This document highlights key considerations for building robust enterprise mobility applications. It discusses targeting multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile to achieve significant adoption. It also covers challenges like engineering costs, time to market, testing across many devices and platforms. The document emphasizes the importance of usability, security, enterprise integration, offline access, synchronization and supporting the applications. It stresses the need to go beyond a point solution and look at the larger ecosystem including analytics and testing.

1. Understanding the Key Aspects of Enterprise Mobility Solutions roshan [at] mindstix.com

2. About… So! You are ready to kick-off your next big Enterprise Mobility initiative… This presentation highlights key questions to be considered when building robust enterprise mobility applications. Answering these questions will help you validate if your solution is really enterprise ready. Help you make the right decisions about your technology architecture and solutions partners . Before you jump the gun, consider this…

3. Platforms! Platforms! To achieve a significant market adoption, your solution needs to target at least 4-5 platforms: iPhone Android Blackberry Windows Mobile Perhaps, Symbian too Are you going to engineer for all?

4. Platform Challenge Each platform lifecycle would include: Design > Develop > QA > Deploy > Support How easy is it to find the right engineering talent for each platform and orchestrate these teams? 5X engineering costs? 5X time to “go live”? Isn’t it more effective to adopt cross-platform architecture and significantly reduce the effort and time-to-market? Yet, achieve the rich experience of native mobile apps…

5. Device Marketplace! New device models in the market at a phenomenal pace! Varied feature capabilities, display resolutions, storage, interactions, performance. Will your enterprise mobile app seamlessly work in such a fragmented marketplace? How will you ensure that your app investments work on future /upcoming devices? How will you test your app against such a wide market of devices?

6. Usability! Much smaller form factors. Fragmented form factors: Tablets, Smartphones (4-inch to 10-inch). Multiple interaction models: Touch, Swipe, Keypad. Much lower attention span. Naturally, a great mobile User Experience is harder to get right! Users expect that “Wow” factor in your enterprise mobile apps today.

7. Usability! Conventional UX models of desktop and web applications do not directly apply. Is your UI simple and action-oriented? Does your usability team have expertise in mobile UX? Can your mobility team rapidly mock mobile interfaces so you have a better sense of your product?

8. Mobile Security Can I rapidly integrate my mobile app with the enterprise authentication mechanisms: Oracle Virtual Directory / LDAP / AD Single-SignOn (SSO) Do I have the plumbing to support multiple user roles and RBAC (Role-based Access Control)? Does my mobile app save data in a tamper-proof encrypted store on the mobile device? Secure communication with backend Web Services?

9. Enterprise Integration Enterprise Mobility solutions are not point-solutions! Solutions have to integrate with a fairly complex 800-pound gorilla: The legacy enterprise IT eco-system. Mobile solutions have to co-exist and ride of top of your enterprise IT infrastructure. Does your team have expertise in both, mobile clients platforms & enterprise backend?

10. Enterprise Integration Have you considered these few likely integration points: SOA / ESB Infrastructure Enterprise Directory Services Enterprise Web-Applications Cloud Services / Cloud APIs Reporting / Analytics / Monitoring Services Enterprise ITES Services Security Policy Managers

11. Offline Access When was the last time you complained of your mobile carrier dropping calls? Is my enterprise mobile app usable and responsive if: Network connectivity is absent? (15-hr Flight?) Network latency is very high? Network bandwidth is limited? Is the app architected to behave intelligently between online vs offline scenarios?

12. Synchronization How does the on-device app stay synchronized with the enterprise backend? Are you re-inventing the synchronization mechanism for each app from scratch? Is the sync-mechanism incremental? Is the sync-optimized to reduce the amount of battery consumption and bandwidth consumption? In case of collaborative mobile apps, how does the sync mechanism deal with concurrent-updates by multiple users?

13. Mobile > Cloud Integration Too slow to get past enterprise-IT hurdles to make your app a reality? Can you be much more agile and move mobility infrastructure to the cloud? Why reinvent? Leverage cloud services: Queueing Caching Storage Content Delivery

14. Mobile > Cloud Integration How well does your mobility backend infrastructure scale? Does the team have the cloud expertise to integrate with Cloud APIs: SalesForce OAuth Paypal Social Media APIs

15. Adoption and the “Wow” Factor! Most mobile users have experienced rich apps from public app stores. Users have exposure to consumer-friendly social media. Users expect that same experience to be extended to enterprise mobile apps today! “ Rich experience”, “Sharing” and “Collaboration” are no longer alien concepts in the enterprise domain.

16. Adoption and the “Wow” Factor! Where is the “wow” factor? Interactive charts and graphs Real-time data streams to mobile apps Rich dashboards Real-time notifications Real-time collaboration capabilities Employees sharing mobile apps with peers (analogous to a social-sharing model) – Increasing app adoption in your enterprise.

17. Support Systems Launching your enterprise mobile applications is half the battle! What is the support eco-system for this? Can uses raise support tickets from the application itself to the Enterprise IT support? Do you have the backend L1-L5 support workflow in place for your mobile app?

18. Application Analytics Do you need to embed in-app analytics? Will these analytics help you track user behavior & improvise the mobile UI experience? Will these analytics help you track the real ROI of your mobility solution? Do you have dashboards / reports to view these analytics?

19. Application Analytics Some analytics you may want to track: How are users interacting with the app UI? Which screens users spend the most time on? Which screens do users feel stuck? What is the average latency to pull new data into the mobile app?

20. Testability How can you test across a large number of scenarios: Variety of carrier networks Large number of devices Varying network conditions Various security vulnerabilities Load testing the mobile backend infrastructure before you roll to production? Does your solution provider offer expertise in mobility testing?

21. Summary… Look at your larger eco-system! Not just a point mobile solution. What is your net-ROI? Rapidly prototype your mobile user experience. Ensure that your technology architecture is cross-platform and future-proof. Ensure you ability to track, analyze and measure mobile applications on the field.

22. Enterprise Mobility @Mindstix SOA Integration Cloud Integration Cross-platform Apps Scalability Cloud-ready Mobility Understanding Business Mobility Needs Mobile Product Conceptualization Thinking-hat & Innovation in Mobility Mobile User Experience Design iPhone / Android Blackberry / WinMo HTML 5 Standards Compliant Apps Cross-Platform Hybrid Mobile Apps Mobile Testing Innovation Architecture Integration Delivery Enterprise Mobility @Mindstix

23. Executive Team ……………………………………… ..…… Roshan Kulkarni Pune, India roshan [at] mindstix.com ……………………………………… ..…… Dinesh Brid Pune, India dinesh [at] mindstix.com ……………………………………… ..…… Contact us We’d love your feedback @ +1 650 331 1141 Strategic Advisors ……………………………………… ..… Arvind Narain San Francisco, U.S.A. …………………… ………………… ..…… Kshama Grandhi Stockholm, Sweden ……………………………………… ..……