IBM is assembling a portfolio of software, services, and partnerships to help ease businesses through the transition to doing business on mobile.
IBM on Thursday announced its MobileFirst initiative to help businesses implement cloud, analytics, and custom apps on mobile, with the right development, security, and management tools. (IBM sponsors Internet Evolution.)
IBM's goal is to help businesses achieve the instantaneous reaction times required by customers, employees, and partners using mobile devices.
"Mobile is at an inflection point much like where the Internet first commercialized 15 years ago," Ed Brill, director of strategy for IBM MobileFirst, said in a phone interview. The focus of mobile today is not on the devices, but on what can be done with them, much as the focus of the Internet shifted 15 years ago from browser wars to business opportunities.
"Organizations that are not taking full advantage of mobile computing are leaving a lot of dollars on the table," Brill says. "Embracing mobile computing is no longer an option."
As part of the MobileFirst portfolio, IBM is introducing a new test workbench under its Rational brand to improve the quality and reliability of mobile apps. In security, IBM is investing in tools to help workers keep business and personal data separate on their devices, and to help businesses test apps before deploying to customers and employees. IBM is providing tools to help organizations support BYOD, enhancing its Endpoint Manager with support for the FIPS 140–2 encryption standard.
And IBM is investing in analytics apps to help organizations provide the most compelling customer experience, expanding Tealeaf CX Mobile to allow app developers and marketing teams to get visual insight into how mobile users interact with apps.
Mobile services from IBM include the IBM Interactive agency to help businesses build compelling apps, says Chris Pepin, IBM mobile enterprise services executive. IBM also offers services to help organizations build and integrate mobile apps. IBM services can help ensure the network, mobile device management, and application management infrastructures are ready for mobile app deployment. And businesses can run part or all the mobile app infrastructure in the cloud. Additionally, IBM offers training workshops for businesses looking to deploy mobile apps.
IBM is expanding its relationship with AT&T to provide developers with tools to create faster, richer mobile apps and services for customers. For example, organizations can now quickly incorporate payment and messages into their apps, IBM announced.
IBM MobileFirst is the latest step in a multiyear push by the vendor to embrace mobile.
Since 2006, IBM has acquired 10 mobile vendors, including BigFix for endpoint management, Tealeaf for customer experience management, and mobile app platform vendor Worklight. IBM has also helped more than 1,000 organizations with their mobile transitions, including ING Direct Canada, the City of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and Visa. IBM has more than 200 apps in mobile app stores, with almost 1 million downloads.
The iPad (or Nexus 7) works pretty well as a one-legged laptop if you use it with a Bluetooth keyboard. You can't have two windows open at once. The screen is small. It's somewhat slow in that my hand has to travel further from the keyboard to touch the screen than it does to use a mouse. And, perhaps most difficult of all, it's not my primary writing tool, so my muscle memory betrays me when I'm trying to write on a tablet.
But it works. And when I go to a conference, carrying the tablet and a keyboard is a MILLION times better than dragging around that heavy laptop all day. There's no contest. I leave my laptop in the office, if I'm going to a local event, or in my hotel room if it's a conference I'm staying overnight at, and do a couple of hours work on that in the morning or evening.
Yeah I really haven't figured out how to be productive from my smartphone or tablet in regards to work. I only read/ send emails. I know for some that mobile devices are their lifeline so for organizations to embrace mobile and have a solution that can secure and separate personal data from work-related data will be a plus.
Maybe it is 50/50 desktop and mobile. Everybody has smartphones, many people have tablets, and people do work from them.
They may do most of their work on the desktop -- and I expect they do (I certainly do). But they get enough work done on their smartphone and tablet that supporting those devices is essential.
It's kind of like having VPN access to enterprise network. Most people work from the office most of the time, but enough people work from home at least part-time that lack of a VPN is going to significantly hurt productivity.
Tumblr in particular is an interesting platform, used by big brands like IBM as well as teen-agers looking for anonymity. It has an extremely diverse user base.
slfisher - Interesting. I did not ask them that question -- and am now slapping myself on the forehead for failing to do so. But I expect from the rest of the announcement that they're going to go cross-platform, because that's what their customers need to do.
An indie software developer has to choose between platforms because they just don't have the staff to develop on more than one. But a big company like IBM -- or its customers -- are going to realize that its employees, customers, and partners are using a diversity of platforms, and failing to support all of them costs business.
Fascinating that IBM is also using Tumblr to get its message across, at least about mobile. A smart move, too, I think, given Tumblr's ppopularity among some user groups. Unfortunately for marketing and IT departments, users are no longer limiting themselves to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+; they are availing themselves of the many other options out there, and it's up to marketing/IT to figure out cost-effective ways to expand to other tools or risk missing out on some important prospects.
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Neal Stephenson is best known as the author of science fiction novels such as SnowCrash and Anathem. But he does other things as well. Among them: He's assembled a team of scientists and engineers to figure out how to build a 20-kilometer-tall tower to use as a platform for launching rockets into space.
While interstellar travel presents huge challenges, it's "almost inevitable," according to a speaker at the Starship Century symposium here in San Diego.
Catch up on the week with one simple serving of Friday File. We've pieced together 10 interesting news bites you may have missed and put them together in bite-size morsels.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
The bring-your-own-device approach isn’t suited to monitoring of enterprise equipment and processes. In these cases, it is up to IT to come forward with gear suited to the task.
Healthcare IT faces an array of challenges and changes in the next three to five years, says the CIO of The Ottawa Hospital. Mobility will play a role in healthcare in a big way.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Ushering in a new era of cognitive computing systems, IBM announced today the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology breakthrough that allows brands to crunch big data in record time to transform the way they engage clients in key functions such as customer service, marketing, and sales.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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