Daily links for 05/18/2012

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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My Impact mainstage talk about mobile

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Bob Sutor

On May 2 I gave a short talk on the main stage of the Impact conference about some IBM announcements around mobile. I gave some analyst statistics and then announcement the IBM Mobile Foundation along with IBM Worklight 5.0. Here’s a video of the event.

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Daily links for 05/16/2012

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • How Mobile is Rapidly Evolving the World – Forbes

    “According to Price Waterhouse Coopers’ latest Digital IQ survey, 66% of organizations are investing in mobile technologies for their employees. But these businesses are reacting to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon, most are not preparing for it.”

    tags: mobile

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Daily links for 05/12/2012

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • IBM Innovate 2012: Learn what’s next, now – United States

    “Innovate 2012 will show you how to harness the power of software-driven innovation to deliver smarter products and improve business outcomes. IBM Rational will share the stage with customers, business partners and your peers to show you how you can make the most of your investments now by managing complexity, lowering risk, and driving down costs.”

    tags: ibm

  • Apple Map App to Replace Google Mapping in iOS – John Paczkowski – Mobile – AllThingsD

    “Sources tell 9to5Mac that Apple will abandon Google’s mapping back-end in the next major iteration of iOS, replacing it with a brand-new mapping application powered by Apple technology. We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tentpole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies. C3 did use missile-targeting technology to develop its gorgeous 3-D models of major cities, so …”

    tags: apple map ios

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Daily links for 05/10/2012

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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What I learned about mobile at IBM Impact 2012

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Bob Sutor

In this post I talk about IBM mobile products and what happened at a large IBM conference. As a result, it is more specific to IBM’s offerings than some of my other blog entries.

This week I’ve been in Las Vegas at the IBM Impact conference. The days have been a blur of meetings with partners, customers, and colleagues from around the world. We’ve talked about the new PureApplication System and updates across the software portfolio for connectivity, integration, business process and decision management, and application integration.

The Liberty Profile in the new WebSphere Application Server version 8.5 has been an especially hot topic. Conversations about that often go something like “It takes up less than 50Mb. Wow! It loads in 5 seconds. Show me! You can develop with it on your Mac. IBM did that?”

We’ve also had quite a few conversations about mobile and I’ve learned a lot.

Now I’m one of the executive leaders for mobile at IBM and I discussed it (briefly) on the main stage on Tuesday, gave an hour+ talk on “Top 11 Trends for Mobile Enterprise,” did press interviews and a panel with journalists, and challenged and was challenged by industry analysts on the topic. So I had a lot to say about mobile. But more than whatever I said, I learned an incredible amount of what our customers and partners are doing with mobile today. We also discussed how IBM’s new mobile products, IBM Worklight 5.0 and the IBM Mobile Foundation, could be essential to them over the next few years.

Here’s a bit of what I learned.

System integrators are looking to pick the one or two best mobile platforms on which to focus their efforts. The hybrid mobile app development model in IBM Worklight is very appealing because of its open standards and technology approach, and because it allows the creation of everything from pure native apps to those that are mostly HTML5 content.

Security and app management are critically important. Both IBM Worklight and Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices, included in the IBM Mobile Foundation, have capabilities that address this. In some organizations, the BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, movement is accelerating their concerns but also their need to react quickly. My suggestion is to consider security and device management as extensions of what you already do for your website, web applications, and hardware like laptops and servers. Don’t think of mobile as this odd new thing, consider it as adding on to what you do already.

Partners have started building mobile apps on Worklight, often without any initial guidance from IBM. This is wonderful. It reaffirms what we knew when we acquired the company earlier this year: Worklight is an elegant product that you can use to create mobile apps for multiple device types, connecting them securely to your backend infrastructure.

Mobile apps are not islands. That is, don’t think of a mobile app server as something that sits in the corner by itself while the rest of your infrastructure is elsewhere. We included IBM WebSphere Cast Iron in the IBM Mobile Foundation because we knew that customers and clients needed to have apps talk to enterprise applications like SAP but also services that run on clouds.

Infrastructure support for a mobile app could be very little or might need to be very large. IBM Worklight 5.0 will ship the Liberty Profile of WebSphere Application Server in the box. So you get small and fast. If you have an existing WebSphere Application Server ND deployment, you can put IBM Worklight right on top of that. This includes WebSphere running on System z mainframes using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Mobile can extend your business. If you have a web presence for retail, mobile can extend that. If you are a bank and have ATMs, mobile can extend some of those functions to mobile devices. If you have automotive repair shops, mobile can increase customer trust and loyalty.

