Constellation Alumni

"I am fascinated by understanding technologies, then explaining how to apply these within enterprises -- while still retaining common sense." Charles Brett is VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc..  His primary focus is on all aspect of mobility and the use of mobile technology in the enterprise.  For 25+ years Charles Brett has focused on delivering common sense to the application of technologies, especially software ones, in organizations of all sizes around the world. While concentrating at Constellation Research on mobility and its management in the enterprise (sometimes known as MDM or Mobile Device Management) he also addresses: mobile app development and deployment mobile apps and associated data management BYOD (Bring or Buy Your Own… Read more

Yesterday saw the launch of the much awaited Samsung Galaxy S4 (and a worthy update it seems, if hardly earth shattering — much like occurred with the iPhone 5).  There has also been much talk about Android weaknesses, hardware or software market specialization as well as Google’s rising share price (and Apple’s currently falling one).  But what almost nobody discusses is: what will be the smartdevice replacement rate?  This metric is beginning to matter more and more to a whole raft of audiences — from device manufacturers to mobile carriers to enterprises and to consumers.

When Apple launched the original iPhone it was correctly hailed as something special — because it was.  The second iPhone was a significant improvement, both in quality (already high) but also in both form and function.  But, by the time of the iPhone 4S and then the iPhone 5 the improvements had become demonstrably incremental rather than revolutionary.

The same is largely true of Android.  Before the arrival of Jelly Bean in mid 2012 Android was pretty rough (but attractively open) and Android devices did not really match the iPhone. Then Samsung delivered the SIII and Note2 (and now the S4) while HTC has moved forward with its all aluminum One and Google with the LG-made Nexus.  All these devices are, with Jelly Bean, now a match for the iPhone.

But here lies the rub.  Once you have an iPhone 4S or 5 or HTC One or SIII or Note 2 or the latest Nexus — what is the incentive to replace these?

Of course there will always be a technoscenti who must have the latest device. They will not disappear but they are also not numbered in multiple millions (remembering that Apple sold 17M+ iPhones and Samsung sold 15M+ in Q4 of 2012 alone).  One key to the future is, therefore, understanding the device replacement rate and then how it will affect different communities in different ways.

If you have invested in a shiny new smartphone (and this applies perhaps even more so to phablets and tablets) with processing power beyond what there are the apps to consume (for example the S4 will come with an octa-core processor and 2GB of RAM — as much as you would find on a full laptop of 2-3 years ago, or even today), why would you want to replace this next year, the year after or even the year after that?  This is going to become the burning question and it is one with global implications.

The so-called ‘rich West’ may have had differing replacement propensities to the rest of the world. Furthermore, the case for multiple smartphones per person is not strong — and the arrival of dual SIM smartphones will only force additional device consolidation.   The rest of the world may still be catching up on acquiring smartphones, but it will arrive at parity pretty soon.  Yet what is clearly evident is that the cost of a smartphone is a much greater investment, as a proportion of disposable income, in the rest of the world which means that it will likely possess a much longer in-use life.

This means that, for mobile phone manufacturers, the alleged promise of a long term future selling into vacant smart device space will not last long when market saturation combined with the inevitable ‘loss of sexiness’ factor(also known as incremental improvements)  occurs in the ‘rich West’.  The result will achieve pretty much the same: expect smartphone replacement rates to match that of (say) laptops — which already have a life of 2-4 years.

[If you do not believe this, make a list of all your mobile devices (including laptops, mp3 players, phones, phablets, tablets, etc.) and indicate when each was bought and when you might plan to replace each.  I did it for myself and, even though both an iPhone and an iPad were stolen in 2012 (and replaced by Android devices), the average age of my devices is already well over 2.5 years.  As for replacement, the only device likely to see replacement in 2013 is the Windows tablet.]

Now  consider the impact and implications if the smart device replacement rate is as slow as I argue it is going to be.

Consumers, whether in the rich or not-so rich worlds will not care much.  They will replace devices when it suits them and value for money will count most of all.  Here Google would be onto a great opportunity with its most recent Nexus, except these are so hard to find to buy.  One oft-ignored aspect to remember here is that many consumers are also employees: with the rise and rise of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) the existence of the previously parallel Enterprise and Consumer markets for smart devices is likely to disappear as the latter absorbs the former.

