In general, I'd like to think I'm a pretty smart guy. Generally speaking, I work with very smart people and have the pleasure of interacting in the world of enterprise mobility with some pretty inteligent individuals who have some innovative ideas around how to address the challenges of this market. Sometimes however, I speak to organizations that may be well off the mark, and during briefings, I'll "politely" share my thoughts with them. This is a story of how I walked in to a meeting with Celio Corp and walked out with a few eggs on my face.
I first met with Celio Corp in the beginning of March when CEO Kirt Bailey and their VP of Marketing Brad Warnock came to Aberdeen's offices to show me the REDFLY Mobile Companion. I did my usual preparation for the meeting, going to their web site and searching the web for information on the two executives, as well as any other information that I could find on the REDFLY. Basically, it was a Foleo knock-off. It was a startup's attempt to replicate the "success" Palm had. Ya, that'll work.
So I walked into the meeting, admittedly feeling a little cocky, thinking I'd be able to pan the product. While I do consider myself to be smarter than the average bear, I will also admit when I am wrong. I left the discussion with enough egg on my face for an omelet - three eggs with onions and mushrooms please. What I thought was just a dumb Foleo knock-off, was actually a pretty ingenious extension of the smartphone with potentially far reaching effects on enterprise mobility. This little device turns your Windows Mobile device into a laptop, literally at the push of a button.
The power of this solution is that it actually addresses the biggest problem with mobile devices used in the enterprise today...their size. Sure, the iPhone or HTC devices have strong processors, large screens, but would you actually try to type anything more than a quick email on it? What about surfing the web? It's actually a real pain to click around or even type in URLs. I wouldn't even bother trying to use Pocket Excel or PowerPoint. The REDFLY addresses that by providing users a large keyboard and screen that connect via Bluetooth (or USB)...you can even connect a mouse to it if you want. This is what makes a smartphone usable for more than a quick email! This in my mind, is a great solution for the road warrior who's going off on 2-3 day road trips, where in all likelihood, he/she will be in tons of meetings and will barely have time to check or respond to email. There's no need to schlep your clunky laptop that ways 6+ pounds.
From a TCO standpoint, the REDFLY lets companies maximize the power of the smartphones they have invested in. What was interesting to me was that, unlike an ultra-mobile PC that needs to be setup, configured, managed, backed up and secured, the REDFLY is completely innocuous. It doesn’t house applications or files. It doesn't even have a CPU! From a security standpoint, it doesn’t introduce a new access point to the company network. Also, whereas when you lose your smartphone, you have to contact the IT department for them to lock down or wipe your device's data. You're wasting their time and you have egg on your face for not remembering where you put it. The neat thing about the REDFLY is that if you lose, you just have to get another one. There's no security issue because zero data resided on the device.
Half way through the meeting, I looked at Kirt and told him the story of how I had prepped for the meeting, and how I was set to pan the product. I then told him "I get it, I like it, I want it." Brad sent me one soon thereafter. I've been playing around with it at home and it works really well. That said, I plan on fully testing it out when I am at CTIA this coming week. I'll be there for a couple of days and am going to take that with me as opposed to me laptop. This is pretty exciting in regards to what it can do for enterprise mobility.
