October 27th, 2009

Why mobility will - and does already - matter to IT

Posted by Chris Silva @ 8:56 am

Categories: Enterprise mobility

Tags: Mobile, Network, Information Technology, Mobility, Advertising & Promotion, Marketing, Chris Silva

Here at Forrester, we spend a good deal of time talking about the future of the mobile enterprise. Whether that’s an emerging standard for a faster, more capable mobile network or a future of all-out mobile connectivity with applications and devices ready to tap into it.

The fact is, while much talk about mobile has a tone of “impending trend” to it, there are currently many mobility initiatives afoot in your organization, some of which IT knows about, some which it may not. So, as it turns out, while mobile seems to be a lot of futurespeak, it turns out it does actually matter to CIOs, and has been highlighted in Forrester’s recent “The Top 15 Technology Trends EA Should Watch” report.

When Forrester thinks about mobility, it splits into three categories:

• Mobile infrastructure — The networks and services that devices tap into, users rely on and mobile applications rely on to function.
• Mobile devices — From laptops and netbooks to iPhones, BlackBerries, and other smartphones, these are the devices hosting those mobile applications and tapping into that mobile infrastructure.
• Mobile applications — What use is a capable, highly-connected device if users can’t use a portable or mobile version of an application on the device?

According to the “Top 15…” report, all three areas: mobile networks gaining in power, mobile devices strengthening and mobile apps going mobile each represent an area of high business impact. The upside of arming your users with the combination of these three technology elements can reap great rewards in productivity, user satisfaction and business efficiency.

Why watch these areas of technology development so closely, then? While mobile devices and networks gaining in capacity and capability is more of an organic trend, reflected by its “medium” label in the “newness” category, understanding which applications will make the best use of these devices, and offer users the best potential for more flexible, efficient workstyles is something many organizations Forrester speaks to are still trying to figure out, hence the “very high” ranking in newness?

What to do, then? Take on the least “new” technologies into consideration first and create a strategy around that platform decision.

Step one, understand what the network and device mix is shaping up to be in your organization. As one example; are you focused exclusively on external network use and are a BlackBerry shop? Explore how external carrier-owned networks can extend users’ connectivity and establish a device migration timeline to take into account RIM’s newest BlackBerry platforms and when and how they’ll enter your environment, how they’ll be managed and secured. Step two, once this is in place, work with application development teams to ensure the capabilities of both the devices and networks that your organization is standardizing on are taken into account when developing mobile applications or evaluating mobile platform vendors.

Thinking about mobile as not just a “now” technology, but taking into account networks, devices, and software as one connected ecosystem will ensure an investment in one of the three, key areas of mobility does not adversely affect the others. After all, successful implementations of technology will allow it to change business for better, not for worse. See the list of recommendations for IT leaders in our Top 15 technology report here.

So next time you’re on a plane, or simply logging into your VPN from the local coffee shop, take note of the experience; is this the way your entire organization should be served in the event of a disaster?

October 8th, 2009

The state of US workforce technology adoption

Posted by Ted Schadler @ 7:54 am

Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise mobility, Information Workplace

Tags: Team, Collaboration, Smart Phone, Information Worker, Tool, Workforce, Gen-Y Employee, Recruitment & Selection, Workforce Management, Payroll Solutions

Did you know that among US information workers that:

• 35% use laptops and 76% use desktop computers?
• Only 11% use smartphones?
• 57% are optimistic about technology, but 43% are pessimistic?

We know because we surveyed 2,001 US information workers that use computers in their jobs at firms with 100 or more employees. Here are a few highlights from a report we published today [available to Forrester clients]:

• Most applications are not widely adopted. Email, word processing, Web browsers, and spreadsheets are the top four applications. But even in those apps, the level of involvement or expertise varies widely — while 60% of employees use word processing daily, only 42% actually create documents. Most other applications are used by only a minority of iWorkers.

• There is pent up demand for smartphones. Only one in 10 information workers has a smartphone for work, but one in three agrees that they use a personal mobile phone for work purposes. Twenty-one percent of iWorkers would like to get email outside of work, and 15% would like email on a smartphone. Any way you slice it, this means that there is pent-up demand for smartphones at work.

• Collaboration tools are stalled out, leaving email to reign supreme. Collaboration tools are important for people on a team, particularly if that team is distributed across many locations. But the tools are not widely adopted. For example, only one in four iWorkers uses Web conferencing, and one in five uses team sites. That leaves email with 87% adoption as the default collaboration tool for most people.

• Gen Y employees are getting squashed at work. These younger workers behave very differently from others outside of work, but they are not so different in how they use technology in their jobs. Sixty percent of these 18- to 29-year-olds use social networking at home, but only 13% use it for work — the same percentage as Gen X employees ages 30 to 43.