For device manufacturers, including Samsung and Apple, the years from 2015-2020 are going to be horrible — with high consumer expectations of ever greater cleverness being disappointed  as each new evolution much looks pretty much the same.  Apple may yet crack China as a cult product, and in so doing may make itself effectively a China oriented organization (after all China could absorb in number of smart devices what the rest of the world combined does).  For vendors all this could be different if some new way (or category) of relevant (to the buyer) device emerges, as did the iPhone and iPad — but even this is likely only to put off painful days.

For mobile carriers and providers all this is an opportunity and a threat.  The opportunity is to withdraw from the costly device-subsidy model which involves massive up front purchases from device manufacturers: eliminating this would free up significant resources, not least cash.  The threat is that the 2 or 3 year contract model delivers ‘loyalty’.  If the focus moves away from devices the mobile carriers will need to focus on the customer (thus far largely unheard of, outside France’s Iliad  and one or two other refreshing organizations): service will be all important.

Finally there is the enterprise dimension.  BYOD has the great advantage that enterprises can rely on employees to make the purchases, which frees up CAPEX and other resources.  With vendors like Airwatch, Boxtone, Fiberlink, SOTI and Symantec, to name only five, offering increasingly sophisticated device and content management, having your employees buy their own devices is less and less the obstacle it was.  In addition, especially if most BYOD devices stabilize around Jelly Bean (for Android), on iOS6 (for iPhones and iPads) on WindowsPhone 8 and Blackberry’s BB10, then enterprise app development will become (relatively) simpler (and many of the criticisms of a multi-furcatedAndroid, in particular, will diminish — though Apple is not as guiltless as it would like to make out) through greater OS consistency.

Indeed, as one thinks more and more about what the replacement metric means it is hard not to conclude that the long term  winners are consumers and enterprises.

Gavin Heaton

Founder Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of  award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. Read more

Brand storytelling can be hard work. Not only are there all the internal hurdles to overcome, sign-offs and legal checks and so on – there is also the challenge of subject matter. What do you do if you have a complex product or solution that you are trying to explain? Which channels do you choose – and how do you incorporate social media into the mix.

I was recently speaking with a financial services industry CEO who lamented that they have the most boring product in the world. He couldn’t see how it would resonate with a social media-savvy audience.

But social media is not broadcast – especially in B2B (business-to-business) marketing. You’re not trying to reach and engage millions of people – you are (or should be) focused on the buyer’s journey and helping to ease your customer’s decision making process. That means selecting the most appropriate channel – and delivering content that provides very specific value to your customer at their point of need. And brand storytelling can form a very powerful component of your content strategy and lead nurturing program.

Still unsure of how this might work for you and your brand?

Enterprise software vendor, Teradata, have been experimenting with brand storytelling for some time and have taken a novel approach that you may want to steal (I mean “learn from”). Tapping into pop culture’s interest in forensic analysis (a la CSI), they have created a series of videos that take a new approach to case studies and product/solution brochures. The “Business Scenario Investigations” or “BSI” team dramatize business problems and then showcase how technology can be used to “solve” the problem.

Each of their videos can be found on the BSI: Teradata Facebook page as well as the YouTube channel. They cleverly provide a powerpoint version of the scenario via Slideshare and share the storyboarding process from problem definition to casting through to resolution.  And while the case of the tainted lasagna may not be to your taste, it’s likely to be very appealing to those CIOs and CMOs wanting to understand how data can transform their businesses. And that’s tasty. Very tasty indeed.

Alumni: Constellation Research Constellation Research

Dr. Brent Kelly is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research and President of KelCor, Inc. He focuses on the unique intersection of unified communications, social business, cloud services, video and mobility.&nbsp; Dr. Kelly provides strategy and counsel to key clients including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, technology policy executives, sell-side firms and technology buyers. <br> Prior to joining Constellation, Dr. Kelly served for 10 years as a partner at Wainhouse Research where he was the primary author of most of the firm’s unified communications reports and forecasts. Dr. Kelly is a regular presenter at Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon), the communications industry trade show where his… Read more

I've just completed reviewing the 7 RFP responses for my session at Enterprise Connect 2013 on cloud-based communications services. The RFP is a 60 page document describing the communications and collaboration requirements for a 2,000 person enterprise with three locations.