Mobile can transform your business. Your first mobile apps will enable some core functionality, but later apps and versions may bring in social, analytics, commerce, and industry-specific elements. Don’t think of just an air travel app, think of one that helps me use my time in airports productively and eat healthily.

So to sum it up: mobile is surging for good reasons, customers and partners are asking the right questions, IBM Worklight is appealing to them as platform on which to build multiple mobile apps, we think the IBM Mobile Foundation is a solid base on which construct your mobile enterprise, and I’m looking forward to showcasing the many, many mobile apps created by and for our customers and partners at Impact 2013.

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Daily links for 05/02/2012

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • IBM Introduces New Foundation For Mobile Computing – MarketWatch

    “IBM has been steadily investing in the mobile space for more than a decade, both organically and through acquisitions: building a complete portfolio of software and services that delivers enterprise-ready mobility for clients. Increasingly, enterprises are reaching beyond their traditional IT boundaries by consuming new Cloud services and creating new mobile applications for employees and customers for broad consumption by customers, partners and developers.”

    tags: ibm mobile foundation

  • IBM Goes After Enterprise Mobility Projects With Mobile Foundation Portfolio | PCWorld Business Center

    “IBM also added ways for enterprises to bring their current data and services to mobile devices. New capabilities in IBM DataPower appliances are designed to help IT departments quickly bring their existing resources to mobile devices. WebSphere Cast Iron, based on technology the company acquired through its 2010 buyout of hybrid cloud software vendor Cast Iron, can help enterprises link mobile applications to clouds and other back-end infrastructure, according to IBM.”

    tags: ibm mobile

  • IBM Creates Foundation for Mobile Computing – Mobile Devices news from Channel Insider

    “Looking to give solution providers a leg up in the mobile computing market that is expected to grow from $22 billion in 2012 to $36 billion by 2015, IBM today rolled out Mobile Foundation, a portfolio of IBM mobile computing technologies that are designed to simplify the management of mobile computing and applications in the enterprise.”

    tags: ibm foundation mobile

  • IBM Launches New Mobile Foundation Portfolio at Impact 2012 – Mobile and Wireless – News & Reviews – eWeek.com

    “Building on its recent acquisition of Worklight, the new foundation further expands IBM’s strategy to provide clients with a mobile platform that spans application development, integration, security and management. For example, using the IBM Mobile Foundation, an airline can transform the way it interacts with its customers by establishing a secure two-way relationship with mobile applications, IBM said. Now, they can use their applications not only to keep customers apprised of their travel plans and current weather conditions, but also send push-notifications to alert them if there are changes or opportunities for upgrades. This is all made possible by deep integration into the airlines’ back-end systems and relevant cloud services.”

    tags: ibm mobile

  • IBM goes after mobile developers with a single platform for IOS and Android – The Inquirer

    “IBM has wasted no time in exploiting the technology it acquired through its January purchase of mobile apps platform provider Worklight, which underpins the new Mobile Foundation release. At its Impact show in Las Vegas on Monday, the firm launched a new set of mobile tools that let developers build a single application and then run it across multiple mobile platforms, such as Apple’s IOS, Google’s Android and RIM’s Blackberry.:

    tags: ibm mobile

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The spectrum of hybrid mobile app development with Worklight

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Bob Sutor

The hybrid approach to developing mobile apps offers advantages for those wishing to produce pure native apps or those that have HTML5 content.

Earlier in 2012, on January 31, IBM announced its planned acquisition of Worklight, a provider of a mobile application development platform. Several weeks later the deal closed. There’s a lot of discussion of Worklight and IBM’s Mobile Enterprise strategy here at the IBM Impact Conference in Las Vegas this week.

Worklight’s components include a Java-based server that can run on the WebSphere Application Server, developer tools that can integrate with app lifecycle products from IBM Rational, a runtime monitoring and application management console, and multi-device runtime support. For this last part, Worklight uses a hybrid approach based on PhoneGap (now incubating in the Apache Software Foundation as the Cordova project).

A hybrid approach like this is an elegant way of using open technologies and standards to span the full spectrum of mobile application development.

The mobile spectrum for hybrid

The advantages to using HTML5 is that the content (HTML), CSS (formatting and UI), and Javascript (coding logic and UI) are portable across browsers on many devices. Your HTML5 will look and operate the same on Apple iOS, Android, and other modern devices.

