Making the most of mobility

Adam Turner

Apple’s much-lauded iPhone 3G has finally landed in Australia, but it’s just one of a number of sophisticated mobile phones that let users conduct business from the palm of their hand.

Along with the old chestnuts of push email and calendar access, such phones often let you surf the web, edit Office documents and even run presentations directly from the handset.

The inclusion of GPS for satellite tracking also opens up a range of new features, from in-car navigation to the automatic collection of spatial data by a mobile workforce.

When properly integrated into an organisation’s backend systems, a smartphone can allow managers to monitor key business processes remotely.

The phones can also tie into systems such as Microsoft’s Sharepoint to speed up the approval process, creating a more nimble organisation equipped to make decisions quickly.

Security policies often let administrators remotely lock or wipe lost phones to protect sensitive corporate data.

In Australia, the biggest hindrance to smartphone adoption has been slow data speeds and high data costs.

The rollout of HSDPA mobile networks such as Telstra’s national Next G network have offered a significant speed boost, while over the next few years Vodafone and Optus aim to expand their metro HSPDA coverage to span the country.

This year’s mobile data price war between Vodafone and 3 has seen their mobile data charges drop dramatically, while Optus and Telstra have offered limited pricing relief.

As for the the phones themselves, the competition is really between platforms more than between individual devices. BlackBerry and Apple both build their own hardware and software for their mobile devices, generally offering a stable platform with a smooth user experience.

Many other mobile operating systems also support BlackBerry connectivity.

Palm’s smartphones switched from using Palm’s own software to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile several year ago, and a wealth of other hardware makers such as HTC, i-mate, Samsung and LG also use Microsoft’s offering. Nokia recently announced plans to fully acquire Symbian, which makes the software used by Nokia and several other smartphones builders.

New mobile phone operating systems are also coming, such as Google’s Android and the open source LiMo Platform.

The line between consumer and business phones is starting to blur as the iPhone becomes more business-friendly and BlackBerry becomes more consumer-friendly.

With many people forced to carry a business phone 24/7, they’re demanding features for both work and play.

Many smartphones feature a full QWERTY keyboard, either below the screen or sliding out from underneath.

Some feature a virtual QWERTY keyboard on the touchscreen, while others support handwriting recognition with a stylus. Most smartphones feature an MP3 player and camera, but this can create issues as some workplaces ban camera phones as a security precaution.

Smartphone rollouts are no longer the domain of large corporates, creating significant opportunities for the channel, according to i-mate APAC marketing manager Allison Caruk.

“We are now seeing the small business sector opening right up and we are even tapping into that top-end consumer base.

We see a very big opportunity in that small business arena in particular, those businesses who don’t really have their own IT department.

If I was an IT reseller I would be going hard for that sector,” Caruk said.

“i-mate’s advanced fleet management offerings put features in the grasp of a small business that it may not have had the resources to handle before.
You can remotely customise, lock and even wipe a device and it’s all web-based.
A channel partner can design a customise build for our devices.
Administrators can also do clever things such as remotely change mail settings.
They can even send out a completely new build. These features make it easy for end-users to manage their devices, but they also make it easy for the channel to offer managed services designed around smartphones.”

The BlackBerry smartphone is also making inroads into the SME space, said Robert Saviane, marketing director for Research In Motion – the company behind BlackBerry.

“The significant adoption in the larger enterprise arena over the past two or three years has been largely around the fundamentals of making wireless push email available. What we’ve seen more recently is that need to access information anywhere, anytime really moving down into the small to medium business market, and even further down into what we call the prosumer level,” Saviane said.

“What we know about small businesses is that they are often a lot more mobile. Therefore that need to have access to pertinent information anywhere anytime is actually more intense. We see that segment as being a real growth area right now and going forward over the next 12 to 18 months. The advantage for a small business is that, with Blackberry, essentially the customer is buying an entire platform, not just the devices but the service and software that go with it. Of course there’s plenty of opportunity for channel players to get a slice of the managed services through approaches such as hosting BlackBerry Enterprise Servers, which integrate with a business’ backend.