End users may obtain a copy of the RFP at no charge at www.constellationr.com/cloud.

The seven responding vendors -  8x8, Avaya, NEC, ShoreTel Sky, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Thinking Phone Networks, and Verizon - have each gone to great lengths to provide the information required by the RFP which included over 300 individual functional components along with the WAN links and pricing for the entire service over a period of 5 years.

What has made this doubly interesting is that four of the respondents, 8x8, ShoreTel Sky, Siemens, and Thinking Phones, provided reference customers that I interviewed. After doing thorough interviews, I've written case studies, which were not vendor sponsored. I learned a lot about motivations for moving to the cloud, some of which involved total cost of ownership, but others centering around other value propositions of the cloud including geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, focusing on the most important IT/telecom business issues, and so forth.

The responses will be presented on March 19, 2013 at Enterprise Connect 2013. I will also make them available in a workshop/seminar format for organizations who want to know more about cloud communications, ts costs and drivers, and for those who would like to use these RFP results to quickly get to short list of one or two providers to pursue for a cloud communications solution.

The RFP workshop contains the following items:

1. An architectural overview of each solution
2. A review of the supported functionality
3. The total cost of ownership for the solutions, including both monthly OPEX and one-time CAPEX
4. Committed SLAs and credits for not meeting these SLAs
5. How each vendor approaches the design, on-boarding process, and continued operations and maintenance.

A sample graphic illustrating vendor responses about encryption as well as the vendor support demarcation point fis shown below. There are many other graphics and figures comparing these solutions in detail. More information is available at www.constellationr.com/cloud.

Alumni: Constellation Research Constellation Research

Dr. Brent Kelly is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research and President of KelCor, Inc. He focuses on the unique intersection of unified communications, social business, cloud services, video and mobility.&nbsp; Dr. Kelly provides strategy and counsel to key clients including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, technology policy executives, sell-side firms and technology buyers. <br> Prior to joining Constellation, Dr. Kelly served for 10 years as a partner at Wainhouse Research where he was the primary author of most of the firm’s unified communications reports and forecasts. Dr. Kelly is a regular presenter at Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon), the communications industry trade show where his… Read more

Any vendor company making PBX or call center software should have a development initiative to add WEbRTC as a channel into the PBX or contact center software alongside SIP and other communications and collaboration protocols. This can be done without too much development cost, and it will put you on the leading edge with respect to the technology curve.

Alumni: Constellation Research Constellation Research

Dr. Brent Kelly is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research and President of KelCor, Inc. He focuses on the unique intersection of unified communications, social business, cloud services, video and mobility.&nbsp; Dr. Kelly provides strategy and counsel to key clients including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, technology policy executives, sell-side firms and technology buyers. <br> Prior to joining Constellation, Dr. Kelly served for 10 years as a partner at Wainhouse Research where he was the primary author of most of the firm’s unified communications reports and forecasts. Dr. Kelly is a regular presenter at Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon), the communications industry trade show where his… Read more

This is a loose phrasing of one of Netwon’s laws of physics, but it applies as well to the WebRTC standards bodies. What we are seeing with the present version of the standard is a basic capability, but we know there must be changes in the future to allow for additional use cases and evolution of capabilities. Hence, the standards and the bodies governing them will be in motion for some time to come. If not, proprietary extensions will arise, as they have done with SIP, and it will take another 10 years to sort things out. Just look at how truly compatible the SIP world is – it isn’t, even though every vendor swears that it is standards compliant.

Thank heavens for the Acme Packets of the world who are Switzerland of SIP protocols. WebRTC will multiply this interoperability issue for any inter-domain communications significantly because of the lack of specification in the control channel, even if the audio and video codecs are the same. Microsoft articulated some of the key SDP issues the current WebRTC standard has at a new post titled, “New CU-RTC-WebHTML5Labs Prototype from MS Open Tech Demonstrates Roaming between Cellular and Wi-Fi Connections”. This post includes a reference to the functional level of the API’s available, which includes a discussion that centers on how core A/V functionality and interoperability need to work, particularly with mobile devices. It also references another post by Robin Raymond about why the SDP issue will be an anchor to WebRTC instead of providing it the wings to soar that so many some are saying the current vague standard provides.

