Enterprise Mobility Matters

Inside Looking Out: An Executive View on Enterprise Mobility with Josh Lipton

Welcome to the latest edition of Inside Looking Out.  This past week (on my vacation, no less!), I got to speak with Josh Lipton.  Josh is a VP of Consulting and the CTO at Advantix Solutions Group, a Texas based wireless mobility management solutions provider.

One of the things that impresses me with Advantix is how they combine so many various parts of EMM as part of an end to end solution to their clientele.

Looking Back to See the Future of Enterprise Mobility

Ah, what a week off can do for the mind and body.  While the beautiful Boston weather provided me an overwhelming amount of rain, I was able to get a couple of (very bad) rounds of golf in, as well as just catch up on a number of chores around the house.  That, combined with the fact that I did not have to get up at the crack of dawn every day, was a very welcome concept.  Now mind you, coming back to ~500 emails was less than pleasant, but it was certainly worth it.

So as I was getting my day going today, I stumbled upon this article on the BBC web site that struck a chord for me.

Metrics Shmetrics

Please don't confuse the lackluster posting frequency for another time when Philippe drops the ball on his beloved blog.  Au contraire mes amis (That's French for Oh conTRAYR my friends), I am on a quick little vacation that has afforded me the opportunity to recharge my depleted batteries - now if I only could figure out a way to recharge my depleted bank account....but I digress.

This quick little entry is to talk about the recent posts on Information Week regarding sales and app download volumed for the Palm Pre (with the obvious comparisons to the iPhone in its various incarnations).

While it's good to see, if you believe the unofficial stats, that Palm has sold about 150,000 devices since the Pre's launch and that about one million apps have been downloaded, I can't help but feel as if we must be cautious.  Let's just wait until we hear from Palm themselves I say.  I've been playing around with the unit they sent me and there's no question it's a great device.  I actually also really like how the device handles OTA firmware updates, and last but not least the App Store.

So bottom line, Palm is definitely back on the right track.  Let's wait for them to tell us just how far they've gotten a month post launch. (Hint hint Palm - might be a cool thing to do a press release on!)

Back to my vacation

Inside Looking Out: An Executive View on Enterprise Mobility with Todd Ostrander

Welcome to the latest edition of Inside Looking Out.  This past week, I got to speak with Todd Ostrander.  Todd is a co-founder and now VP at Perlego Systems, a Washington (State) based mobility management solution provider.

One of the thing that I think sets Perlego apart from the (relatively) crowded MDM space, is that they provide their MDM solution as a SaaS based subscription model.

Revisiting a Holistic Enterprise Mobility Strategy

If you recall, I asked some time ago what you all thought should be included in mobility management.  That great discussion, combined with the changing realities of the enterprise mobility ecosystem, made me spend a fair bit of time over the last few months reconsidering:

• The real challenges around enterprise mobility;
• What should be included in a holistic mobility strategy; as well as
• What enterprise mobility management should include and what's included in those key groups.

I'm happy to share with you the fact that the fruits of those efforts have now been crystalized into a new Strategy Analytics research document.  While normally the research is reserved for Strategy Analytics clients, I think this is important enough a topic that it deserves to be shared with the broader enterprise mobility community.

You can download the document here for free (registration is required though....sorry).   Have a look and tell me what you think!

Inside Looking Out: An Executive View on Enterprise Mobility with Dan Dearing

Welcome to the latest edition of Inside Looking Out.  This past week, I got to speak with Dan Dearing.  Dan is the VP of Marketing and Product Management at Trust Digital, a Virginia-based mobility management solution provider.

One of the things I like most about TD is how they are one of the only mobility management companies out there that can actually (vs. just saying they can) handle the iPhone in the enterprise...and everyone here knows how I feel about an unmanaged iPhone.

Rumors Flying Around About Palm Being an Acquisition Target

Ah yes, time for another pseudo/quasi non-sequitor at your favorite little enterprise mobility watering hole.  This time, the quote that comes to mind comes from Mr. Samuel Clemens....a.k.a Mark Twain, when he said "The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated." 

Now without ever suggesting I could ever write the next great american "novel" (on enterprise mobility), nor ever suggesting that Palm is "dying" (we know I don't believe that), let's look at some of market dynamics around how this makes (no) sense.

For Enterprise Mobility's Sake: Stop The iPhone Insanity!

I, along with another gazillion people, listened/watched with great interest to the keynote from Apple's World Wide Developer Conference on Monday.  There, Apple SVP Phil Schiller went through various product announcements, including the much anticipated iPhone 3GS and the latest incarnation of the iPhone operating system - now up to version 3.0.  What never ceases to amaze me is how people fall over each other raving about every single improvement Apple makes in any product.  Am I the only one who was underwhelmed with the iPhone annoucements?  Am I the only one who thinks we need to Stop the insanity? [Editor's note: Have I lost my mind that I am making reference to Susan Powter???]

Inside Looking Out: An Executive View on Enterprise Mobility with Julie Palen

Welcome to the second edition of Inside Looking Out.  This past week, I had the pleasure of speaking with my good friend and colleague Julie Palen.  Julie is the Senior Vice President, Mobile Device Management Solutions at Tangoe.

Tangoe is, in my mind, one of the organizations that "gets it" in terms of the need for holistic mobility management solutions by providing its customers a broad range of services around the life cycle of a mobility deployment.

Confusing Device Management and Application Management

So it's about 10 pm on Monday night.  A good day at work (working on some really cool research on BlackBerry shops), capped off by meeting some friends for cocktails and then coming home to make a nice, healthy, dinner.

It's summer time, which means I am part of Red Sox Nation.  They're not playing tonight after Daisuke Matsuzaka had another disappointing outing.  What baseball can I possibly watch then?  Well, I can watch the Yankees hopefully lose to whoever they're playing.  In fact, there's a T-Shirt I saw recently that I loved: "I love two teams, the Red Sox...and whoever beats the Yankees."  Regardless, I can't help but read up on enterprise mobility...