This data will help Information & Knowledge Management and other IT professionals:

• Improve your negotiating position by using data to drive license discussions. By knowing exactly which applications the workforce is using today and the frequency of use (read: importance) of each application, sourcing and vendor management professionals can bring hard data to the negotiating table.

• Practice lean provisioning, making decisions based on workforce research. By tailoring the workforce technology tool kit to the specific needs of each information worker segment, infrastructure and operations professionals will improve adoption, activity, satisfaction, and productivity. And with tough decisions around desktop virtualization, mobility, and access, quantitative analysis is the right foundation.

• Identify gaps in productivity and barriers to success. CIOs have plenty of scars from the failure of previous technology investments to thrill and delight the workforce. By asking workers what they truly need or why they don’t think they need a new technology, this benchmark will lay the groundwork to prevent future failures.

• Use data to help with tough architecture decisions. “Mobilize every application” is a mantra that rings ever louder in the halls of many IT shops. For an enterprise architect, it’s important to have data to know who’s working at home, who’s working away from his desk, who’s collaborating with customers from a customer site, and what each of those groups needs from technology.

• Talk to business sponsors in the language of metrics. In presenting data on what different groups of information workers need and get from technology, information and knowledge management professionals responsible for a collaboration, portal, or knowledge management program can have a meaningful discussion about adoption, gaps, requirements, and funding.

Questions, comments, thoughts? Please share.

September 24th, 2009

On the record with BlackBerry & iPhone: Both will win

Posted by Ted Schadler @ 11:21 am

Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise mobility

Tags: Apple iPhone, Smart Phone, RIM BlackBerry, Matter, Smart Phones, Cellular Phones, Handhelds, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Hardware

I’m nobody’s fan boy. I don’t love any particular brand. Never have. Never will. It’s not in my DNA. I love my family, I love food and wine and dinner conversation, I love making music with the band, and I love to ride my bike on Metro West roads with a buncha guys. I don’t love products.

But I do love great technology that improves lives and businesses. That’s my calling card and the reason I work at Forrester Research.

We have lots of data and analysis that illuminates the future. It’s our stock in trade. Data like the level of enterprise IT support for bring your own (BYO) phones (46% provide some support). Or the number of working Americans that own a mobile phone (84%) or a smartphone (7.4%). BTW, this data shows where the real growth potential in this market is.

So what matters in the smartphone platform enterprise wars? Great products, stellar service, attractive prices, and memorable marketing matter of course. But in my experience with platforms wars and device wars through the ages, some other things will matter as well:

So who will win? It’s too early to tell, but it looks to me based on these inputs as well as conversations with over 50 enterprise IT professionals that both BlackBerry and iPhone devices will dominate. On the other hand, this market looks a lot more to me like the fast food market than the cola market. It won’t be a two horse race; it will be a 5 or 6 horse race.

But to be clear: My job is to support IT professionals dealing with horizontal workforce technologies. For these clients, I work to identify their needs, issues, and situation. Then I share best practices from other firms and my data-driven analysis of what path they should take. RIM and Apple are at the top of that list today, both in the best practices and in the advice. But I will never count out the other device platforms at this point. Too much investment from too many great vendors to do that.

It’s going to be an exciting market with tremendous advances, hence advantages, for companies and individuals in the next four years. Hang on, folks.

I’m sure other things matter to the enterprise smartphone platform wars, and I’d be happy to hear about them. We’ll learn together.

• BYO phones will matter a lot because it allows firms to deliver the amazing benefits of smartphones to more people at lower cost. And that puts the decision into the hands of an individual (though perhaps from an approved list. [Forrester clients should ping me to see this data; it's an important shift in the market.]
• Applications will matter a lot because people want to do things, not just look cool doing them. True for golfers, true for CEOs, true for everybody. Applications that deliver enterprise value and work well across platforms would be great, but any applicatino that solves a business problem will be attractive to someone.
• Developer passion matters a lot because that’s how great applications get built. One guy I know at an ISV is building a smartphone application in his spare time because he thinks it’s the future.
• Security and device management matters a lot because enterprise IT needs to be able to assure the lawyers that they did everything in their power to protect the company.
• Carrier choice matters because nobody wants to be stuck with a single supplier.
• Individual preference matters because people are more different than the same, and nobody wants to be told what kind of device they have to use. In this, I agree violently with Adam Richardson of FrogDesign. [Couple this with BYO, and you'll see where the real competition lies.]

September 22nd, 2009

It's flu season: connect and optimize your workers

Posted by Chris Silva @ 11:28 am

Categories: Enterprise mobility, Networking

Tags: Continuity, Mobile, Optimization, Worker, Mobile User, WANs, Advertising & Promotion, Remote Access, Network Technology, Networking

I recently took part in my first Wi-Fi enabled flight (AA 387 STL — SAN) and, in addition to raving about the experience, I found it one of the better ways to make productive use of otherwise lost time. While the speed was reasonable, and better than I’d expected, there was a separate tier of experience that I encountered as a result of being a mobile user accessing Forrester’s services and applications from 30,000 feet. 

