely on 10

percent of the features. This unfortunate reality has had limited impact on PC application usage because it is

relatively easy for users to ignore the 90 percent of an application they don’t need. Mobile applications, however,

don’t work that way. In fact, if an application includes more than the required 10 percent of the features that

people use on a handheld, the entire app becomes 100 percent useless because too much data can have a

negative impact on application performance. Any feature that is not needed, therefore, deters the usage of

a mobile device.

Making mobile applications role based and user configurable is essential, but difficult. Why? The 10 percent

needed by each user is different and often based on the contextual information — time of day, day of week,

location, or priorities — as described earlier. The wrong way to solve the 10-percent problem is to do what PC

application owners do: find a one-size-fits-all configuration or “custom configure” the application for each group

and role. The right way is to give control of the mobile application to end users. Only they know exactly what they

need and exactly how it should be formatted. All other solutions are untenable. This approach, combined with

elements of machine learning to recommend optimal configurations, is the Holy Grail of mobile computing. The

executive’s business application, for example, must consist only of the escalations, approvals, and dashboards

he or she needs, while the problem coordinator’s app should receive only relevant problem summaries, alerts,

and skill-based routing details. Most importantly, configuring and deploying role-based applications should not

require incremental time or resources, regardless of how many end users or devices are supported.

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Figure 1. Simple apps can be mobilized without regard to roles. Enterprise apps, alas, must be configurable by users for users, each of whom need a unique combination of workflow, data, features, and settings.

LAW 3: MOBILE APPLICATIONS MUST BE DEVICE INDEPENDENTDevice operating systems, features, and formats continue to proliferate as handhelds take on increasingly

specialized functions. For example, despite the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, media-optimized

devices often provide the poorest email solutions, and entertainment-optimized devices are often the heaviest

and have the weakest battery life. This problem is compounded in business settings where CIOs are notoriously

reluctant, and often unable, to commit to a single device model company-wide.

Law 3 addresses this: mobile applications must adapt to mobile devices — not the other way around. In Mobile

1.0, vendors designed solutions for particular hardware, but most of them failed.

Today’s enterprise users demand support for the devices they already own, which almost always means

consistent support for multiple mobile operating systems and models is a requirement. In reality, most

corporate device strategies involve three or four device types and one or two carriers. A common scenario

in IT organizations is that mid-level and senior managers use iPad, iPhone, or BlackBerry devices; field techs

carry BlackBerry or “ruggedized” Windows devices; and help-desk analysts and problem coordinators have

BlackBerry or Android smartphones. Today, these are a combination of corporate-issue and employee-owned

devices, with the mix increasingly shifting toward employee-owned devices with network access and business

apps supported by corporate IT.

Mobile applications designed to support the Mobile 2.0 enterprise must support this range of devices without

any per-device configuration. The right way to do this is for the Mobile Gateway to store profiles for each device

and the client-side application to automatically access them. That way, new device profiles can be added to

allow only optimized content to be delivered — without any need to change the underlying application or

mobile settings.

LAW 4: MOBILE APPLICATIONS MUST INTEROPERATE WITH OTHER MOBILE APPLICATIONS The Zen philosophical riddle about the sound of one hand clapping loosely parallels the need for mobile

applications to interoperate. One hand alone implies the sound two clapping together would make. But while

intent exists, it is useless without the complement of a second hand. Add many more hands clapping together

and you get thunderous applause.

Mobile Apps

PC Apps

NEED FOR ROLE-BASED APPS

Role-Based Configuration

App

licat

ion

Com

plex

ity

6

So it is with mobile applications. They are powerful alone but only make noise together. For example, integrate

a mobile self-service portal with incident and change management, and everything from work orders to facility

requests to network outages can be triaged, diagnosed, and resolved remotely. Embed a simple asset look-up

feature in a standard trouble ticket, and the trouble ticket becomes a historical account of all issues related to that

asset. Add team calendaring to a group reassignment, and the request becomes actionable because it will only

be delivered to on-call users.

This ability to interoperate is almost as integral a part of the mobile experience as the device itself. To be effective,

it must be no more difficult to integrate multiple applications than it is to mobilize an individual application.

LAW 5: MOBILE APPLICATIONS MUST NOT REQUIRE CHANGES TO THE UNDERLYING APPLICATIONS The Mobile 2.0 experience is predicated on three essential elements:

1. Simplicity – Ease of use

2. Ubiquity – Anywhere, anytime access

3. Continuity – Business processes must be maintained, if not enhanced

Continuity is critical because the most basic design goal is to extend existing applications to existing devices

using existing business processes. It is not acceptable for mobile applications to dictate how businesses operate.

