CTO Blog
Mobility has seen fast growth and been a hot topic the in last couple of years and at Mobile World Congress this year, it turned a corner and moved beyond being just a procession of breakthrough devices and new forms of wireless. The question is who noticed this in the IT or enterprise IT community and will they make the connection in terms of the enterprise user and models for cloud delivery?
The focus, announcements and fun have – in the past – always seemed to centre on new devices with incredible capabilities that invited the comparison with the functionality of a PC. Much less time was given to what people are using mobile devices for. That is the real game change to look at and at least one group of 24 operators grasped this and established a new alliance. The alliance is focussed on one simple objective: to take on Apple and its App Store dominance. Under the old rules of the game anything that increased connection time and usage was good, so as long as you were part of the Apple game all those extra call minutes and data were just what you wanted.
As an operator, you expected to have to provide a lot of content yourself to get this to happen, but now it seems you don’t have to which is good, right? Wrong! It now seems that the content is the driving force in the selection of the network and even the device itself. Not like before, when the phone itself and the selection offered by an operator, were the driving force and basis of competition. This is a serious shift and further compounded by users being prepared to buy their own phone and use bare SIM-based contracts. This once again forces operators back into being mere commodity providers, competing on price with high churn rates.
If Apple has become the dominant driver in this market with the iPhone, then it has done so on the basis of the content in the App Store. In many ways, the model is a small and proprietary mimic of what clouds are about and most likely contains some lessons to learn from in terms of user expectations and behaviour. The real point of clouds, including the name, was to support and broaden a web 2.0 type experience in which users had access to, and could choose from, many different ‘services’, or ‘apps’ without needing to know anything about, or be constrained by, the underlying technology. To understand this and see an interesting diagram on what is intended, it’s worth reading the introductory paragraphs about cloud computing on Wikipedia.
But what can we take from Mobile World Congress and what does it teach us about deploying cloud computing within the enterprise? Well Marc Benioff at Salesforce.com has the answer and I for one agree with him, though I don’t like his use of the term cloud 2.0! The answer is that people want to use and swap information, expertise and capabilities on a continuous basis in support of the continuously changing experiences that they are having and to use this to help guide their decisions and activities. Look more carefully at what is in the Apple App store: it’s a vast range of services that can support current activities, whether choosing wine, using a spirit level to put up a shelf, or … well the list is endless. The list seems endless because anyone in the world can produce a simple service about their unique idea readily with all the complexity taken out of the task of writing it by the Infostructure of the Apple App Store. As Marc says, we will go past the idea that clouds deliver IT more cheaply and move to a new generation of clouds and a model where constant interaction and interchange of data and services between users support their activities.
In their private life users already have this kind of experience, but in work life, they are increasingly bypassing enterprise systems. The next development is likely to be the formal enablement of supporting users in safely downloading and using the services and apps that they choose to use to be more productive in their roles. So for me, Mobile World Congress is an object lesson in what is likely to happen when user environment capabilities grow more significantly than device functionality.
About the author
Capgemini Global Chief Technology Officer, Andy is a member of the Capgemini Group management board and advises on all aspects of technology-driven market changes, together with being a member of the Policy Board for the British Computer Society. Andy is the author of many white papers, and the co-author three books that have charted the current changes in technology and its use by business starting in 2006 with ‘Mashup Corporations’ detailing how enterprises could make use of Web 2.0 to develop new go to market propositions. This was followed in May 2008 by Mesh Collaboration focussing on the impact of Web 2.0 on the enterprise front office and its working techniques, then in 2010 “Enterprise Cloud Computing: A Strategy Guide for Business and Technology leaders” co-authored with well-known academic Peter Fingar and one of the leading authorities on business process, John Pyke. The book describes the wider business implications of Cloud Computing with the promise of on-demand business innovation. It looks at how businesses trade differently on the web using mash-ups but also the challenges in managing more frequent change through social tools, and what happens when cloud comes into play in fully fledged operations. Andy was voted one of the top 25 most influential CTOs in the world in 2009 by InfoWorld and is grateful to readers of Computing Weekly who voted the Capgemini CTOblog the best Blog for Business Managers and CIOs each year for the last three years.
I could not agree more and I guess this is what has puzzled reviewers of phones since the iPhone was release. They just compared the tech specs with some device that had more in the list and said the iPhone won’t sell…and well…to their surprise it did…
its the old competing on feeds and speeds issue rather than looking at what people really want to use devices for!