If you can build your app entirely using HTML5, do it. You can place it on the web or your intranet and your users can access it anytime they want. You can also update it when you wish. You can also skip the whole app store experience. This approach is based on open standards, the best way we have found to handle interoperability.

At the other end, we have Native. This uses the low level APIs and programming languages for specific devices. For example, for Apple iPhones and iPads you would usually code your app in Objective-C and link in any other libraries you need. The full power of the SDK and device is available to you.

It is also completely non-portable, albeit powerful. When you need to produce an Android version, be prepared to code the app all over again. Each version will look completely native to the device, and this is an advantage to multiplatform approaches that force apps to have a common but non-native look everywhere. (“Our app works the same and looks ugly everywhere.”)

For hybrid apps, you use only enough native code to establish the main processing loop for your app, use device capabilities like the camera, and link in any special binary libraries. You try to maximize your use of HTML5 so that as much of your app is portable. PhoneGap and hence Worklight can help make your use of native code easier to port across platforms. Throw in Worklight’s support for Javascript frameworks like Dojo, jQuery Mobile, and Sencha Touch, and you’ve got a powerful solution.

Here’s something important that a lot of people miss about the hybrid approach. If you use no HTML5 content whatsoever, you still get the app manageability, push notification framework, and security from Worklight. So you get a pure native app that is nevertheless in the same “family” as your mobile apps that do include HTML5.

At the other other extreme, even if you use no special native features and try to have your app being almost completely HTML5, you get to put your app in an app store, and you, once again, get the app manageability, push notification framework, and security from Worklight.

Worklight logoSo Worklight and its hybrid approach covers almost the entire range from pure HTML5 to pure Native.

What if you already have a source of HTML like an app server or portal and want to build a mobile app around it? You can use this content, CSS, and Javascript as the main core of a mobile app built with Worklight. So what you built in the past can be repurposed in your mobile apps.

This also means that your developers’ web programming skills are usable when building Worklight hybrid mobile apps. If you are a software developer, this is a very effective way to quickly add mobile app development to your portfolio of skills.

Some apps will use a lot of HTML5, some will use very little. With Worklight’s hybrid approach, your skills are applicable across many different kinds of mobile apps. This is important, trust me, because you won’t be building just one mobile app in the future.

Also see:

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Some views from 32,000 feet

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Bob Sutor

As I flew from Chicago to Las Vegas yesterday to attend the IBM Impact conference, I was lucky enough to sit on the left side of the plane in a windows seat. As the 3 and 1/2 hour trip proceeded, I used my iPad to photograph some of the changing landscape underneath us.

The last three rather look like Mars, if Mars had water, clouds, a blue sky …

Click on an image to see a larger version.

US landscape US landscape US landscape
US landscape US landscape

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Daily links for 04/25/2012

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 04/12/2012 – OpenStack Foundation Edition

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 04/11/2012 – IBM PureSystems Edition

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • IBM News room – 2012-04-11 IBM Sets the Stage for the Next Era of Computing

    “IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced a major step forward in a new, simpler era of computing with the introduction of a new category of “expert integrated systems.” This new family is the first with built-in expertise based on IBM’s decades of experience running IT operations for tens of thousands of clients in 170 countries. IBM’s expert integrated systems family – PureSystems – is the result of $2 billion in R&D and acquisitions over four years, an unprecedented move by IBM to integrate all IT elements, both physical and virtual. The new systems family offers clients an alternative to today’s enterprise computing model, where multiple and disparate systems require significant resources to set up and maintain.”

    tags: ibm expert systems

  • Marie L. Wieck: We’re Entering a New Era of Computing

    “The CIOs I talk with describe the avalanche of projects they face. Almost three quarters of the CIOs say they are investing in mobile deployments this year, of which one-third of those will be deployed in a cloud. However, 70 percent of their budgets, on average, are still spent on maintenance and 34 percent of their projects are late. It’s a vicious cycle.”

    tags: ibm expert systems

  • Experts on Expertise : How PureSystems will impact the IT experience – YouTube

    “A group of industry leaders sit down to discuss how PureSystems will change the overall experience and economics of IT, and what this means for their businesses.”

    tags: ibm expert systems video

  • Solving Corporate Computing’s Dilemma: Melding Simplicity and Flexibility « A Smarter Planet Blog

    “Organizations shouldn’t have to spend so much on routine operations. A commissioned study* conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM shows that integrated systems can cut substantial amounts of time and budget for many common IT projects. For instance, pre-integration can make it possible to install and put to use new computing systems in hours rather than days. By handling routine tasks much more efficiently and effectively, that frees up time and money for companies to innovate—trying out new technologies and new business models.”

