I’ve been watching RIM’s BlackBerry revolution unfold over more than a decade, to the point where telecom regulators or governments airing their latest complaints in the public domain has become predictable and commonplace. Following the protracted complaints by a minister in the Indian government in 2008, RIM has most recently been in the firing line from the UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, which claimed that: "As a result of how BlackBerry data is managed and stored, in their current form, certain Blackberry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions…" Saudi Arabia may also suspend BlackBerry mobile email and instant messaging services because they are considering the services to operate “outside local laws” and raise “national security” concerns. The services are apparently under scrutiny because they are operated through secure network operations centres around the world, meaning that most governments can't access the data easily on their own, a requirement of local legal interception legislation. This is nothing new for RIM. In my opinion, it is difficult to take these objections at face value. Comments that UAE and Saudi are small markets and do not matter to RIM are also wide of the mark (they still represent around 1.2 million subscribers).

• • There is a broad difference between accessing information on reasonable grounds and unreasonable monitoring of users. Legal intercept is fundamentally complex concept, for which there must be reasonable grounds for investigation, but is not the same as spying on users without reason.
  • A negotiating tactic to drive greater investment in these local country markets, through location of data centres or NOCs in these regions.
  • Business customers, who make up the majority of RIM customers, especially in developing markets, are higher ARPU customers. For a telecom regulator to shut off a high ARPU service for mobile carriers is hardly beneficial to a developing country’s economy.
  • The governments and regulators  that publically object to RIM’s level of content encryption are the same who benefit from RIM’s content encryption.
  • RIM is only subject to this scrutiny, because it is the only company that can meet the rigorous security standards set by national governments.  It is also the only incumbent that has a presence in vertical markets that require tight GRC (Governance, Regulation and Compliance).

Ultimately, RIM will have to allow its carrier partners access to tools that allow them to comply with lawful intercept legislation. However, RIM holds the keys and will likely only offer the tools to carriers that allow access to information that is legally required on a case by case basis. This will allow for reasonable compliance with requests from regulators and governments, whilst avoiding the less than savoury possibility of broad population monitoring, that in itself have broad moral repercussions. What is clear is that the company will not decouple the solution that would create a fragemented entity and damage the company’s USP. What is clear, is that RIM is in a bizarre predicament whereby it’s tight security and GRC adherence, driven by its architecture, which has given it an apparently insurmountable installed base in government, is having a seemingly negative impact on its business. Nevertheless, I believe RIM can and will meet reasonable demands by providing tools to carriers, whilst avoiding the unsavoury business of wholesale privacy violation. The stark reality remains, that RIM is only open to this scrutiny is because it is the only company that can provide this level of security to users, companies and even government agencies!

Mobility and the “Real Time” Enterprise

A Techcrunch article about Jive’s new app marketplace over the past week got me thinking again about the role of mobility and social media in the enterprise. In another survey concerning “web-workers”, it is alleged that 85% of workers use their mobile phone as their primary communications device, 60% use VoIP with only 46% using fixed line communications as a primary communication tool. Both mobility and social media are important enterprise tools.

• In recent years, as businesses have started evolving toward more people-centric collaborative environments powered by wikis and other social software solutions, real time has become an integral part of the social software stack that colleagues use to communicate and work together.

Not one player has successfully extended a social revolution to the enterprise successfully.

Major ISVs and enterprise vendors have attempted to integrate social media into the enterprise, including Microsoft with SharePoint with its wiki-style pages and built-in messaging, and Salesforce.com with a Twitter-style Chatter service, but nobody has really succeeded.

The challenge for enterprise social media is two fold. First, most enterprises have corporate standards governing firewalls, security and licensed software, which is installed and maintained by IT departments and secondly the web world of beta software, open standards and an “anything-goes” kind of approach to social networks and information sharing is incongruous to corporate IT environments.

Jive are one company looking to change that, but whether Jive’s blend of open APIs, an open app marketplace and installed software can successfully bring these two worlds together remains to be seen. After all, Google is now making inroads into business with the most complete offering of these two components so far, Google Apps.

Essentially, however, the issue comes from the fact that there’s little cognizance of business process activity that generally takes place within traditional ERP, CRM and supply chain systems. These traditional applications address critical functions in the enterprise that are closely tied activities that can be measured in the form of increase revenue or reduced costs. 

