University of Mobile Ecosystem: How MDM is changing the education system

Posted on by
Reply

Emails, e-Books, e-Readers, E-EVERYTHING! It’s everywhere!  From business to personal, the “E” landscape is growing at a substantial rate. Throughout the past few years we have seen it earn itself a predominant place in the education market. In fact, one might go as far as to say education was one of the first places the e-landscape first saw a dramatic surge, and now we are seeing higher education invite tablets and other mobile devices into the classroom.

But what if you lose one of these devices?  Stanford University saw a need to protect these devices and has come up with a helpful tool for their students, faculty and administration by rolling out an MDM software solution for free to all that makeup their university population:

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2012/03/29/california-university-rolls-out-free-mobile-device-security-software-to-students-faculty.aspx

I know firsthand as a student that I would like to go green and go digital.  But with a busy work schedule and a busy school schedule, I run out of time to manage my mobile devices.  My ecosystem currently consists of an iMac at home, and then iPads and iPhones both in and out of the classroom (my wife is a high school teacher and uses the iPad in the classroom from an educators standpoint). With potentially sensitive data going from our personal lives to our business lives, and vice versa, there is a need to protect our individual ecosystems.

What does your own ecosystem look like?

MAM, MDM, BYOD, MEAP… Alphabet Soup and a Dose of Confusion

Posted on by
Reply

I participated in a discussion of the Enterprise Mobility Group on LinkedIn (which you can link to from our discussion on our own board). It’s addressed towards CIOs, and centers around the growth of Mobile Application Management and it’s impact on Mobile Device Management. Reviewing those comments, and observing the explosive growth of LinkedIn groups targeted at “Enterprise Mobility”, I got thinking about something I’ve noticed for quite a while. 

The market specialists have always seemed very confused when it comes to device management (MDM), mobile application development, and many other areas of mobility. There has always been a tendency to lump multiple technologies together when they really should not be connected. As one example, there has been a tendency for years for media publications to lump “cell phone management” in as part of MDM. Cellular carriers and their channel have always had their own management issues. However, they’re not the same issues a WMS manager has controlling barcode scanners, mobile printers, etc. Yet most industry reports (until very recently), have tended to lump cellular phones, and a whole host of other devices all together when talking “MDM”.

Continue reading →

2011 Partners of the Year With Mini Profile! Read all about it!

Posted on by
Reply

Good afternoon everyone!  Spring has sprung and sunshine has arrived. We recently announced our 2011 Partners of the Year and 2011 Rising Stars, and we wanted to congratulate the winners:

2011 PARTNERS OF THE YEAR

Denali – Americas
Skywire – APAC
Zetes – EMEA

2011 RISING STARS

Heartland Computers
Nomadvance
Leopard Systems

Great news for all of our winners! So that you can get familiar with the winners, we’ll be doing a series of mini-profiles on each. The first is about our friends at Denali, who are based out of Washington state:

Redmond, Washington based Denali provides IT people, IT products and IT processes that enable its customers to increase revenue, decrease operational costs, achieve regulatory compliance and improve corporate value. The company is part of 3md Inc. Denali has experienced steady growth since its inception at around 60 percent year over year and is one of the leading mid-sized companies in the Northwest region. With customer demands going mobile the company is doing the same by investing in and offering more mobile technology solutions.

Continue reading →

Voice Enabled Applications – Speakeasy and Goya Video Case Study

Posted on by
Reply

We are excited to share our Speakeasy and Goya Foods video case study. Luis and his team are doing amazing things with their applications, and this video has some excellent insight into the ways voice-enabling their Manhattan Associates WMS has really improved operations. Take a peek and let us know what you think!

You can view all of our videos at our YouTube page, here.

Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms and Your Rugged Devices

Posted on by
Reply

Anyone who has used a rugged mobile device knows how valuable the devices are to any enterprise. Their efficiency and speed make them one of the keys to retail and warehouse business processes. But, does your organization have a solid mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) to make mobile applications and workers as productive as possible?  

According to a SearchConsumerization article written by Michael Brandenburg, “Mobile enterprise application platforms provide an environment where enterprises can develop an application once and run it on any mobile OS. This approach is essential to enterprises that support a mix of devices, especially those that allow end users to run mobile enterprise applications on personal devices.”

Velocity was built to do exactly that, and is built and optimized for ruggedized mobile devices where traditional browsers are not. In the past, enterprises were forced to run Web applications across a variety of different versions of Windows, Pocket IE, etc. This led to inconsistent and unreliable user experience. Velocity stabilizes user experience regarding this issue.

As more and more companies see the value in moving toward web applications, it’s critical that they have a browser that is capable of meeting new needs and requirements. If your organization is looking at moving towards browser-based applications, it’s important to remember a few things: 1) Ensure that the application will be rendered properly across many different device types/sizes. 2) Will it work across multi-OS platforms, common in the rugged space? 3) Will connection be maintained if the device moves in and out of RF coverage?

Make sure you know the answers to these questions, and if you feel we’ve missed any, feel free to post them in the comments below.

Speakeasy and the Next Evolution of Voice Implementation

Posted on by
Reply

The Voice market is changing. The traditional, legacy, providers are seeing the market  expand and enterprises are finding that adding voice to their web applications no longer requires being held “hostage.” With long implementation cycles, costly brand-new hardware and extensive training, enterprises are shelling out big money to add Voice. This begs the question; when does ROI actually kick in? Isn’t Voice supposed to streamline operations, therefore saving you money?