    tags: ibm expert systems

  • I.B.M. Aims to Sharply Simplify Corporate Data Center Technology – NYTimes.com

    “I.B.M. is bringing its answer to the marketplace on Wednesday — an effort that industry executives and analysts say is the most ambitious step yet to simplify and streamline data center technology. With this initiative, I.B.M. will sell bundles of server hardware and software packaged in simplified systems, with setup and maintenance automated by intelligent software. Tasks that now take days or weeks can be reduced to hours, the company claims.”

    tags: ibm expert systems

  • IBM Takes On Oracle, Cisco to Simplify Server ‘Scut Work’ – Businessweek

    “International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) (IBM) is taking on Oracle Corp. (ORCL) (ORCL) and Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) (CSCO) with server computers and software packaged and automated to reduce the time and money clients spend on “scut work.” The world’s largest computer-services provider built what it calls PureSystems over four years, delivering server systems that are easier to install, automate, update and manage, IBM said in a statement. That frees information-technology staff to work on more valuable, business-specific tasks, it said.”

    tags: ibm expert systems

  • IBM | Expert integrated systems blog

    “IBM PureSystems is the integration platform with all of these capabilities. It offers compute, networking, and storage capabilities with standard components; a virtualization engine and a high level systems management appliance to manage all the resources (14 compute nodes, the Enterprise Chassis, SAN networking switches, storage, and more); it supports resource pooling and intelligent automation for dynamic VM placement and fast deployment of services.”

    tags: ibm expert systems blog

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Introducing PureSystems, IBM’s expert integrated systems family

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Bob Sutor

ibm logoToday IBM introduced the PureSystems family to simultaneously simplify yet make more powerful the hardware and software that organizations use to power their datacenters, cloud, and other computing environments.

From the press release:

With the introduction of the new PureSystems family, IBM is unveiling three major advances that point to a new era of computing technology that is designed to allow businesses to slash the high costs and nagging complexity associated with managing information technology.

  • “Scale-In” System Design: With PureSystems, IBM is introducing a new concept in system design that integrates the server, storage, and networking into a highly automated, simple-to-manage machine. Scale-in design provides for increased density – PureSystems can handle twice as many applications compared to some IBM systems, doubling the computing power per square foot of data center space.
  • Patterns of Expertise: For the first time, IBM is embedding technology and industry expertise through first-of-a-kind software that allows the systems to automatically handle basic, time-consuming tasks such as configuration, upgrades, and application requirements.
  • Cloud Ready integration: Out of the box, all PureSystems family members are built for the cloud, enabling corporations to quickly create private, self-service cloud offerings that can scale up and down automatically.

What this means is the hardware is tightly integrated and easier to configure and maintain. The software patterns complement the hardware and accelerate the use of the systems for the types of workloads that customers really deploy. Finally, since the systems are cloud-ready, PureSystem installations can span use cases from traditional datacenters to private clouds.

This represents a US $2 Billion R&D investment by IBM. Personally, it’s been fascinating watching the pieces come together and the different parts of IBM working to create this new family of products. It’s exciting to finally be able to talk about it!

IBM recently celebrated its 100 year anniversary and talked about the many significant computing innovations it introduced during its first century. I suspect I won’t be around to see the corresponding version for the second hundred years, but I’m very confident that today’s PureSystems introduction will be front and center.

The PureSystems team producing this snazzy infographic to sum up why customers need these new systems.

IBM PureSystems Infographic - IT Headaches

Also see: “Daily links for 04/11/2012 – IBM PureSystems Edition”

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Daily links for 04/05/2012

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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The Apple iPad meets the 1964 NY World’s Fair

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Bob Sutor

1964 exhibitI was 6 years old during the 1964 World’s Fair and so a perfect age to be hugely impressed by all its attractions and views of the future. IBM Research, the arm of the IBM Corporation that does science in the service of all the technological directions of the company, has now published a free Apple iPad app called Minds of Modern Mathematics which focuses on the original exhibit developed by Charles and Ray Eames.

From the press release:

Users can click through more than 500 biographies, milestones and images of artifacts culled from the Mathematica exhibit as well as a high-resolution image of the original timeline poster.

The app also includes the “IBM Mathematics Peep Show,” a series of playful, two-minute animated films by Charles and Ray Eames that offer lessons on mathematical concepts, from exponents to the way ancient Greeks measured the earth.