“Wireless email has become a core business tool, but that is really only where it starts. The BlackBerry platform enables a whole range of different capabilities beyond wireless email, calendaring and address book. For the channel there is a lot of value in terms of delivering applications such as field service and sales force automation as well as CRM applications. These present a really interesting opportunity for the channel to add value and strengthen the relationship with the customer.”

Along with BlackBerry, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile is also primarily targeted at business users. The growing adoption of Unified Communications will in turn drive the adoption of Windows Mobile devices, said Rick Anderson, Microsoft enterprise mobility solutions specialist.

“We are probably going to see a growth in pushing Presence and Instant Messaging information to mobile devices, off the back of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server. Sharepoint integration will also allow you to expose key information on a device in an easy and meaningful way. If I was an OCS or Sharepoint-focused partner, I would certainly look at how I could deliver this information to mobile devices,” Anderson said.

“On top of this, I would say that as soon as we are able to deliver some of that KPI and IM information on the road, we will see a greater proliferation of mobile devices. It will certainly go beyond just messaging to also offer specific tools to sales and professional services folks.”

Channel players with Visual Studio and .NET skills are well-equipped to develop such applications and services for the Windows Mobile platform, according to Anderson.

“We’re helping our partners move into the mobile space by helping them upgrade some of their skills, such as Visual Studio and your .NET. In particular we have run some three-day workshops on taking your skills in Visual Studio and then making them mobile-friendly.”

Australian telco Telstra is also working to simplify smartphones services and integration, making it easy for the channel to leverage smartphones as part of a wider business solution.

A key area to focus on is productivity gains obtained from location-based services, said Telstra Product Management executive director Ross Fielding.

Telstra offers a range of mobile Fleet Management or People Management tools such as the Xora TimeTrack employee time-tracking system, Fielding explained.

“The sweet spot that we see for businesses is thinking about how you can make them more productive, making use of the location information that we have in our mobile network,” he said.

“Sure we can do that now, but where do we go to from there? Wouldn’t it be great to access your CRM systems on your handheld? That will be where we move to next. That is a little more difficult because there is more integration required. At the same, we think there’s still plenty of growth in providing basic PDA functionality, because there is still a lot of businesses that don’t quite know how to set that up. Enterprises do because they typically have an IT department, but in a small business it’s not as easy. We are putting a lot of work into simplifying that.

“Third-party developers in the channel should do exactly the same thing we are doing right now. They need to look at where the opportunities are in terms of apps and services, and then work out if they have the right skills necessary to help implement those sorts of things.”

Research In Motion’s Robert Saviane also believes that the channel must leverage its understanding of customers’ businesses to meet, or anticipate, their mobile needs.

“Their needs are becoming more complex and more converged. Look at those business processes that add value in the way in which those businesses interact with their own customers. What we find is that once the focus is around those areas, it becomes obvious the sorts of opportunities that exist in terms of a wireless solution that they are able to deploy and actually drive value from,” Saviane said.

Whilst many IT projects are driven by solid ROI figures, Microsoft’s Rick Anderson is seeing more organisations’ relaxed approach to smartphone deployments.

“A lot of the information worker-type deployments that are happening now tend to not be so hardcore in terms of the business case prior to actually making some of these decisions,” Anderson said.

“It is being driven a little bit more by “here is a great device, here is the interface, here is the information you can grab from it, what can you guys do with it?” This is a little bit odd for the enterprise environment, but there seems to be a shift in thinking towards offering such tools to employees and seeing how they run with them.”

i-mate’s Allison Caruk agrees that selling the value of smartphones is about showing rather than telling.

“Pitching smartphones is about going hard on the productivity angle – avoiding the rework so you don’t need to wait until you get back to the office to place that order, for example. Demonstration is absolutely key, customers need to actually see the devices and what they’re capable of.”