• Also, from a user point of view, “making it look like Facebook, doesn’t make it Facebook”, even if it helps a user to navigate through familiarity! Consider that Linked In has 35 million members compared to over 400 million for Facebook!

Mobility is becoming a key part of enterprise strategy, and companies face the simultaneous challenge of trying to integrate both social media and mobility (as well as enabling social media platforms on mobile platforms).

• Add to this the task of managing individual liable devices within companies, and the challenge facing IT departments seems even more daunting. IT managers then face a critical decision between tightly “ring -fenced” corporate environments or take the altogether riskier approach of opening up their environments altogether.

Recently a number of statistics have been thrown into the enterprise cloud computing debate. Some suggest that 20% of companies will forsake all IT assets and utilise cloud services only. This is a very bold prediction to put it mildly. It is true that over 95% of companies globally are SMEs (over 99% in the EU27) and that cloud computing meets many of their needs at face value, but digging deeper the future of cloud computing in business is infinitely more complex…., and frankly, well, cloudy.

If enterprises do adopt cloud computing, it will likely take the form of private or hybrid clouds.

Despite many companies relaxing their demands of just over 5 minutes of unscheduled downtime per YEAR, it is clear that there is a demand for SLAs by companies for cloud providers, and positioning public cloud services for true enterprise ready adoption is not really feasible. Google’s association with public cloud services, for example, may well limit its attempt to penetrate vertical markets like government (Is Android Well Placed for Google's Enterprise Ambitions?), despite limited success to date with Google Apps.

Alliances are already forming to offer private or hybrid services that match the same level of service as in-house IT. For example, the Microsoft-HP alliance is a great example that presents mutually beneficial offerings to both vendors (HP sells Microsoft optimized servers for SQL Server etc and gets its servers into Microsoft’s Azure cloud),  while Cisco, EMC and VMware have also teamed up to offer a cloud infrastructure. Fundamentally, it's about joining forces to sell the hardware and software that will comprise private clouds. Ultimately, though, many of these IT megavendors are complimenting their latest and greatest on-premise solutions with a cloud offering.

The reality remains that many businesses are still wary of cloud computing. Despite some enterprises becoming more comfortable with the Cloud (such as Panasonic’s shift of 300,000 users to Lotus Live) 

Beyond the lack of control and latency are issues of cyber attacks, which can leave companies very vulnerable. The recent attack on Google shows that there are windows into datacenters and in the cloud, a company is only as secure as its weakest link.

While there is a clear desire to slash CapEx, IT spending is set to grow by 4%-5% in 2010, and surveys from companies such as Symantec suggest that cloud computing is far down the list of priorities for spending in 2010 below security, backup and recovery and continuous data protection, essentially core compliance and governance issues.

Enterprise cloud computing is growing fast, but it will be a slower journey than many are predicting.

Andrew Brown

The announcement is not yet cold, but already opinion is polarizing surrounding Apple’s new iPad. The product will appear in 60 days with WiFi and in 90 days unlocked with AT&T data plan for $629 and $29/month. Moreover, the inevitable debate around the device’s suitability and fit for the enterprise market is already heating up.

Some are making the assumption that the iPad will slot it’s way into business via users and be welcomed with open arms. Others will say that it will be shunned outright like other tablet products and will face the same fate as Apple’s sub 5% global market share in the PC market.

So let’s look at a few ways enterprises are going to change in the future:

• Over the next few years, enterprise technology and telecommunications purchasing decisions will be based on the preferences of individual employees, rather than traditional IT department criteria. In the past, hardware and software manufacturers targeted their latest products toward the enterprise market, and specifically the gate-keeping IT department.
• The shift to three nines from five nines reliability is driving greater scrutiny of application deployment and usage. A principal driver for this change is cost. A fragile economic recovery this year is likely to keep businesses focused on identifying unnecessary products or services.
• Businesses will start to look more towards distributed architectures such as cloud computing: energy efficiency and cost saving, thin client growth driven by virtualized data enters and increasingly the next step-towards cloud services (for example Google Apps). This new mindset will change the role of the equipment users need-and add major value to the role of the smartphone, tablet or even thin client that allows for access to information from any location.

So where will iPad find itself in the enterprise?