In fact, the opposite must be true.

Take the example of the IT outsourcer that supports hundreds of field agents for a large government agency and

needed a mobile incident management app for technicians. The outsourcer had spent years developing and refining

workflow, ticket routing, approvals, escalations, and SLAs in the underlying IT service management system.

A top priority was making sure the firm didn’t need to recreate or redesign business rules to accommodate the

mobile solution. This was an explicit requirement. As a result, the outsourcer now has a system that not only is fully

integrated with the existing IT service management application but also improves first-call resolution rate, reduces

network downtime, and enables tighter SLAs for critical issues.

Before deploying your mobile solution, consider the elements of your existing workflow that should and should

not change, and base your analysis on user behaviors, not on the capabilities of the mobile solution. Document

this and refer to it when developing your implementation plan. Having a plan that preserves the integrity of

existing workflow and selecting a mobile solution capable of adhering to the plan is the surest way to guarantee

user adoption and minimize the risk of project-related cost overruns.

LAW 6: MOBILE APPLICATIONS MUST BE CAPABLE OF BEING ADMINISTERED WITHOUT WIRELESS DOMAIN EXPERTISEA key benefit of implementing a mobile solution is that the business remains buffered from the complexities of

wireless security, data transmission, billing, and device management. This is increasingly critical as devices,

networks, and user requirements proliferate. We are already faced with a staggering set of choices when doing

simple tasks, such as activating phones, selecting service plans, and procuring and provisioning new devices.

Those will continue to be complicated decisions, but they’ll pale in comparison to mobile application-related

decisions. Mobile application design decisions spawn a complex set of decision trees — for example, alerting

paths should be optimized by schedules, incident priority, and network bandwidth. For these reasons, effective

mobile applications isolate users from the complexities of mobility. The same resources that administer PC

applications must be able to also administer their mobile equivalents.

A simple illustration shows the trend we’re all experiencing firsthand: today, a Google search for “mobile

enterprise software” returns more than 90 million results. In 2009, it returned a fraction of that amount. By 2012,

it will likely return significantly more than it does today. Expect not just more mobile applications, but also more

complicated apps accessed by increasingly powerful devices. And expect to support them with the same or fewer

resources than you have today.

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LAW 7: MOBILE APPLICATIONS MUST CREATE REAL VALUE IN DAYS WITHOUT PROGRAMMINGThe final law of good mobile software design is perhaps the most obvious and least practiced: mobilizing 10

percent of an existing application should take no more than 10 percent of the time it took to configure the parent

app. Mobile applications must add by subtraction, and part of adding is making sure what is extracted can be

used without significant rework. For example, large menus should not need to be recreated for handhelds —

regardless of their size. Similarly, interconnected features, such as submitter names (which display employee

details) or problem types (which show category and item fields), should operate on handhelds as they do on

PCs. That doesn’t necessarily mean all menu items should be downloaded or that all desktop workflow must

fire offline. What it means is the mobile design tool should make it easy to preserve desktop functionality while

optimizing it for mobile constraints.

Deconstructing and rebuilding applications take time, which was already invested in the design of the original

application. It certainly isn’t logical that paring down an application would require it to first be expanded or

enhanced. To avoid unnecessary rework, only deploy mobile solutions that are tightly integrated with underlying

applications and have robust development environments, role-based configuration features, and broad

device support.

THE SEVEN LAWS IN PERSPECTIVESoftware that obeys these laws restores the focus of the mobile employee on what matters — creating

business value — and shifts it away from applications, devices, and configuration. That is at the core of how

and why mobile applications are powerful in ways PC applications never have or can be. They align tools with

existing, inherently mobile business process. They deliver on the promise of user-centric, rather than tool-

centric, computing.

In so doing, they liberate not just application developers and IT organizations but everyone they support as well.

Industry analysts claim more than half of all corporate employees are mobile, or away from a desk at least half

of the time. That means greater productivity, but also more time for family and lifestyles. Consistent with this

trend, analysts report that mobilizing corporate applications is one of the top three IT priorities in 2011. This

dramatic shift in work behavior will only be made possible by new, enlightened approaches to mobile

software design.