Alumni: Constellation Research Constellation Research

Dr. Brent Kelly is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research and President of KelCor, Inc. He focuses on the unique intersection of unified communications, social business, cloud services, video and mobility.&nbsp; Dr. Kelly provides strategy and counsel to key clients including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, technology policy executives, sell-side firms and technology buyers. <br> Prior to joining Constellation, Dr. Kelly served for 10 years as a partner at Wainhouse Research where he was the primary author of most of the firm’s unified communications reports and forecasts. Dr. Kelly is a regular presenter at Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon), the communications industry trade show where his… Read more

I have the opportunity to co-chair the WebRTC conference-within-a-conference that will be held in conjunction with Enterprise Connect 2013. This is a top notch mini-conference with four goals in mind:

1. Educate – there will be two tutorial sessions, one by Cisco distinguished engineer, Cullen Jennings, and the other by Google senior product manager, Jan Linden. In this session, attendees will learn the ins and outs of WebRTC and how the standards that make up WebRTC are progressing.
2. Dispel Hype – there is a lot of noise right now about WebRTC, but like my industry colleague, Phil Edholm, said, “we do need some adult thinking here”. To that end, we will have presentations by companies who are either enabling WebRTC for others or who are developing applications using WebRTC themselves. These include Avaya, Microsoft, Thrupoint, and Acme Packet. One additional highlight of this session will be that attendees will be able to hear from Microsoft itself, rather than an industry pundit, about some of the issues it sees with the WebRTC standard as currently proposed. Microsoft will also show a demo illustrating some of the issues and how they could be overcome.
3. Understand Opportunities and Challenges – we will have five “new comers” display their WebRTC products in a sort of “speed dating” format in which they have 9 minutes in which to convince us that they have a compelling offering and that we should follow up with them after the event. These companies include Plivo, Twilio, Plantronics, Addlive, and TenHands. In addition, we have a panel session featuring five major video communications companies – Vidtel, Avaya/Radvision, Cisco, Vidyo, and Polycom. In this session these companies will articulate the view from the top as to why WebRTC will or will not shake up the video communications industry. Finally, our last session will be on how WebRTC may impact and influence customer engagement. We have the privilege of listening to a financial services firm, Vanguard, who is already developing one or more applications using WebRTC. In addition, we will hear from contact center providers  Genesys and Siemens to get their views on how WebRTC may impact how end user companies think about engagement and what channels, including the voice, video and collaboration channels that WebRTC enables, these end users should put in their contact centers and website interfaces. 
4. Networking – this event will be a who’s who of attendees in the WebRTC world. All will be highly accessible during the daylong event and the WebRTC reception that follows it.

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepo<br>LinkedIn:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The… Read more

Here are just a few of the product stories that I noticed today.  I don't have time to write full posts about all of them, but I will try and cover a few of them in more detail in the next day or two. For now, I'll offer up a quick point of view on each.

IBM Notes and Domino 9.0 Social Edition - MyPOV: (more detailed reviewing coming) The biggest innovation here is the addition of (OpenSocial based) "embedded experiences" inside Notes email messages and applications. That means developers can add features to their applications that people can access directly from within their Notes client. For example, if a manager receives an email about an expense approval, they can take action on it right from the email message instead of having to switch to tool that sent it. IBM is providing embedded experiences for many of the features of their IBM Connections platform. For example instead of simply sending an email that notifies people when they are mentioned in a Connections conversation, that email contains the entire conversation (including embedded media like pictures and videos) and allows the person to reply to or Like the conversation right from the email. For those familiar with Google+ and Gmail this will sound very similar.

IBM Connections Suite V4.5 now includes IBM Connections Content Manager V4.5 - MyPOV: One of the strengths of IBM solutions is that they understand the business requirements of their customers. The integration of IBM Content Manager into Connections enables people to create and share content with advanced features like check-in/out and version control, which are not available in the standard pages features of IBM Connections Communities/Wikis.