I first became aware of the Eames’ and their relationship to IBM in the PBS American Masters documentary Charles & Ray Eames: The Architect and the Painter. The iPad app, which is available in the Apple App Store, includes, I believe, a couple of the videos from the documentary. I thought they were wonderful in the film and am looking forward to seeing the rest of them. They explain several interesting mathematical problems and concepts in playful and whimsical ways not often seen elsewhere.

Exhibits like this led many people to consider careers in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences. Coupled with the race to land on the moon, there was a tremendous amount of public support and recognition in the 60s for technological knowledge and innovation. We need to return to this, and quickly. I hope this app helps inspire students around the world to think about mathematics in new ways and to consider learning more of it.

Here’s an example of someone not “getting” the importance of the subject. When I was working on my Ph.D. in mathematics someone remarked to me that I “must know some really large numbers.” Yes, there are numbers, but mathematics is about relationships and structured systems that work together in coherent ways.

I challenge you to take a look at this app and find three things you didn’t know. If you’re pleased and impressed, recommend the app to others.

 

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Daily links for 04/01/2012

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 03/30/2012

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • 5 Cities Benefiting From Mobile Apps

    “City government agencies around the world continue to explore mobile applications to provide services more effectively and to reach citizens in new ways. And it’s not just for civil services — cities are embracing apps to highlight their own civic culture and even promote community action. Here are 10 cities that offer mobile apps for citizens, tourists or both. Does your city have an app? What do you like about it?”

    tags: mobile apps

  • Mobile app developers, don’t forget about privacy and security

    “Hearn believes that mobile app development projects will start to take security and privacy into the design process within the next two years because a lot of countries around the world are focusing on the privacy issues and starting to pass more legislation that make the penalties a lot stricter and harsher for business that don’t do it.”

    tags: mobile privacy security

  • How to Avoid the Common Pitfalls of Mobile App Development

    “Mobile development has come a long way in the past few years. But as technology continues to introduce new and more innovating products at a rapid pace, there’s room for many developers to make huge mistakes along the way — ones that could jeopardize their product or even their entire business.”

    tags: mobile app development

  • Squashing Bugs: The Many Layered Approach to Mobile App Testing

    “We enlisted IBM’s Leigh Williamson, a Distinguished Engineer and a member of the CTO Team, to guide us through the different ways that developers can go about app testing. Testing is not as simple as a developer trying to troubleshoot the native code on an app. Mobile apps are often vertical software systems with a variety of moving parts on the front end, in the middle and in a back-end cloud. Your code on the device may be running perfectly fine, but you would never know it because it is being corrupted from the back end that feeds it information. Or maybe some of the middle-tier services, like third-party SDKs, are running improperly. When something goes wrong, sometimes it is easy to figure out what is broken. Many times, you have no idea.”

    tags: mobile app testing

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Daily links for 03/22/2012

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Ask Ars: how safe is my data stored in iCloud?

    “Apple’s iCloud service lets users sync a staggering amount of data between Macs, Windows PCs, iPhones, and iPads. Though Apple says it stores this data securely in an encrypted format, just how safe is it? An Ars reader wrote in to ask us this question, so we decided to investigate.”

    tags: apple icloud

  • BBC News – Jenna-Louise Coleman takes on Doctor Who role

    “Former Emmerdale actress Jenna-Louise Coleman has landed the role of the Time Lord’s new companion in Doctor Who, the BBC has confirmed. Chief writer Steven Moffat announced the actress will replace Karen Gillan’s character Amy Pond when she leaves the show in the next series.”

    tags: bbc drwho

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Daily links for 03/20/2012

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 03/17/2012

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Mobile security video from EE Times from Mobile World Congress

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Bob Sutor

I’m one of the people interviewed in this video from EE Times done at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona. Next time I’ll try to not move my hands quite so much.

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Daily links for 03/15/2012

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • The New iPad Is Much the Same, Only Better – NYTimes.com

    “The biggest new feature is what Apple calls the Retina display: like the one on the iPhone 4S, it’s a very, very sharp screen. It’s four times as sharp as the iPad 2 — in fact, it’s the sharpest ever on a mobile device. This screen has 3.1 million pixels, which is 1 million pixels more than on a high-definition TV set. (At least Apple says that that’s how many pixels it has; I quit counting after three days.)”

    tags: ipad nytimes apple

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Daily links for 03/13/2012

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Google programming languages failing to gain traction | Application Development – InfoWorld

