Hi everyone! My name is Jonathan Stark and I’m here today to talk about Mobile Apps and the Enterprise.\n\nQuick background on me... I’ve been doing application strategy, design, and development for the past 10 years or so. I’ve written 2 books for O’Reilly about building native web apps for mobile devices (iPhone and Android), and I’ve been the maintainer of the jQTouch open source mobile web development library. \n\nYou may also know me as the guy behind a mobile payments experiment called Jonathan’s Card, where I posted a screen shot of my Starbucks card online and invited the entire internet to get or give a free coffee using it. \n\nEarly this year (2011) I joined a Boston-based mobile consulting firm called Mobiquity as the VP of Application Architecture and in that capacity I’ve gotten an unprecedented view into the state of mobile in across a wide range of large and successful organizations. In the course of this work, some obivious patterns have emerged, which are what I’d like to share with you today. \n
I want to start by identifying some of the main properties of mobile computing in an enterprise environment. I’ll touch on several high level points and then drill into each in more depth throughout the talk. \n
Robust: People have come to expect “real time, all the time” access to their data and if they don’t get it, they’ll go somewhere else. \n\nScalable: Enterprise apps need to be able to respond to potentially huge usage spikes caused by anything from a mention in the mainstream media, to an unusually successful marketing promotion. \n\nFlexible: Apps need to be built in a way that allows IT to respond to unpredictable demands. \n\nExtensible: Enterprise apps need to be able to grow with the business without too much worry about backwards compatibility or interoperability issues. Similar to flexibility, but more strategic than tactical. \n\nSecure: An enterprise level security breach can be catastrophic to the business (just ask Sony). Sensitive data needs to be secure of course, but additionally, the business has to ensure that their applications are in compliance with any industry or governmental restrictions and regulations (e.g., healthcare, financial services).\n\nMeasureable: Enterprise apps should be goal oriented, and progress toward these goals needs to be measured both for ROI (e.g., analytics, conversions) and iterative improvements (e.g., usage statistics, a/b testing). \n\n
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B2C: Kindle Reader, \n\nB2E: Internal HR or employee scheduling, \n\nB2B2C: Medical manufacturing company providing a tablet-based sales materials app to independent affiliates. \n
Whether it’s customers, employees, or affiliates, large organizations need to reach lots and lots of people. This demands that they be platform agnostic. \n\nB2C - You can’t control what devices your customer own.\nB2E - Consumerization of IT is real. BYOD policies are becoming more common. \nB2B2C - Somewhere in between the other two. \n\nThe question is, how do you deal with the fragmentation issue?\n
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PhoneGap support matrix\n
Native vs pure web app running in a browser\n
Native vs web app running inside PhoneGap\n
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Here’s where we get behind the front-end clients and into the 80% of the iceberg that is below the waterline. \n
Enterprises have LOTS of existing systems. They typically never had to talk to each other previous to mobile because end-user expectations were lower. \n\nExample: Customer wants a shirt from J. Crew ... (marketing product db, retail inventory, operations, supply chain, shipping, ecommerce, loyalty, etc.)\n\nP.S. Politics rears it’s ugly head - SVP of Retail doesn’t want to lose in-store sales to SVP of .com\n\n\n