WHAT MOBILE DEVICES DO BETTER THAN PCSHandhelds do certain things better than PCs, and when those are isolated and optimized, the handheld itself

becomes a better computing device than the PC. The PC experience, by its nature, is flat. It is you, the machine,

and a relatively passive network. On the contrary, the mobile experience has depth. It is you, your surroundings,

what you’re doing, the person you are interacting with, where you’re going, and where you’ve been. Plus this

experience provides all of the sensory inputs that inform your ability to act on those things in real time.

Mobile applications that comply with the seven laws feed off this contextual information. They assimilate data

from your calendar, current position, social grid, and priority list to empower you with information needed to

make good decisions fast. They integrate different media, such as video, voice, and text, with intelligent alerting,

signature and photo capture, GPS mapping, receipt printing, and RFID or barcode scanning to create better tools

than you currently have at your desk and make them available when and where you need them most. What this

means for the mobile enterprise is less downtime because employees will finally be everywhere at once, ready

to collaborate and make better decisions faster.

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BEST PRACTICES FOR MOBILIZING BUSINESS APPLICATIONSThis paper has discussed mobility in the context of historical, social, and cultural trends. It also has explored the

factors that will drive mainstream adoption of mobile applications, including the seven laws. However, although

context and theory are useful, what will ultimately help you is knowing what to do in practice. Here are five field-

tested tips for deploying mobile solutions that can deliver real business value.

DOCUMENT YOUR VISION AND COLLECT BASELINE METRICSWhy it matters

This may be the first non-email mobile solution your organization has deployed, so anticipate resistance and

prepare by determining your objectives early and revisiting them often. Are you trying to increase your SLA hit

rate? Improve response time? Replace laptops with smartphones? Reduce travel time?

Define the drivers and make sure they relate to established business objectives. For example, if you are trying

to increase the first-call resolution rate for urgent issues by 30 percent in the first 90 days to reduce downtime

to fewer than 30 minutes per month, you must be prepared to measure the impact of your solution with detailed

“before” and “after” metrics.

Mobile technology is cool, but it’s the projects driven by technology that fail. Be ready with your list of objectives

and vision statement.

Ask yourself

» What is the problem you are trying to solve? » Why do you need a mobile solution? Are there better ways to solve this problem? » Who will your project benefit? » How will life be better afterward?

MAKE MOBILITY A PART OF EVERYTHING YOU DOWhy it matters

When you get it right, mobility will become a natural part of every business application you design. It will be

indistinguishable from the rest of the project and intertwined so tightly it becomes inseparable. To get there,

begin by considering how your first mobile solution will improve existing business processes or enable new

ones. The more tightly you integrate mobile applications with the business, the more internal support and

funding you’ll receive, and the shorter the adoption cycle will be. For example, your solution may let you:

» Commit to tighter acknowledgement SLAs » Reduce escalation time for critical issues » Require customers to fill out surveys or confirm resolution status before tickets are closed via signature

capture » Give business users mobile access to service catalogs or knowledge bases

All of these take existing processes and make them better through the addition of wireless technology.

Remember this: products don’t solve problems, people using them do.

Ask yourself

» When are the business users disadvantaged by being disconnected from systems and each other? » Where else can mobility help your organization after the first application is successful?

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COLLABORATE WITH NETWORK SECURITYWhy it matters

Corporate data historically resided exclusively behind the firewall. Along came VPNs, which security teams

slowly learned to accept. Now they are slowly warming up to remotely hosted applications and Software as

a Service (SaaS). When properly configured, these new access methods don’t necessarily pose additional

security risks. Even so, they were initially viewed with skepticism because they were new and unfamiliar.

Wireless fits squarely in that category. Unknown devices accessing corporate data over unknown networks

through unknown entry points is more stressful. However, if you proactively engage security process owners,

it doesn’t have to be. Make sure you know how new devices and servers are certified for network access. You

must understand approval channels and normal approval cycle times. You must know what configuration

settings have been approved on mobile devices and servers. Armed with answers, you will find the security

team is not only a willing participant in the project but an advocate. After all, you’re helping eliminate many

malicious PCs from the network.

Ask yourself

» What security threats, real or perceived, does the application pose? » What other mobile applications are used today and how have they affected security? » How can the security team be proactively engaged in the project?

