Despite the Claims, Path Between Enterprise Data and the Handheld Is Littered With Complexity, Programmers, Time, Money, and Frustration. Desperate for a Simple Solution
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Analysts are proclaiming that the mobile enterprise is finally taking off, says Peter Price, but getting "my data", in "my way", on "my handheld", in "my lifetime" is a process that still makes IT and business unit managers shudder - this despite current claims by middleware vendors to the contrary. What in fact is still lacking, says the CEO of the Los Angeles, CA-based Webalo, is a simple, nearly "point-and-click" method to provide mobile workers and executives immediate access to just the data they need - from wherever it resides, on whatever mobile handheld device they happen to carry - without mounting an enterprise software development project of classical proportions.
"The bitter truth is that any company that wishes to 'mobilize the workplace' first has to mobilize squads of programmers from its internal I.T. department or favorite service bureau, and then be prepared for a protracted, costly, and - in the end - unsatisfying implementation that is obsolete before it is deployed," says Price. "Until this problem is solved, the mobilized workforce is a myth." Price will elaborate upon these remarks tomorrow at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES), an industry conference - devoted to the BlackBerry wireless handheld device - that attracts technology decision-makers, IT technologists, and business software developers.
According to Price, the problem results from the profound mismatch between the conception of enterprise software systems, and the specific, in-the-moment needs of a mobile worker armed only with a BlackBerry or other handheld device. "Mobile workers don't need a sales force automation system or an ERP [enterprise resource planning] system shoehorned into the palm of their hand," says Price. "What they really need is just the data to do the next task or make the next decision they are faced with. It's all about the user, and the task at hand. It's about having it my way."
The difficulty, says Price, is making this happen. "If your goal or requirement is the absolute minimum in marginal software cost to 'mobilize' a worker," he argues, "currently your only solution is to attempt to customize a mobile 'add on' from the original software vendor, and force fit it to your needs." Price calls this "Having it their way."
By contrast, he says, if you desire to have "pixel level" control of the worker's handheld, and an application custom-tailored to his or her workflow and data needs, you today face a development effort of major proportions, as you are essentially re-conceptualizing and re-implementing an enterprise-class application for a different "display" device. "The folly, notwithstanding, of doing this in an era when specific handheld devices - each of which takes custom code - have a half-life of about six months, and Internet-time business processes become obsolete before such software is even beta tested, is that only a comparatively few corporations can justify the substantial time and expense," Price maintains.
As examples of that rare breed, he cites UPS and FedEx: "These are multi-billion-dollar enterprises whose business processes predominantly revolve around a vast, mobile workforce. Not only can they justify a software investment equal to the GNP of small nation, they can even rationalize engineering a custom handheld device - which, of course, they did. But for the vast majority of companies, what do we do? How can we get the data we need, right now, tailored to our favorite device, for a minimum investment? In other words, 'How do we get it my way?'"
One approach, which Price says works far better in theory than in practice, is to attempt to use one of several middleware "toolkits" that purport to map enterprise data to generic handheld devices. "These turn out, invariably, to require a custom software development effort anyway, in spite of the fact that the vendors offer ready-made templates, because your application is widely different from the vendor's demos," says Price. "The templates are almost never useful, so you have to pay the vendor to hack them." And when you are done, he says, you have invested dearly in a custom application, and you are still faced with the moving target problem.
Wanted: A New Approach
Price calls these "old solutions to a new-generation problem." "Today's world is all about delivering solutions tailored or 'personalized' to the user," says Price. "You've already got applications and data within your organization; let's just personalize them not only to the device, but to the user, and to the user's immediate needs from moment to moment." The needs of a stocking clerk on the floor at a supermarket carrying a Windows Mobile device, he argues, are different than those of his boss visiting the regional office carrying a BlackBerry, even though the back-end data and systems are the same. "And let's do all of this without programming, without calling in the service bureau, without hacking applications for months on end," he adds.
The right approach, maintains Price, is to take advantage of the new "software as a service" paradigm, and create a lightweight yet powerful service to dynamically manage interactions with devices, with users, and with business applications.
In Price's model, a Web-accessible service would take responsibility for optimizing the presentation of information via a "thin" client on a mobile device, depending upon the parameters of that specific device. It would also act as a proxy for the user to enable transactions to occur asynchronously, and would forge an end-to-end interface between existing enterprise applications and the user's device. "The service could then provide a browser-based environment for non-programmers to set up the linkages between a user and enterprise data through a simple, 'wizard' type Web interface," he argues.
"This is the right model to mobilize the workforce," predicts Price, "-- a modern Web service that provides speed and utter simplicity in setup, speed in execution, de minimis marginal costs, total device independence, dynamic device adaptation, personalized delivery of data, task-oriented interfaces, optimization of screen real-estate, immediacy, and relevance. And all of this could be delivered as a platform that makes it possible for the users of the data - as opposed to the I.T. departments and service bureaus - to set up the connection to their data, their way, on their device, and within hours - not months or years!
"This is the paradigm for the mobile era," he says.
About Webalo
Webalo technology transforms enterprise applications and data to make them compatible with mobile devices. This eliminates the need for traditional custom programming, reducing the deployment of mobile applications from weeks or months to, in most cases, less than a day. The resulting "anywhere, any time, on-demand" availability of enterprise data on handheld devices turns such devices into viable alternatives to desktop, laptop, and palmtop computer hardware, and lets mobile employees work more productively -- on the spot -- to solve problems, answer questions, monitor operations, close sales, and make informed decisions.
The Webalo Mobile Dashboard Service -- available both as a hosted service and as a behind-the-firewall appliance -- lets non-IT business administrators securely specify the content of mobile-accessible information, and the companion Webalo Proxy Server configures it, in seconds, to conform to the native user interface of any BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, or Java-enabled smartphone. Webalo's technology transforms the role of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) into a User Oriented Architecture, enabling Web services to communicate with users as effectively as they communicate with other system services.
Software vendors and system integrators such as Actuate, IBM, Nokia, and RIM are working with Webalo to enhance both their service oriented business applications and their mobile devices. Los Angeles based, Webalo is privately held and was founded in 2000. For further information, visit www.webalo.com.
Editors, note: All trademarks and registered trademarks are those of their respective companies.
Additional background information is available at www.roeder-johnson.com.
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