LiveHive (collaboration platform) Launches. MyPOV: I like that rather than just being another Facebook clone using a chronological based activity stream, LiveHive (formerly known as Capture To Cloud) is taking a more FlipBoard or Pinterest like approach. LiveHive should not be confused with former collaboration vendor Hive Live which was purchased by RightNow in Sept 2009, who was then purchased by Oracle in Sept 2011.

Azendoo Social Task Manager Releases New UI and Improved Features - (translated from their French blog post) MyPOV: I really like Azendoo's integration with Evernote. With each release they continue to improve the user experience and the tools they integrate with, making Azendoo one of the leading stand-alone (meaning, not part of a larger collaboration platform) Social Task Management vendors.

Trello (Kanban based Social Task Manager) Release iPad App - MyPOV: While the Kanban approach to task management may be best known to developers and engineers, Trello makes it simple for beginners to get started and use to manage their projects. The drag and drop touch UI of the iPad is a perfect way to move tasks between stages. This is a welcome addition for Trello users.

Evernote for Mac adds new Quick Note feature - MyPOV: I love this. It's already made an impact in my productivity, especially with the built in screen shot feature.

DropBox Delivers A New Menu Bar - MyPOV: I've not tested this myself, but providing notifications of activity is an expected feature in most of today's applications.  If DropBox provides effective filtering and the ability to take action on the events, then this should prove to be a useful feature.

Egnyte (File-sharing) Adds Support For Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure and NetApp StorageGRID - MyPOV: Each vendor in the very competitive file-sharing and sync market is looking for ways to differentiate themselves. Egnyte is focused on providing customers a choice of where their content is stored.

The number of  app development ‘solutions’ on show at Mobile World Congress 2013 amounted to over 20, and might have been over 40 once you counted in development tools provided by major offerings that were not explicitly on show (for example, Eclipse or the .NET Framework). Yet such a plethora only served to emphasize just how dissipated has become the mobile app development decision scenario — for individuals as much as enterprises.  Hard, as well as expensive, choices are inevitable for those wishing to deliver rich results in 2013.

A little over a year ago the shape of mobile app development seemed to fall into 3 main categories:

• the Web-like
• the Native
• the Hybrid.

The Web-like app aims to provide an app experience which adjusts to whatever smart device size/type is being used.  This approximates to what you would find with a browser and pretty much requires an online connection (i.e., you usually cannot use such an app offline).   The advantage is swift delivery, the ability to minimize consideration of device characteristics and use of existing enterprise web infrastructure; the disadvantage lies with the need to connect to a server, plus the limits on the degree of app elegance that are possible within such an approach — although this is balanced by good security, in effect, enforced through the connection.

At the opposite extreme lies the Native app.  This is full-blooded app development using the likes of Xcode (with Objective C, for iOS), Eclipse (for Android) , Visual Studio (for Microsoft’s WindowsPhone 8, Windows 8 RT and Windows 8) or the Blackberry NDK (with C/C++ for BB10).  All these in different are familiar tools to IT developers.   The primary advantage is that full programmatic capabilities are available and that the app can be self-standing (an increasingly common requirement) but with this comes the disadvantages of complexity, the need for advanced skill sets plus longer development and delivery times.  (Security enforcement can occur at whatever level is appropriate.)

The Hybrid comes somewhere in-between.  Most commonly it is associated with some form of native container which exposes a limited set of APIs in order to obtain increased capabilities.  Almost always some level of library involvement occurs (to provide common functions).  App creation comes via ‘products’ like PhoneGap or Appcelerator Titanium  or Globos with some form of  ’compilation’ at the end to create the app.  As you might expect the advantages and disadvantages are a hybrid of those for the Web-based and the Native — with app security being better than the first though not as good as that coming from the second (the Native).

This categorization, however, hide a larger part of the puzzle — which involves deciding which platform(s) you wish to use.  This can be summarized in a table like that below:

At its ‘worst’, if you wish to provide a native app for all four mobile platforms, you will need to have development skills in four different development environments — Xcode, Eclipse, Visual Studio and NDK as well as the relevant development languages.  This will be expensive if you are responsible for creating an app which can run on all major device variants.