• Statements such “70% of Fortune 100 companies are evaluating the iPhone” or “20% of companies in the US are evaluating the iPhone”, assume that the iPad is the same as the iPhone. This is questionable as it assumes that users will be enthused by the iPad in the same way as the iPhone, surely flawed logic? The product categories and usage patterns are different in many respects and initial responses appear somewhat underwhelming!
• Why reinvent the wheel? Why should users or businesses substitute their or PCs (notebooks or netbooks) to make way for an iPad, when fully fledged devices are cheaper and supported by massive developer communities and support hundreds of thousands of applications?
• It gives Apple developers yet another device. Write once, deploy on iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad
• What about mobile management? Support for mobile devices (including notebooks) is still not widely deployed and many companies are not even aware of how important this is. In order to ever meet governance and compliance criteria this is still an issue that is a long way from being resolved, irrespective of how devices enter an organisation.

It’s very early to praise or condemn the iPad, or really predict where it will go in the Enterprise, but one thing is for certain-Apple has it’s work cut out to revolutionise the market for tablets in the same way it revolutionised the market for smartphones!

Andrew Brown

Every year at CES (Consumer Electronics Show), a multitude of new devices emerge to a lot of hype and excitement. This year it was Google’s Nexus One. But something was different this year. For the first time, M2M (Machine-to-Machine) solutions like in-home energy management solutions, home automation and security systems, were just some of the connected technology applications got plenty of attention.

As someone covering the M2M market, I get used to hearing that M2M is primarily a B2B, industrial business, and while integrated fleet management, POS terminals, security alarms, vending machines and supply chain solutions are still a core part of M2M, there is no doubt that M2M is ready for a leap into the mass market.

Following AT&T’s partnership with Jasper last year to provision and deliver and manage consumer devices  http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=ReportAbstractViewer&a0=4750 a host of new consumer solutions are now out there and CES was a great platform for showcasing them:

Whirlpool (http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/whirlpool-plans-to-make-1m-smart-dryers-by-2011/) demonstrated its new smart clothes dryer on display to demonstrate how a dryer compatible with the smart grid can help consumers to reduce their energy consumption.

These dryers will have the ability to communicate with the smart grid to determine when to run based on peak demand, which will in turn help consumers save money on their energy bills and Whirlpool has committed to producing a total of 1 million of these appliances by the end of 2011.

Schlage http://link.schlage.com made energy management news by showing how consumers can integrate their system with thermostats giving them the ability to remotely adjust the temperature in their home via Schlage’s online portal.

On the security side, Schlage has also partnered with Alarm.com,www.alarm.com,  This collaboration enables users to connect to Alarm.com’s system with Schlage devices through Z-Wave technology, giving them access to realtime footage from cameras installed throughout their homes.

Control4 (http://www.control4.com/) introduced a display for viewing and controlling lighting and climate as well as access music, videos, and online services such as weather

This is just the tip of the iceberg. As the combination of regulatory burden, disruptive technologies and maturing markets challenge telcos, expansion into adjacent markets such as M2M is one potential avenue for exploration. Maybe calling it sexy is a bit much, but with green issues high on the agenda, governments ploughing money into energy saving, consumers trying to save on utility bills and industry heavyweights like Google (http://www.google.org/powermeter/) getting in on the energy saving business, the role of M2M in our lives looks set for a bright future!

Andrew Brown

The hype and excitement surrounding the Android platform has intensified with the recent release of Google's own handset running the OS, Nexus One. Offering high levels of user-customisation, social networking integration and a 'desktop-like' mobile browsing experience, the device is very attractive to consumers...but is the operating system anywhere close to ready for the Enterprise? Leaving aside the iPhone effect (consumer desire to use their own smartphones within a company) and the need for corporate devices to have some kind of roadmap (RIM BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices offer this to business via carriers), there are still a baseline set of criteria that a platform should meet: An 'Enterprise-ready' operating system should offer the features required by a mobile user as well as conform to the security policy defined by the IT department: Features

• Wireless access to corporate email (usually Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange), contacts and calendar information, ideally updated via 'push' with no user-interaction required. All information exchanges between the device and the server should be secure. Access should preferably be available via both cellular and WiFi connections.
• Support for Virtual Private Networking (VPN) infrastructure enabling access to internal corporate applications and network resources
• Corporate IP PBX support providing free calls over WiFi when in the office between internal extensions, and landline-to-landline call charges for landline numbers.