    “In the March index, released over the weekend, Google saw its Go language drop out of the top 50 while Google’s Dart language was ranked 78th. Oracle’s Java language ranked first, used by 17.1 percent of developers, while Microsoft’s C# came in at the third spot, used by 8.24 percent of developers. The Microsoft Visual Basic language was ranked seventh, used by 4.37 percent of developers. Objective-C, preferred by Apple and used for developing applications for the iPhone and iPad tablet, was ranked fifth, used by 7.38 percent of developers.”

    tags: google programming languages application development

  • New York State High-Efficiency Appliance Rebate Program

    “Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the “Buy Green, Save Green NYS High-Efficiency Appliance Rebate Program” with $3.5 million in federal funds available to New York residents for the purchase of high-efficiency ENERGY STAR® refrigerators and clothes washers. The program begins Monday, March 19.”

    tags: new york rebate

  • Liberate your Web Apps (WASdev)

    “The latest version of WebSphere Application Server (WAS), V8.5 Beta – Liberty Profile, is now available via free download.  If you think you already know WAS, this version may surprise you.  The WAS V8.5 Beta – Liberty Profile, is small, fast and free, because you told us that’s what you wanted.”    

    tags: web ibm websphere liberty

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Return to “Landmines for Open Source in the Mobile Space”

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Before I had my current job involving the IBM mobile platform and product management for the WebSphere Application Server, I worked on Linux and open source. In March of 2011, I gave a talk at POSSCON called “Landmines for Open Source in the Mobile Space.” I gave a look at this again and thought a lot of it was still relevant.

You can see a video of the talk and get a link to the presentation here. What do you think still holds? What is out of date?

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Daily links for 03/10/2012

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • IBM Showcases ‘Deep Thunder’ Weather Forecasting App On iPad | TPM Idea Lab

    “By IBM’s own admission, weather forecasting seemed like an unusual use for its supercomputing technology. But 16 years after it began work the parallel processing supercomputing system that would become known as “Deep Thunder” —- a targeted weather forecasting program — IBM has taken the technology mobile, putting it on an iPad app and showing it off to lawmakers on Capitol Hill at a breakfast event on Wednesday and to reporters at its New York offices later in the week.”

    tags: ibm weather ipad mobile

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Stats for browsers and operating systems accessing sutor.com

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Bob Sutor

I haven’t posted the stats for browser and operating system access to this website since last July, but since I’ve been doing a lot of posting lately on mobile topics, I thought it would be useful to check the stats again. The numbers are from Google Analytics and are for the last six weeks of traffic.

Browsers

Position Browser Percentage
1. Firefox 37.85%
2. Chrome 31.76%
3. Internet Explorer 13.46%
4. Safari 9.15%
5. “Mozilla Compatible Agent” 2.58%

Operating Systems

Position Operating System Percentage
1. Windows 60.13%
2. Macintosh 22.21%
3. Linux 9.31%
4. iPhone 2.73%
5. iPad 2.68%

Browsers and Operating Systems

Position Browser / Operating System Percentage
1. Firefox / Windows 26.72%
2. Chrome / Windows 19.19%
3. Internet Explorer / Windows 13.42%
4. Chrome / Macintosh 11.20%
5. Firefox / Linux 5.79%
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Daily links for 03/09/2012

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Four takeaways from Apple’s ‘resolutionary’ iPad | Apple – CNET News

    “Every time a new Apple product comes off the assembly line, it gets put under the biggest magnifying glass imaginable as crowds of onlookers parse the announcement with Talmudic intensity, hoping to piece together the “bigger meaning” and the likely impact on the computing world and mankind. For your consideration, then: four takeaways that you won’t find in Apple’s advertising materials about the newest iPad.”

    tags: apple ipad

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Photos: IBM mobile session at 2012 Mobile World Congress

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Here are a couple of photos from the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from Wednesday, February 29, 2012. These were taken by IBM’s Peter Leabo (thanks!) during my presentation in the afternoon session we hosted in Auditorium A in the Apps Planet exhibition hall.