It isn’t to say that these traditional providers don’t eventually save organizations money, but with tight budgets and staff often wearing multiple hats it is even more important for enterprises to see an early return, not only on the financial side, but also on the implementation side.

At our “Voice in 30 Days!” webinar, we talked about many of these topics, and how Speakeasy answers these challenges. For enterprises adding Voice just got a whole lot simpler.

Don’t have the resources or time to dedicate to a Speakeasy implementation? At the webinar, we announced the new Speakeasy Professional Services team that is available to get voice applications up and running as fast as possible. Our highly qualified group of field implementation engineers serves as an extension to your organization by ensuring that your specific objectives are met and that Speakeasy is deployed correctly. Additionally, with close relationships with strategic WMS providers and support for enterprise applications such as SAP and Oracle mean customers who were once limited to voice options, now – so to say – have a voice! We’d love to hear your voice success stories in the comments below!

Additional Considerations For Remote Service Connectivity – Don’t Forget The Device!!

Posted on by
Reply

Good afternoon everyone! Wanted to share something on remote service connectivity. Aberdeen Group’s research report, “The Real-Time Service Enterprise: Leveraging Remote Connectivity to Drive Service Performance,” lists the key items that differentiate Best-in-Class service providers from the Average and Laggard providers. In particular, the report points out the aggressive growth of remote connectivity technology that Best-in-Class service providers are leveraging to, A) stay better connected to their remote assets, which in turn helps them to, B) provide better customer service at lower costs.

What is interesting to note, (that is not really addressed in the report), is the additional and/or modified management requirements necessary to control all these new remotely connected technologies. In other words, it’s great to have a lot of new technology closely connecting field service to the home office in real-time. However, the emergence of these new devices and technology bring with them an added requirement for additional monitoring and management of the devices themselves (My smart-device allows the home office to monitor inventory control in real-time. But…. who’s monitoring the smart-device??).

As companies move forward with real-time, remote-management of field service assets they (and their management partners), would be well-advised to focus on remote management of the field-service technology as well. The ability to remote control into a field-service device (as an example), ensures maximum uptime and usage of that device, which only enhances the real-time aspect of the total field service.

MDM Market Report Highlights Wavelink: Guest Blog From Galvin Consulting

Posted on by
Reply

The post below comes from Carolyn Galvin of Galvin Consulting, and is her exclusive contribution regarding Wavelink and the recent “Key Consideration in Evaluating & Selecting a MDM Solution” study. Hope you enjoy it!

Hello everyone! My name is Carolyn Galvin and I founded the market research firm Galvin Consulting. We are a global network of analysts and researchers specializing in market research, competitive research, and customer satisfaction research. The reason I’m writing this post for you today is because we recently released our latest mobility study on the Mobile Device Management market entitled “Key Considerations in Evaluating & Selecting a MDM Solution.” Our study includes key findings from in-depth interviews with chairmen, SVPs and EVPs at top-tier MDM vendors, including Wavelink. Together, Wavelink and I thought it would be helpful to give you a flavor for what’s in the study, so let’s dive in.

The report highlights how BYOD and the Consumerization of IT have transformed the mobility market and impacted organizations’ reliance on mobile device management solutions, particularly in highly regulated industries such as healthcare and financial services, and among large organizations with geographically dispersed employee populations. 

Continue reading →

The Future of Mobile Web Applications – Webinar Recap

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, we wrapped up our “Next Generation of Mobile Web Applications” webinar, which introduced you to Wavelink Velocity. In the coming month, you’ll hear plenty about how, with Velocity, we are primarily giving enterprises the ability to do three things:

  • Increase the speed of wireless applications
  • Provide a consistent UI of the web application to a diverse environment of devices (Datalogic, Motorola, Honeywell, etc)
  • Improving the efficiency of mobile workers by enabling them to complete web applications faster.

I encourage you to view the recorded webinar and see for yourself. What benefits can you see if you could run your mobile web applications faster than before? How much do you feel you could save in productivity costs?

Planning and Budgeting for MDM

Posted on by
Reply

Mobile Device Management is the new “hot” thing in the enterprise, especially with all the talk of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies. We’ve recently posted on BYOD, as have many others. But, I think it’s important to remember that there are other important considerations to think about. Primarily, the cost consideration before you decide on a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution.

Research shows that cost is a major concern for those implementing MDM, which makes sense, because any solution has to be worth it! At the core, MDM is focused on reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of mobile assets. A huge factor in these “costs of ownership” is security. Since MDM solutions entered the space, securing information that travels to and from the device, and information that is on the device, has been crucial. If information is ever compromised, companies can lose thousands to millions of dollars. With the BYOD phenomena, the need to control this “cost” has been thrown in the limelight.

Prospects for MDM also now have new delivery options available, which can factor into the cost of a solution. We’ve written and presented extensively on how your cost considerations should match the delivery method that best suites your budget. For some, that’s a SaaS model (low monthly subscription), for others it an on-site install (more investment required up front). Either way, it’s important to know that the installation method you chose will impact costs.

If you’d like to discuss other cost considerations, feel free to email me or discuss in the comments below. Additionally, if you’re interested in TCO and the return on investment for MDM solutions, I’m happy to provide you with our Avalanche ROI Calculator. Just put your info in the “Ask the Advisor” fields to the left with “ROI Calculator” in the comment box, and I’ll follow-up with you.