Corporate Email: At the time of writing, only Android 2.1 features native Exchange support, although only the Nexus One features this version of the OS. HTC-branded Android devices such as the Hero and the Tattoo both already feature HTC's own Exchange client which supports full mailbox synchronisation including subfolders as well as contact-lookup and out of office support. Other third party applications such as Moxier Mail, Nitrodesk's Touchdown and Dataviz's RoadSync are all Exchange ActiveSync licensees, that support baseline Exchange policies VPN support - Android 1.6 (Donut) brought with it support for Virtual Private Networks, including PPTP, L2TP and IPSec protocols as well as certificate authentication. IP PBX/VoIP Support: SIPdroid is a free-to-use VoIP client for the Android platform that can be used to interface with any IP PBX that supports the SIP standard. Security Naturally there are perils to and open source operating systems (besides fragmentation), such as the ability to freely manipulate and exploit vulnerabilities in the platform. How does Android stack-up here?

• Application-sandboxing: In Android all applications must state what hardware resources and file locations they require access to, and only those areas will be permitted by the operating system. It is not possible to alter these once installed without at least requiring approval by the user. This approval is requested during the initial installation and can be viewed at any point within the Applications setting menu.
• Remote Device Wipe - Although part of the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, it is not currently supported on the HTC Exchange client. This is on the roadmap for HTC Exchange 2.0. A third party Exchange ActgiveSync solution would be required to enable this functionality. Any device marked for wipe from the Exchange server will not be able to synchronise any new information, but any information held on that device will not be erased.
• password Usage - It is not possible to enforce use of a password on the Android platform using the Exchange ActiveSync policy without a third party application. Again, this is on the roadmap for HTC Exchange 2.0 However it is worth noting that Android does support the use of hand gestures as a form of unlocking a device, rather than an alphanumeric password:
• Corporate Usage Policy - It is not possible to remotely enable or disable hardware or software elements on the Android platform at this point, neither does the OS support on-device encryption. However, companies such as Sybase support the Android platform http://www.sybase.co.uk/detail?id=1064587

All in all, Android is nowhere near mature enough yet for a typical business to support Android as a credible platform. Third party providers may be offering the “plumbing”, but there are still a lack of basic enterprise functionality (policy support, password, remote wipe) to make it a credible choice…yet! Andrew Brown

With the Wall Street Journal pronouncing the “long overdue” death of Email on October 12th, a fierce debate has ensued, surrounding the role of communications in our lives, especially around speed of response, expectations of others and whether social networking and other collaborative tools actually increase or decrease the flood of information that deluges us each and every day. Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging tools have existed for a number of years. Facebook and Twitter have emerged as major winners, with the number of users ramping dramatically. Mobility is a key part of this experience, given that mobile devices and smartphones are the “umbilical cord” of the modern generation. However the experience of using these different tools varies dramatically, from “snacking” or “linking” on Twitter, deeper content via blogs or status updates, multimedia and other external content on Facebook. We also use voice (fixed and mobile), SMS, MMS and Email as well as IM, although. From a wireless standpoint, it is true that data is becoming much more significant for mobile operator networks, but it remains SMS and voice, that are at the core of revenue generation. Either way, many still use social networking tools in a rather siloed manner, although various forms of cross-polination between the social networks is afoot, thanks to aggregators (TweetDeck,  Pixelpipe, ShoZu or Snaptu etc etc) allowing users to post once, and deploy in many places. The pinnacle of this aggregation would see many of the best elements of communication blended into a unified format, which brings us to Google Wave. The preview release of Google Wave into the wild to around 600,000 so far-(a wave invite is like a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Gold Ticket!) has intensified the debate around how we communicate. Pitched as the next generation of Internet communication, the idea is that instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, objects known as waves will contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave's existence.  In many ways it is similar in concept to collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint that we have seen in the business market for many years, essentially cloud communication where a single point of communication is shaped or morphed in real-time, without endless duplication (a criticism often levelled at email). Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and instant messaging. It seems that many are looking for reasons why existing forms of communication, such as email, deserve to die: We are now “always online”, we no longer log on and off as in the past, we communicate via social networks like Twitter in real-time, and nobody wants to wait for communication anymore. This is not a new debate. The same criticism was levelled at “snail mail” (physical letters, we used to have those!), but people still need logistics. Buying online is of little use if nobody delivers the goods!! The same is true for email. Email is not just communication, it is a file system it is also a key part of governance and also regulatory compliance for many businesses in the world. A record of what happened, when and why. How is a wave going to achieve restore points along its highly manipulated route? Users are familiar and comfortable with email, it is also baked into many other systems (even down to activating Twitter accounts or an intrinsyc part of an online profile etc). Moreover email can even be used offline! The recent furore over yet another Gmail outage, and the constant stabilty issues with Twitter and other cloud services, would suggest we are not ready to dump email just yet. Without a doubt the contextless nature of communications is a key factor here and there is clearly a form of disruption between the forms of communication? A change is coming. Direct messages in Twitter are a free way to do the equivalent of SMS or IM, fixed or mobile and context  doesn’t matter. As we shift towards critical mass, this will no doubt affect the margins operators can make on SMS. It has taken email a lot longer to see anywhere close to the equivalent penetration or seamless communication between fixed or mobile email. Google Wave cannot achieve this seamless experience in the first instance due to technical limitations for mass penetration on the mobile side, but has enormous potential for consumer communications. Either way, some things will remain consistent… as with email, Twitter or even Google Wave, we will no doubt be plagued by spam…some things never change! Andy Brown Twitter: http://twitter.com/AndyBrownSA