Bob Sutor speaking at MWC 2012 in Barcelona

Bob Sutor speaking at MWC 2012 in Barcelona

Also see: “IBM Mobile Strategy – Mobile World Congress 2012 presentation”

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Daily links for 03/08/2012 – Apple (new) iPad (3) Edition

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Bob Sutor

The new iPad

  • iPad | TechCrunch

    “This was surprising because our expectations were set for a new name. But it really shouldn’t be all that surprising. My iMac is not the “iMac 11″. My MacBook Air is not the “MacBook Air 4″. The iPod line changes, but the name remains the same. This will undoubtedly happen to the iPhone line as well. Just as the spec is dying (more than partially ushered to the grave by Apple), the ascending number naming race is dying too. It’s about simplicity.”

    tags: apple ipad

  • Apple Updates iPad With Some Refinements – NYTimes.com

    “The new tablet, called simply the new iPad with no numbers or letters following the name, is an effort to keep growth chugging along in a two-year-old business that has turned into a major technology franchise for the company. Apple’s $9.15 billion in iPad sales over the holiday quarter were almost double the amount of revenue Microsoft brought in from its Windows software and not far from Google’s total revenue as a company during the same period.”

    tags: apple ipad

  • Ten disappointments with iOS 5.1

    “With the help of Ars’s Macintosh Achaia to refine the points for this article, here are ten annoyances that will remain with us as part of iOS—at least until the next iOS release rolls around.”

    tags: apple ios

  • Hands-on and questions answered: third-gen iPad, third-gen Apple TV

    “Apple announced both a new iPad and a new Apple TV during its media event on Wednesday, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it by looking at them. Ars spent some hands-on time with both devices in the briefing room after the event was over and managed to get a few answers to some of our questions, but as usual, Apple remained mum on some others.”

    tags: apple ipad

  • iPad 3: What we didn’t get | Apple – CNET News

    “The dust has finally settled, the rumors have been replaced by facts, and now we know what the new iPad is all about. So what’s missing? Or what fell a little short of expectations?”

    tags: apple ipad

  • New iPad doesn’t blow me away, and it doesn’t need to | Apple – CNET News

    “Why’s that? Because when you’re buying an iPad, you’re buying into the Apple ecosystem. The iPad isn’t dominant just because it’s a cool device, but because it stands alongside other immensely popular devices in the iPhone, iPod, and MacBook. Throw Apple TV and iCloud into the mix, and you have a set of devices that touch virtually everything you do. If you have one Apple device, it’s really hard not to consider getting the others.”

    tags: apple ipad

  • Meet Apple’s new iPad, now with a Retina Display | ZDNet

    “Given all of the hype surrounding new Apple products, there are inevitably high sales expectations for the newest iPad. A recent survey from independent mobile advertising network InMobi found that nearly one-third of mobile users will buy the new iPad.”

    tags: apple ipad

  • New iPad is bad news for Android tablets | ZDNet

    “Bottom line, this hardware refresh is more than enough to keep the iPad ahead of the Android competition for the foreseeable future.”

    tags: apple ipad

  • Apple new iPad hands-on (update: video!) — Engadget

    “Unsurprisingly, Apple has managed to produce something that’s truly beautiful to look at, and while we’ve yet to see the full potential of having this many pixels on a 9.7-inch slate, we’re guessing a cadre of game developers are already hard at work in order to remedy that. Beyond being dazzling from a density standpoint, colors are sharp and accurate, and viewing angles are predictably ridiculous; even taking a peek from an extreme side angle gives way to a fairly solid image with next to no washout.”

    tags: apple ipad

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Daily links for 03/07/2012

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Allow Us to Lay Down the Rules of Eating Sushi: BA Daily: Blogs : bonappetit.com

    “You may or may not realize this, but there are Rules when you go out for sushi. Maybe the Rules aren’t law at, say, Sushi Boy in the LAX airport (what are you doing there, anyways?), but any of the best sushi chefs know and respect the Rules, and breaking them means that your meal will be sub par. (Why waste the best fish on you, you undeserving mixer of wasabi into soy sauce?)”

    tags: sushi

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Photos: Maroon 5 at IBM Pulse conference

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Here are some photos from last night’s Maroon 5 concert at the IBM Pulse conference in Las Vegas. The band came on around 8pm, played for 55 minutes, took a 5 minute encore break and then came back for 15 more minutes.

They are really terrific live and rock much more than I would have thought from hearing their singles through the years. Great energy and was a really fun evening.

I was way in the back, as I think you can guess from the images. Click a photo to see a larger version.

Maroon 5 at IBM Pulse

Maroon 5 at IBM Pulse

Maroon 5 at IBM Pulse

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Video interview with me at IBM Pulse on mobile topics

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Yesterday I sat down at the IBM Pulse Conference with Todd Watson and Scott Laningham to discuss several mobile topics including security, privacy, mobile operating systems, and what we might see next.