For the same reason, I predict the iPad will sell very good (despite its so-called ‘disappointing specs’) and it will trigger yet another wave of specialised mini-applications. Should we still call the iPad ‘mobile’ by the way..?
hi ron – i think you are right, when youthink of the progression through music, to books, its got to move increasingly to video next and the iPad looks right for all of these moves. Speaking as a enthusiastic Amazon Kindle user for eighteen months it suprized me how good it was in comparison!
Great post!
I feel mobile operators have an uphill challenge against being turned into just pure utilities. The vast majority of them have expertise only as infrastructure providers not as content providers. I find it hard to foresee any content service from operators that is both seamless and diverse in its offerings.
On the enterprise front: there’s a great special in the Jan 28th Economist on social networks and the enterprise. It also reiterates the notion that employees are increasingly bypassing enterprise systems.
My concern is that for the telecom operators you can read the System Integrators. There is the same need to recognise how not to become a commodity supplier on price of much of the current IT environment!
Hi Andy.
Nice post
I think google Android would provide a radical change in adoption of Mobile apps and Devices giving a stiff competition to Apple , like whats happening with Microsoft now.
Andy -
Good article by you providing a quick overview of several technology areas touched by Mobile computing especially with the “AppStore” phenomena from Apple and also Nokia reving up the “OVI” store.
At the university level in Helsinki there is lot lot around Content based research going on including this Opensource effort – http://www.tml.tkk.fi/~starkom… – a prof named Sasu tarkoma – publishing a lot from 2006 or even before ..Some real examples – http://www.hiit.fi/fi/dynamos – context aware services etc..And of course nokia research also teaming up with Global research – http://research.nokia.com/rese… – I agree with you on the Marc Benioff Cloud 2.0!!
wow – and thats a good post too! three good urls to add more to the topic. very gratefull thanks ! andy
Content is king, hasn’t that always been the mantra. Don’t we all visit a web site or blog because of the consistent availability of quality information. Again from Apple the iTunes Music Store success has come from content availability, 10 billion tunes downloaded since 2003. Excellent article that reiterates that we users are more interested in substance over style.
The other interesting point about the ‘content is king’ truism (thanks Shailesh for reminding us!) is that we used to worry that there would be too much content for us to find what we wanted. In fact increasingly the interaction communication of social communities means we find content by recommendation.
Andy – on a different note, Marc’s article on Chatter, is it healthy to have similar but more collaboration tools launched almost every other day..ofcourse it all about competition and good for users, but their USPs might start sounding repetitive
thats a good point and its one that i see as an issue, and raised this morning with SAP about thier 12sprint collaboration beta. My quesiton was a simple one; obviously the basic capability of all collaboration tools is pretty well the same. So the quesiton must be to SAP, and every other vendor, how does your collaboration tool leverage your customers existing investment in your products? The alignment to and leverage of a specfic existing products will in my view be the differentiation that will make a new, (as opposed to existing ones that already have volume such as Facebook or Twitter),collaborative product a success
Andy, Thanks for the article. I have been using a smart phone for a long time, while the general public were slow adapters. However the iPhone changed all that rapidly with its “coolness” factor. This has caused a change in behavior that a large part of the world operates – or rather the iphone toting world operates. I dont think the device game (offering a compelling device) will be a differentiator – eg: users that want the iPhone jailbreak it.
So given the fact that apple has come up with a very compelling solution for a pleasant user experience, and the ability for anyone to develop an application and service – what do you see as a compelling reason for people to move away to another solution. Is the possibility of having a solution that offers more openness (eg: Andriod) than Apple provides and possibly power cost and less “Apple” control. Do you see that as a possible alternate? Would love to hear your thoughts on what other content providers and telecom service providers can do to get a bite of this huge market.
mmm What a question! i strongly suspect that it will not be possible to attack the Apple market using their own approach. they have created what looks to be a sustainable first mover advantage. Instead i think the most likely move will be another ‘white space’ creation that provides an equally compelling ecosystem where providers and users both gain. To me thats the real basis of the Apple model, it created a win-win for both sides of the market. does that have to be head on into the Apple space? not necessarily as the Internet of Things is made increasingly real by genunine ‘cloud technolgy’ there will be many new possibilities.
Andy, Thanks for your response! It is going to be interesting to see what new possibilities come from the cloud computing world to transform our tomorrow (or make that our quickly changing tomorrow) further.
whilst the management focus for growing business revenue remains focused on innovation and white space we should always remember to expect the true challenge to leadership to be the unexpected! in the past it tended to be better execution and you can see how that reflected in the use of techology for IT. the future use of technology looks to be different!