The most impressive thing about the mobility revolution is that we've quickly come to take it for granted that we're connected all the time.
That insight jumped out at me when I was working with our sponsor IBM on our latest infographic, Business on the Move. In IT, we get so hung up on the details of mobility -- the technical details of choosing devices, managing apps and users, connecting to back-end systems, and deploying wireless networks -- that we lose sight of the ground moving under our feet (sort of like this woman so absorbed in her texting that she falls into a mall fountain).
Fifteen years ago, when you wanted to go online, you had to go to your desk and boot up a PC to get a dialup Internet connection. Now, whether we're in the mall, in bed, or on an airplane tens of thousands of feet up in the air, we're always connected to the Internet.
To be more precise, we're always connected to colleagues, customers, and suppliers, as well as back-end corporate information systems we need to do our jobs.
Or at least that's true for businesses forward-looking enough to transform themselves into mobile enterprises.
The challenge for businesses today is to mix mobile into their entire IT infrastructures, so they can achieve the mobile benefits that employees, partners, and -- most importantly -- customers demand.
Get the Internet Evolution infographic, in partnership with IBM, to find out more about enterprise mobility, including examples of firms succeeding with mobile business, the benefits of mobile in the enterprise, and a look ahead to the future of mobile: Business on the Move.
Yesterday I got a new iPhone 5. I needed to leave the house while the phone was still downloading apps, and I thought for a few minutes that I'd have to leave the house without a working cell phone. That felt weird, even dangerous -- even though I was 36 years old before I got my first cell phone.
As it turned out, I realized I didn't need the apps the iPhone was downloading right away, so I had a working phone with me after all. Whew!
My favorite feature of every cell phone I own is the "off" button.
I was surprised to read a recent article that said people sleep with their cell phones so people can get in touch with them, and then claim they're sleeping with the phones because they use them as alarm clocks.
I do use my iPhone as an alarm clock. And every night when I get into bed, I put the phone in airplane mode. Nobody can get through to me then. It's with me nearly every waking minute of the day, and that's enough.
"If you're the one whose connectivity is being demanded, it can be a curse."
You're not kidding!! At my new job, I mentioned that perhaps people should have my cell number handy and the staff warned me to never give out my personal cell info because it will be mistaken for a business line and then I'd never get any peace.
Despite all the benefits of constanct connection, I think we're also going to be careful about burnout.
Brian Newby - Good point about the data connectivity being key.
20 years ago we'd jump off the plane and immediately hit the pay phones. Now we expect to be connected on the plane. And we complain about FAA rules requiring us to disconnect during the few minutes of takeoff and landing.
A salient point, Roques. As our technology springs forward, the bar will continue to be raised. The "get it now" mentality can certainly be seen as both a curse and a blessing, depending on the lens you look through.
With mobility, there's also higher expectations, specially with responses. Who sends an email at 5:01pm and expects to receive a response the next day, after 9am?
24/7/365 is something that is being expected with the "new" ways of doing business. We should thank and curse at mobility.
The infographic indicates that mobility will change the way businesses operate, putting the CMO in a more strategic -- and powerful -- position as arbiter of social business and custodian of brands and culture.
Beyond being connected, I think the real point is being connected with data, as in the infographic.
We've always been connected to some degree. 15 years ago I'd hop off a plane and head for the payphones. As we moved to cell phones, the further shift has occurred where we don't really talk on our phones.
"Rollover minutes," is a meaningless phrase for most because our connection is data-oriented.
And, yet, we have a long way to go, especially in terms of mobile data speed. Using the Internet with a mobile device is a gazillion times better than 10 years ago, but it's still slow.
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Join us on Thursday -- that's tomorrow -- on IE Radio to find out more about the challenges of turning a maker of exercise equipment into a cloud software company.
Patients can become their own doctors, at least in preventing and managing chronic conditions, with the aid of wireless technologies, according to Joseph C. Kvedar, MD, director of the Center for Connected Health at Partners Healthcare.
In an era of municipal budget cuts and austerity, the small City of Staunton, Va., expanded its services to include municipal WiFi for residents, employees, and tourists.
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Michael Brutsch, a.k.a. Reddit's Violentacrez, is a creep who posted borderline kiddie porn to the Internet anonymously, and got fired when outed by a media outlet. It's a cautionary tale even for people who aren't jerks and predators.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
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.
So here we are, the last day of the 2013 US Open Golf Championship at Merion, and Phil Mickelson -- who has been a US Open runner-up five times now but never taken the trophy -- is right up there at the top of the leaderboard.
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