A separate level of speed and responsiveness is a normal part of the conversation around mobile and remote user support, and while an airplane with Wi-Fi is an extreme example, the impact to productivity on users relying on remote access such as SSL VPN connections for day-to-day work quickly adds up as more users are leveraging these means for connectivity. Fact is, while most of the focus of late on providing access for continuity in light of disruptions like office closures for H1N1, the focus takes into account only a portion of the problem: access, but does not address an issue with potentially further-reaching affects: parity of experience. As long-term remote access scenarios loom as an increasingly likely.

A handful of vendors tackling issues of network performance for branch and remote users are addressing the needs of the mobile user through mobile WAN optimization. In short, in mobile WAN optimization, a piece of software residing on the mobile users takes the place of a WAN optimization appliance that would sit in a branch office or datacenter front-ending the user’s connection. In this way, a user can have their connection optimized, experience the perceived uptick in bandwidth speed that comes from compressing and prioritizing application data and, when possible, caching information — in the case of an offering from vendor Expand Networks, creating a virtual cache across multiple mobile users in a branch — to ease the burden on the WAN link.

As users connect from more and varied locations — and Forrester data shows that, while internal WLAN is the number one means for wireless connectivity, other modalities such as those from cellular carriers are among the top three — the need to provide optimization in addition to remote connectivity for these users is critical. Ensuring that users can connect to resources may allow for business operations to maintain continuity but providing a parity of experience to an office or wired connection can ensure that that continuity does not equal an efficiency hit when multiplied across an entire organization which is sifted to a remote worker environment.

So next time you’re on a plane, or simply logging into your VPN from the local coffee shop, take note of the experience; is this the way your entire organization should be served in the event of a disaster?

January 7th, 2009

Wi-Fi: the only network you need?

Posted by Chris Silva @ 5:38 pm

Categories: Enterprise mobility

Tags: Device, Network, Personal Area Network, Radio, Wireless LANs, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wireless, Advertising & Promotion, Chipsets

CES, the showcase of all tech that is likely to make a splash over the next year, is upon us. While reserved primarily for, as the name implies, consumer technology, there are fundamental tools and technologies that will impact businesses as well.News coming out of Las Vegas today is around chipmaker Intel’s use of existing Wi-Fi radios for personal area network (PAN) connectivity. The release of the updated wi-Fi driver software will allow the existing wireless 802.11 radios inside devices with the Centrino 2 chipset to use the radio as a means to connect to an IP-based network as well as local, Wi-Fi-enabled devices. The devices, ranging from cameras to network attached storage (NAS) will allow users to rely on the Wi-Fi radio in their Centrino-powered device to provide IP connectivity as well as file sharing and peripheral connectivity. Currently, the standard for most PAN applications and peripheral devices is Bluetooth, however Ozmo Devices, a firm partially funded by Intel, is out to change that.

While consumers may applaud the ability to connect to multiple resources while saving battery and not having to juggle dongles for various wireless accessories, the real appeal for making dual-use of the Wi-Fi radio in the device is its potential to advance the idea of the all-wireless workplace. Wireless infrastructure vendors have long talked about the future state of an all-wireless workplace where the LAN and resource connectivity is all wireless. Saving on the need for deploying wired network drops, the all-wireless story is appealing, if a suitable Wi-Fi network is already in place. Benefits can include a more flexible and more easily reconfigured workplace and the potential for lower power consumption due to having just wireless client devices to power in addition to printers and some access points - ideal for a branch office.

Intel has talked about the idea of its Cliffside technology - the ability to split the phsyical wireless radio in a client device into two separate, logical connectivity devices for the past year or more. Today, the ability to make this concept reality not only extends to new devices, but is backward-compatible with all 5100 and 5300 Intel WiFi Link chipsets.

What does this mean for an IT department contemplating an all-wireless deployment? Devices will not only to connect to the network using Wi-Fi, but can be connected to share peripherals and resources as the become available.  In addition to power consumption savings, the new multitasking features of the WLAN chipsets will allow for simpler standard configurations of mobile client devices, taking advantage of a newly multi-tasking 802.11 radio.

October 1st, 2008

iPhone + Lotus Notes = Opportunity + Annoyance

Posted by Ted Schadler @ 8:53 am

Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise mobility, Web 2.0

Tags: Apple iPhone, Mobile, IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Corp., E-mail Servers, Groupware, Advertising & Promotion, Enterprise Software, Software, Marketing

Maybe you saw the IBM announcement or the NY Times blog posting on it. iPhone now can run iNotes, a lightweight application for access to Lotus Notes email, calendaring, and contacts.

