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!

With so much noise surrounding the sheer number of applications in Apple’s App Store, as well as the ramping of content on Android Market, it has been refreshing to hear more from RIM recently about quality not quantity of applications.

To get this message across, RIM announced the concept of “Super Apps”. Although I am not especially keen on the name, it was absolutely necessary to look at how people use applications and how they should be integrated into the operating environment to offer the richest, most complete user experience, that sits squarely with RIM’s philosophy of offering the richest most integrated user experience available.

Which of course leads to the question “what is a super app?”. According to RIM, a super app must:

1. Offer an “Always-on” Experience: BlackBerry OS allows multitasking, with the idea that a super app can run in the background and even start up automatically with no user action required. This allows for much of the apps work to happen seamlessly, without an app chugging away in the foreground.
2. Tight Integration with Native Apps: The key to the BlackBerry experience is the simplicity, especially core functions such as inbox, calendar, address book, phone as well as camera and browser. RIM’s API frameworks allow developers to include menu/drop-down items into these core functions, reducing the need to constantly switch between applications, integrating seamlessly with the native app experience
3. Proactive and Notification-driven: RIM’s push infrastructure allows for apps to proactively  notify a user of the right information at the right time. They can notify the user in many ways when a certain event occurs or relevant data arrives to the device
4. Highly Contextualized: Utilising RIM’s location APIs allows for app development that is relevant and contextual utilising not only GPS, but cell site location and geo-coding as well as deeply integrated.
5. Social and Connected Allows for integration of third party apps into the email, SMS, MMS or chat clients to enable users to share content from your apps with others in their address book
6. Designed for Efficiency: A core part of RIM’s ethos is efficiency, offered through and end-to-end architecture that is optimized for “always-on environments”. Super Apps should be built with efficiency and scalability in mind.

In many ways, super apps highlight how RIM has opened up more APIs and services, as well as improving tooling resources for developers. The new services go much deeper than before, and offer major opportunities to integrate apps with native functions (such as the email inbox), as well as with payment and advertising functions among others.

It has already been shown how users will pay for richer, more deeply integrated applications: iPhone Users Install Most Applications but BlackBerry Owners Pay for More

Mobile enterprise applications will also benefit dramatically from the deep integration into core functions and resolve the major issues of certain types of applications (especially CRM) behaving “in an offline state”. Oracle demonstrated how healthcare workflow applications can benefit from this level of integration on a BlackBerry, and the results were impressive.

Ultimately, it is about time another OEM (Nokia excluded) started talking about rich, deeply integrated experiences, rather than focusing on sheer app volumes in “app silos”. Surely one deeply integrated, rich application that is genuinely useful holds sway over 200 apps that lack any rich integration whatsoever?

Andrew Brown

With the ever intensifying app war out in the smartphone marketplace, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has upped the ante by offering a new push service for BlackBerry software developers to enable rapid delivery of application-content to BlackBerry smartphones. It’s no secret that RIM has a market leading user experience for mobile push email, underpinned by it’s “ground-up for wireless” network architecture, but finally RIM is taking the game to Apple and Android developers where all the noise is being made, by leveraging its network operations centre (NOC).

Push applications are not new to the BlackBerry, but access to the required BlackBerry APIs and other resources was costly in the past and the necessary fees were prohibitive to many application developers. It seems as though access to APIs in version 5 of the handheld software is going to be a game changer.

The push service is being made available in two tiers:

• BlackBerry Push Essentials is a free service while
• BlackBerry Push Plus has a free tier and paid tiers, but essentially allows a host of monitoring and scheduling tools as well as offering pricing tiers for very high push notification loads (10,000+)

Developers are required to meet some baseline criteria

• Applications must provide a one-time message to indicate push usage to the user
• Software must indicate higher data pricing when roaming and that users should check with their carrier for data pricing
• Apps must allow users to switch pushes on or off
• Users must be able to remove the app and/or change BlackBerry smartphones

RIM is bullish about the offering, which it describes as: “…unlike alternative push solutions that can only notify users that new content is available for download because of push message size limitations, with the BlackBerry Push Service, full content (up to an industry-leading 8KB in size) is pushed to the device and made immediately available for use."

I’m excited by this announcement. As expected, most of the focus has been on consumer content, especially news, stocks and sports, but the real value is in how this changes, or rather enhances the BlackBerry user experience. RIM’s architecture facilitates "listening" for content updates, instead of having to initiate what can be lengthy processes via comparable mobile app push services. The service will run on BIS and BES and will put itself in a strong position for business applications, by bringing updates to the user, rather than a user foraging for information. There are already some solid examples of push app technology, from patient information in healthcare and sales force automation to emergency response.

Competition is fierce, and the number of personal liable devices forcing their way into businesses will keep growing. With BESX RIM is allowing IT departments and administrators to “bend without breaking” while this announcement sees RIM really starting to extract maximum value from its architecture, which will allow the company to differentiate itself from competition. RIM is now effectively placing itself both in the minds of consumers and businesses.