The natural management preference is, therefore, to simplify.  But selecting the Web-based app approach, while vastly less expensive, is likely to produce apps that disappoint on one or both of its two challenges — the quality of the user experience and/or the desirability of being able to use the app offline.  The appeal of, say, HTML5 as a cross platform delivery mechanism sounds great but simply does not produce the quality of result that most now expect to have to deliver.

The Hybrid approach, while enabling a richer delivery than the Web-based, does not see to offer a great deal more.  (The downsides of the Web app and the Hybrid were demonstrated, rather ironically, by the official MWC2013 app which needed a connection in order to find what you were looking for within the exposition.  It remains an ongoing irony that the MWC organizers and/or their sponsors seem unable, or unwilling, to provide comprehensive mobile communication for attendees — though, to be fair, to do this for four days  in an internal space of c 100,000m2 occupied by c 50,000 people a day and probably with in excess of 150,000-200,000 devices is a technical challenge for anyone.)

Unfortunately, the conclusion to emerge seems to be that — if you want to contain cost and complexity when building mobile apps — you must:

• either choose one (possibly two) platforms (from iOS, Android, Windows or BB1)
• or decide that the Web-based and/or Hybrid are adequate.

Yet this is, in effect, a technical decision.  It may not be what the business wants, which is sophistication suited for purpose. Fit for purpose transcends complexity and cost issues, which is why the mobile app world is becoming so expensive.

An example: the Economist has an (offline) app for the iPhone, iPad, Android and the Blackberry Playbook (though not for Windows 8 or BB10).  Thus those who are on Windows 8 and BB10 cannot read offline.  These existing apps, in effect, replace the experience of reading the physical magazine (though it calls itself a newspaper) by placing the content on-screen.  If, however, the reading experience is not good, then any publisher risks losing subscriber  enchantment.  As it so happens, the Economist’s Android app has problems: it crashes inconsistently.  This is, for the publisher, a nightmare.  It is as if the ink on the printed version suddenly disappears, but might reappear later — or might not.  While nobody likes a bad experience what is possibly worse is an inconsistent one: if you do not know what you will receive, even though you may most often receive what you want, you will likely despair.  In the Economist example the fear must be that a subscriber will give up and cancel his or her subscription — because he or she cannot read when he or she wishes to read.

Where does this lead? MWC2013 proved unable to deliver evidence of impending simplification of mobile app development.  In fact it was rather the reverse.

In an ideal world one would like to design and create in one ‘master environment’ and then use this as the basis to generate optimized apps for each of the selected target platforms.  When IBM bought Worklight in early 2012 it obtained an approach very similar to this, for this was Worklight’s specialty.  Yet today’s IBM solution, incorporating a mix of Worklight and Rationale (and Tivoli) technologies and experience, represents — as you might expect — traditional IT application  development applied to mobile platforms.  It works.  It is also heavyweight (and necessarily expensive).  But is may also only have limited relevance (mainly to IBMs traditional customers — large organizations) and be top-heavy for those who wish to be nimble and flexible.

This raises a question, implicit in what was shown at MWC2013: is mobile apps development at a crossroads:

• either you accept the IBM approach, app development becomes more and more like traditional IT development — which may be fine for enterprises but does imply a certain association with cumbersome and painful delivery schedules
• or you hope the platform owners (Apple, Google, Microsoft and Blackberry/RIM) will combine to make native app development simpler and with much reduced inconsistencies — perhaps creating a unified app development environment (candidly, hell will freeze over long before this happens — and why should they be interested?)
• or some innovation appears which enables a single design and build approach (much like that originally delivered by Worklight) which can then be pointed at the selected target platforms.

For those looking for mobile apps development to be in swift, responsive, fresh and quick to market, the first option provides an increasingly negative association with traditional IT practices (slow, expensive, unresponsive, etc.).   In contrast mobile apps at present possesses positive associations and aspirations.

Now consider what might happen if (say) an innovator delivered multi-platform/device app creation in (say) a SaaS-type fee-based  model wherein:

• the design and build (and initial testing by simulation) occurs off-line (but could be on-line)
• optimized platform-specific app versions arrive after submission online to a ‘creation service’.