LESS IS MOREWhy it matters

You may be tempted to overwhelm users with new features. Don’t. Begin with the most basic, fundamental

feature, such as closing trouble tickets or reassigning them. Then develop a phased rollout plan. Give users the

opportunity to master the first critical behavior before adding new ones. When the first one is working, they will

request additional ones, and you’ll be ready for them.

Most businesses make the mistake of assuming users need all or most of the features they use at desktops.

Don’t start from the PC and work backward. Always start with mobile behaviors and work forward. Mobile

behaviors are the natural behaviors of remote workers. The natural mobile behavior would be to roam the area

he or she is designated, access information and tools, and take action from the road, instead of the from the

office.

Ask yourself

» What is the one feature you can’t live without? » Once you have it, what will you need next? » How will you gather feedback to prioritize the order new features are deployed?

LEARN FROM THE MOBILE ADOPTION LIFECYCLEWhy it matters

Invariably, your users’ attitudes toward mobile applications will improve over time, but expect some resistance

to change. Mobile applications give management an increased ability to monitor their activities. Ordinarily,

that is a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, the wireless adoption cycle has a happy ending. Your applications will

demonstrate how productive users are and, once they adapt to new behaviors, will liberate them.

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Figure 2. The mobile adoption lifecycle

In Stage One, users are reluctant and merely observe, perhaps skeptically, what is being proposed. By Stage

Two, they have accepted, if not embraced, the new behaviors and are open to learning how they’ll help and

hinder. The third stage is when power users emerge and distance themselves from everyone else. The rest of

the pack is committed to the success of the project and realizes they can benefit personally by investing more

time learning and doing. By Stage Four, all but the slowest learners have achieved mastery. The most

gratifying aspect of Stage Four is that your users now are advocates who will shepherd new users through

the adoption lifecycle.

Ask yourself

» Who will be your power users? How can you involve them early in the project? » Who will be your laggards? How can you mitigate their impact? » How can you get everyone from Stage One to Stage Four as quickly as possible?

New app deployed

Usageincreases

Advocatesemerge

Investmentincreases

Mobile appentrenched

Mobile appreplaces PC

Adoption Lifecycle

1 1

CONCLUSIONProgressive companies are applying the seven laws today to give mobile employees a competitive advantage.

Take the national grocery store chain that mobilized network management, knowledge management, help desk, and inventory

management applications for smartphones with role-based views and dashboards. They, of course, didn’t have the whole solution

ready on day one, but by being methodical, following a disciplined process of gathering requirements and feedback, setting user

expectations, and rigorously applying the seven laws, they got there sooner than expected.

These mobile applications empower everyone at the retailer — from CIOs to managers and field technicians — with real-time,

holistic views of issues affecting IT. After one year, they measured cost savings of $1.6 million by reducing average resolution time

by 15 minutes per issue across 180,000 issues and using that productivity dividend to eliminate backlog and perform preventive

maintenance tasks.

Companies are getting real value from mobility today without prior domain knowledge or significant incremental expense.

The common theme across the most successful projects is they let business needs rather than technology drive design and

implementation — and they obey the seven laws. The real value of Mobile 2.0 is that the rest of us can now deploy powerful

applications that a few years back were only available to mobile businesses, such as UPS or FedEx.

Mobile is a part of the fabric of today’s global society. It shapes everything from politics to international aid. It is the modern-day

equivalent of electricity. We rely on it without considering how electrons flow or how cells of towers and base stations connect.

Mobility will continue to make the world flatter and smaller as infrastructure and applications improve. We’ll quickly evolve past

Mobile 2.0, and what Mobile 3.0 holds in store is, without hyperbole, as big and bold as the imagination.

» Expect wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that monitor and transmit information about our environment. Airplanes will be

automatically guided to avoid severe weather, and solar panels will adjust automatically to the angle best suited for energy

absorption. » Expect to be always on — and safer as a result. WiMAX and municipal Wi-Fi networks will make live wireless video feeds of

your children and home a click away. Responsibility for crime prevention will devolve from officers to the world’s most efficient

crime-fighting team — ordinary citizens with mobile image capture technology. » Expect smart mobile applications that adapt to your behavior. They’ll route and prioritize messages based on your schedule

and location and push information to you only when you need it. They will be less an extension of your PC and more an

extension of your brain. This outsourcing of the data retrieval function we perform worst will ultimately liberate us to do the

cognitive processing we perform best.

Most of all, expect to be continuously amazed by the reach and impact of mobile technology.

For more information about mobile technology, visit www.bmc.com/mobility

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