Andrew Brown

 

Over the last few years, enterprises and ISVs have tried to figure out how to move “beyond email” for mobile workers (i.e. how to get high value and cost ERP and CRM apps into the hands of users) the term Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) has been talked about with increasing frequency, primarily, it seems, as there is little in the way of an alternative term.

                                     Sybase Unwired Mobile Platform.

However, I have never liked the acronym, primarily because it emphasises the application, rather than the complexity in bringing a solution to market, which in reality requires an infrastructure approach and the involvement of several players in the ecosystem. It is also seemingly aligned only with mobile software vendors such as Syclo, Sybase and Antenna software, rather than taking into account how the large business software companies such as SAP and Oracle are changing their approach to the mobile market.

I prefer to use the term “MIP” (Mobile Infrastructure Platform). This is why:

Clearly the mobile worker market is the next critical step in extending simple but rich mobile access to ERP and CRM tools. However, it is also beset by complexity, which explains why some of the largest ISVs are so dependent on partners to deliver not only mobile products but good mobile experiences. For example, SAP has a CRM application that it created SAP Netweaver Mobile, but it was not connected to the back-end database and behaved ostensibly as an “offline” application. Oracle has Business Indicators and Mobile Sales Assistant as well as other tools, but the experience is similar. Indeed, since announcements with RIM in 2007 about native SAP applications running on BlackBerry devices, SAP has been remarkably reticent. The reason? It is very challenging to do.

As a result, companies such as SAP have taken the approach that they took in the adaptive manufacturing sector: build out a comprehensive list of partners to offer solutions. Oracle have done the same. Both companies offer mobile ERP and CRM tools, but have really failed to deliver a rich experience optimized for wireless environments. In March SAP went a step further, when it announced that it will deliver on the mobile CRM application agreed upon a year ago when they announced a co-innovation agreement with Sybase. The result will be Mobile Sales for SAP CRM and Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP Business Suite, for iPhone, BlackBerry  and Windows Mobile.

This is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t enough. The result of the Sybase agreement may well be an improvement on the partnering model, but companies such as SAP need to acquire the relevant asset (either Antenna Concert, Sybase Unwired, Sky Technologies or another), integrate with their own enterprise software offerings to offer a complete MIP (mobile infrastructure platform) essentially an in-house, scalable turnkey product that can be deployed in many instances. This will require tough choices and no little compromise, but without the industry leaders taking this approach, it will be hard to move the mobile ERP and CRM markets forward. And there is no doubt that the 1 billion+ mobile workers (in 2012) will be the next frontier.

Andrew Brown

After much excitement and expectation, Microsoft finally unleashed its “Tron-like” Windows Phone 7 Series Operating System on the world at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (the term series apparently refers to the phones that will be announced throughout the year, not a variety of OS flavours as in the past).

What is immediately apparent is the look and feel. The main takeaway is that the phone is of secondary importance, with all the focus on the interface. The design and layout of 7 Series' UI (internally called Metro) is original, utilizing what lead project designer(Albert Shum, formerly of Nike) called an "authentically digital" and "chrome-less" experience. Microsoft has been praised for moving away from the stamping its PC legacy all over the OS as in the past, with only a single hardware button indicating it’s a Windows Phone at all.

First impressions are positive-the simplicity leaves the user feeling that the OS is fast and responsive, but there are nagging doubts surrounding what Microsoft has stripped out to make this OS snappy-and clearly the OS won’t be compatible with earlier phones given the high specs that Microsoft will demand of its OEM partners.

The new system, centres on "hubs" designed for specific tasks. For example, Windows Mobile 7 Series' People Hub aggregates social networking and email contacts, from Facebook, Windows Live, and webmail accounts among others, enabling the user to interact with their friends across multiple media through a single application."

Microsoft’s launch has been slick and polished-with the fickle majority now saying that the death of Microsoft’s mobile business has been greatly exaggerated.

 

Certainly the key features are all core consumer in nature: Zune integration and XBox Live integration as well as social networking integration for popular sites such as Facebook. Enterprise is still catered for, but less detail was forthcoming outside the “Office Hub”that was announced. It has been suggested that many non-business users that bought a Windows Mobile phone in the past had no idea who manufactured the phone. However, OEMs aligned with the WP7S launch may see their brand stand out more with an OS that is less obviously has “this is a Windows Phone” stamped all over the UI.

Nevertheless, questions remain:

• Lack of clarity on hardware OEM reference designs
• No surprises in OEM partner line-up (does this really mean a chance for Dell and HP to get into this market-I’m not sure)
• Lack of detail on .net CF framework (core for development and enterprise) and what functionality has been stripped out to sharpen OS responsiveness.
• Backwards compatibility and multitasking
• Business Integration with UC and the Cloud: Azure and OCS

What is clear is that a Microsoft mobile OS will finally sit in a (hopefully) compelling set of devices to go up against Android, Symbian and the new iPhone for the Q4 holiday season. For enterprises, if precious little plumbing has been stripped from the OS, then this could be a very interesting platform for business as well.

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