With the Wall Street Journal pronouncing the “long overdue” death of Email on October 12th, a fierce debate has ensued, surrounding the role of communications in our lives, especially around speed of response, expectations of others and whether social networking and other collaborative tools actually increase or decrease the flood of information that deluges us each and every day. Social networking, blogging and micro-blogging tools have existed for a number of years. Facebook and Twitter have emerged as major winners, with the number of users ramping dramatically. Mobility is a key part of this experience, given that mobile devices and smartphones are the “umbilical cord” of the modern generation. However the experience of using these different tools varies dramatically, from “snacking” or “linking” on Twitter, deeper content via blogs or status updates, multimedia and other external content on Facebook. We also use voice (fixed and mobile), SMS, MMS and Email as well as IM, although. From a wireless standpoint, it is true that data is becoming much more significant for mobile operator networks, but it remains SMS and voice, that are at the core of revenue generation. Either way, many still use social networking tools in a rather siloed manner, although various forms of cross-polination between the social networks is afoot, thanks to aggregators (TweetDeck,  Pixelpipe, ShoZu or Snaptu etc etc) allowing users to post once, and deploy in many places. The pinnacle of this aggregation would see many of the best elements of communication blended into a unified format, which brings us to Google Wave. The preview release of Google Wave into the wild to around 600,000 so far-(a wave invite is like a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Gold Ticket!) has intensified the debate around how we communicate. Pitched as the next generation of Internet communication, the idea is that instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user's inbox for context, objects known as waves will contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave's existence.  In many ways it is similar in concept to collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint that we have seen in the business market for many years, essentially cloud communication where a single point of communication is shaped or morphed in real-time, without endless duplication (a criticism often levelled at email). Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and instant messaging. It seems that many are looking for reasons why existing forms of communication, such as email, deserve to die: We are now “always online”, we no longer log on and off as in the past, we communicate via social networks like Twitter in real-time, and nobody wants to wait for communication anymore. This is not a new debate. The same criticism was levelled at “snail mail” (physical letters, we used to have those!), but people still need logistics. Buying online is of little use if nobody delivers the goods!! The same is true for email. Email is not just communication, it is a file system it is also a key part of governance and also regulatory compliance for many businesses in the world. A record of what happened, when and why. How is a wave going to achieve restore points along its highly manipulated route? Users are familiar and comfortable with email, it is also baked into many other systems (even down to activating Twitter accounts or an intrinsyc part of an online profile etc). Moreover email can even be used offline! The recent furore over yet another Gmail outage, and the constant stabilty issues with Twitter and other cloud services, would suggest we are not ready to dump email just yet. Without a doubt the contextless nature of communications is a key factor here and there is clearly a form of disruption between the forms of communication? A change is coming. Direct messages in Twitter are a free way to do the equivalent of SMS or IM, fixed or mobile and context  doesn’t matter. As we shift towards critical mass, this will no doubt affect the margins operators can make on SMS. It has taken email a lot longer to see anywhere close to the equivalent penetration or seamless communication between fixed or mobile email. Google Wave cannot achieve this seamless experience in the first instance due to technical limitations for mass penetration on the mobile side, but has enormous potential for consumer communications. Either way, some things will remain consistent… as with email, Twitter or even Google Wave, we will no doubt be plagued by spam…some things never change! Andy Brown Twitter: http://twitter.com/AndyBrownSA