With such an approach mobile app developers could concentrate on form and function, and less on platform specifics (indeed the better any device/platform simulators, the better the ultimate outcome).  The qualities of “swift, responsive, fresh and quick to market ” would combine with those of high quality native implementations optimized for the relevant platforms.

Is this a total pipedream?  On the raw evidence of MWC2013, yes.  But interesting innovators are constantly appearing, if not going far enough.  For example, take Apmato (Berlin, Germany) — which is ready to offer a SaaS-like, friendly mobile app development service for all sizes of business.  It has decided to implement an approach like that of Content Management Systems — any Apmato app consumes content from Apmato content servers with Apmato providing a whole mobile app service (even down to managing the submission process to Apple or Google).  While this does not go anywhere near as far as providing a full native mobile app development service, it does provide much of what a mobile native app development service back end needs.

If MWC2013 provided no obvious answers it did provide indicators.  The most important is that mobile native app development for any one platform will continue to be expensive in 2013 and even more so for more than one platform.  As customers (enterprise or consumer) buy their own devices, trying to limit choice to ‘just’ iOS or Android will be infeasible.  The result will be multiple mobile app dilemmas in 2013 — but there are some indicators of what might happen by MWC2014.

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepo<br>LinkedIn:&nbsp;https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo &nbsp; &nbsp; , Title:&nbsp;Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The… Read more

This past week in San Francisco Saba held their annual customer conference, Saba People Summit. After several hours of meetings with their executive team, my primary take away is that Saba is returning their focus (in both product development and in marketing) to their core strengths in Learning (formal and informal) and Development (ex: career planning, improving skills, etc.) This is a shift from the 2012 summit, where they launched Saba People Cloud (SPC), which they referred to as: "The first, people-centric Social Enterprise Platform that connects all the people in the value chain and enables strategic people processes". That (fluffy) message clearly did not resonate well, and Saba has responded appropriately by now talking less about "being social" and more about how their platform can help people learn, become better employees and advanced their careers.

This return to their strengths comes at a good time, as customers are looking for a more pragmatic approach to "social software", which I refer to as "Purposeful Collaboration". With purposeful collaboration, platforms and process are put in place with the goal of achieving specific business outcomes. For example, an engineering team could be focused on improving product quality, marketing could be trying to increase the lead pipeline, or customer support could be looking to reduce call times.




For Saba, purposeful collaboration manifests itself around talent management use-cases. For example, instead of just showing us a demo of teams sharing status updates or collaborating on a project, Saba highlighted how SPC can display course catalogues, enabling students to discuss content and provide reviews, plus via seamless e-commerce functionality, courses can be purchased, and once they are completed certifications are displayed on people's profiles.



Saba's product portfolio contains three primary offerings: Saba Enterprise Cloud (SEC), Saba People Cloud and Saba Meetings.

• SEC is their original talent management platform and is what the majority of their customers are currently using. The name is misleading as it is available both on-premises (which is how most of their customers are currently deployed) and in the cloud.
• Saba People Cloud contains all the standard elements of a social platform that you'd expect such as activity streams and file-sharing, plus one of the most robust feature sets around profiles and directories that I've seen. It also offers excellent real time communication integration with Saba Meetings, formerly Centra. Even though Saba People Cloud was launched last year, I got the feeling from several execs (via the tone of their voice, defensive wording, etc.) that it was a bit early, but they now feel SPC is truly ready for customers to start using it. Saba has a Services offering called LEAP which will help customers make the transition from SEC to SPC. However, since SPC is cloud only, customers who wish to continue with their on-premises deployments will have to stay on SEC. This could be a concern for customers, as SPC appears to be where the majority of Saba's development work will be going forward.
  
  

Despite a difficult year which included several executive departures (including founder and CEO Bobby Yazdani) as well as investigations into the company's financial practices, Saba People Summit 2013 had quite a positive vibe. The customers I spoke with seemed happy and employees where very proud of the progress they have made on their products. In my opinion Saba People Cloud is quite a capable platform, especially when integrated with Saba Meetings. It should provide a good solution for customers that are looking to provide a modern (cloud-based, socially enabled) Learning and Development solution to their employees and partners.