But why the complex equation? Let me break it down for you:

• iPhone. IBM Lotus has shipped an iPhone app (available in the Apple AppStore) that gives Lotus Notes users on-the-go access to email, calendars, and contacts. Why does this matter, you say? After all, didn’t Apple do this for Exchange back in June?

Well, yes, they did. Apple did it. And that’s the point. This time around, it’s IBM that did it — a third-party. And that is the crux of the matter: An independent company can extend the value of iPhone by building a mobile Internet application. Nothing new there; after all the AppStore has a gazillion apps already. That’s the iPhone part of the equation.

• + Lotus Notes. This part of the equation should start to attract the interest of information and knowledge management professionals on the Notes platform (about 40% of our enterprise customers run Notes, and they are the biggest companies and organizations).

IBM has no axe to grind with any mobile device (unlike Microsoft, who is required to promote Windows Mobile devices — though we’ve seen a lot of iPhones on the Redmond campus lately). Therefore, it can afford to be device agnostic. The Armonk software giant has long supported BlackBerry, Nokia, and Windows Mobile devices. It now supports iPhone.

• = Opportunity. It’s an opportunity for information workers to get what they want on the devices they want to run. Our survey of 60,000 consumers (34,000 of which have jobs) shows that iPhone owners are a breed apart: more affluent, more enthusiastic about technology, and get this, they are 50% more likely than other mobile owners to “tell their friends about products that interest them” (61% of iPhone owners agree, whereas only 39% of mobile owners do).

In other words, these iPhone owners are change agents. They see a benefit and want to go for it. We call this behavior of employee-led adoption “Technology Populism,” and it’s a force majeure. Here’s one cool situation we heard from a client: demand for iPhone is so high that IT put up a wiki to encourage iPhone opportunists to comment on problems and solutions for iPhone in the enterprise. It’s a “very active” wiki with 70 active participants. And this after only a month.

• + Annoyance. It’s an annoyance today for IT to support iPhones. While iPhone is a great application platform, it doesn’t have the end-to-end system that BlackBerry alone can provide. While we’re big fans of the BlackBerry for messaging (and think that the company is poised to mainstream content apps like SharePoint access and collaboration apps like training and web conferencing), the iPhone has huge developer interest. And in our experience, the platform that attracts the most developers wins.

And that’s an annoyance for IT. (Sigh.) But our information and management professionals — Rick, Giselle, Henry, and Patty — will have to get used to the pressure and turn around to apply it to Apple to provide support or at least third-party options to manage those iPhone devices. They’re here to stay.

September 16th, 2008

Who Is For Sale This Time?

Posted by Chris Silva @ 6:08 am

Categories: Acquisitions, Enterprise mobility, Infrastructure & Operations, Networking

Tags:

It seems the WLAN acquisition rumor mill is hot again after a recent drop in Aruba Network (ARUN) shares nearly a week ago. Still not trading near its most recent trough of $4.29/share on July 14, according to Google Finance, I am not convinced that the next acquisition announcement will involve Aruba.The company, publicly traded and still letting the ink dry on it’s government go-to-market partnership with Foundry, still seems a formidable pill for any other networking powerhouse - Juniper being everyone’s favorite contender - to swallow.

Since the Aruba IPO, I’ve viewed the vendor in a separate class from most others in the WLAN space. Since the time of their decision to go public, we’ve seen many others’ marques give way to more familiar brand names as the Wi-Fi buying spree has heated up. With a market capitalization of over $400M today and 2007 revenues of $127.5M - a number they seem on track to hitting again based on their most recent quarter ended - it seems unlikely that a major vendor would be willing to fork over even 1/2 revenues for a business line extension into enterprise Wi-Fi.

Meru Networks is another vendor that’s often viewed as an acquisition target, and one that I’ve looked at as an attractive target for at least one vendor, and seems a more likely target because:

• Meru is still a privately held company and, therefore, does not bear any value inflation from a public market
• The company has a solid, if somewhat unorthodox, architecture that appeals to resource strapped organizations such as those in education.

Meru seems a bit unlikely due to:

• The vendor’s somewhat different “virtual cell“(PDF link) architecture - while not a requirement to use its gear - may seem a bit of a risky strategy to established and staid networking vendors.
• The company has had noting short of surprising success since they were first included in a Forrester Wave in 2007, which could make them a bit pricey, compared to the dwindling field of independent WLAN vendors.

So, there it is, I’m drawing a line in the sand that the acquisition target is not Aruba, perhaps Meru and potentially another, even smaller vendor. Nothing short of hedging on my part, I suppose, but I will say this: WLAN is a logical line extension for Juniper, and I’m not ruling out - but rather expecting - at least one more acuqisition before the year is out.

Check back to see if I’m eating my words or linking back to my sagacious prediction come December.