Watch live streaming video from ibmsoftware at livestream.com
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Daily links for 03/03/2012

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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The mobile lifecycle

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Bob Sutor

I’ve been giving many talks lately to customers and partners about IBM’s mobile strategy and recent moves in our product portfolios. See, for example, the news of the Worklight acquisition and the presentation I gave at Mobile World Congress 2012. Here are some more detail on one of the slides, the mobile lifecycle.

Mobile lifecycle issues

Let’s go through the bullets one by one.

Strong demand by LoB

Mobile is personal: people have and use smartphones and tablets in their everyday lives. It makes it much easier for business people to imagine how mobile apps can affect and improve their effectiveness, customer loyalty, and revenue. This then drives the CIO, CTO, and the IT staff to decide how to create and distribute the apps. Their decisions include choosing a platform on which they can can consistently build the 5, 10 or more apps they will create in the next 3 to 5 years.

Higher expectations of user experience with mobile apps

Since people have so much experience with personal use of mobile apps, even games, they  expect very high quality user experiences from apps provided by enterprises such as banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and governments. They have similar high expectations for any apps they use to get their jobs done, such as business analytics, workflow, supply chain, commerce, and social business.

Lack of best practices guidance on how to deliver mobile applications

There’s been a lot of mobile app building experimentation by businesses in the last two years. Many of the apps were outsourced and, while they may look good, came in much more expensively than expected. Some of the apps were native, some were HTML5, and some were done in “interesting” ways. Businesses need to control the costs in building and maintaining the apps, while getting maximal reuse of current staff technical knowledge. This means you take what you know and apply it to creating your first mobile app, but also use the same information and technologies to build many mobile apps after that.

More direct involvement from users/stakeholders in design

It’s not up to the IT team to figure out all the technology to build, run, connect, manage, and secure mobile apps as well as to define the user experience. People who will be using the apps want to influence the interface design, and in many cases insist upon it.

Native programming models are not portable across devices

You can create amazing beautiful and functional apps using pure native methods with the Apple iOS and Android SDKs. Whichever one you pick, you can then do it all over again for the other one. This may be what you have to do, but recognize the difficulty and the expense. While some companies offer on-device environments to try to make apps work and look the same across devices, I think a much better approach is to maximize the use of open standards like HTML5. You also need to balance optimizing for a particular device, maximizing cross-platform code, and not having your app behave in a “least common denominator” manner.

Highly fragmented set of mobile devices and platforms

Raise your hand if you think we won’t see any more mobile operating systems in the next five years. Anybody? Nobody? Apple is different from Android which is different from BlackBerry which is different from Windows Phone. Android? Which version of Android? You need a mobile development and management platform that can handle mobile devices that exist today and will be introduced in the next few years.

Very large number of configurations of devices, platforms, carriers, etc. to test

Not only do we have many mobile operating systems, we have many handset providers and they may tweak the operating system and the applications available on it. The same goes for telcos. So you need a testing strategy that helps you cover the range of platforms you want to support. By the way, it is ok to say that you won’t cover all possible combinations. Pick the ones you absolutely must support and choose a mobile development and management platform that can handle those and the ones on your immediate roadmap.

Mobile landscape evolves at a much faster pace

New handsets come out every year, as well as major versions of mobile operating systems. Point releases of the operating systems come out every few months. For smartphones and tablets, many parts of the world are shifting from 3G to 4G. If you take too long to develop your mobile application or solution, you will be a generation or two behind by the time it gets to market.

More frequent releases and updates for apps with more urgent time-to-market demands

Not only do you have to get your app to market to match the hardware and software used by your consumers, you have to update and distribute your app as frequently as necessary to address bug and security fixes and competitive feature additions. Backward compatibility is important, but you need to evolve your app as fast as necessary to deliver what your users need to be productive and to stay your users.

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IBM Mobile Strategy – Mobile World Congress 2012 presentation

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Bob Sutor

My presentation given at the Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, on February 29, 2012, is now available on SlideShare and for download here as a PDF.

The title of the talk was “IBM Mobile Strategy”.

IBM Mobile Strategy – Mobile World Congress 2012

View more presentations from Bob Sutor

Also see: “Photos: IBM mobile session at 2012 Mobile World Congress”

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Daily links for 02/29/2012

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Idevnews | IBM Builds Out AppDev, Management Portfolios for Mobile IT

    “With these latest mobile announcements, Sutor said IBM continues to complete a set of mobile-optimized tools and capabilities to support mobile apps across their lifecycle — design, development, test, provision and operate.  But the focus goes beyond traditional SDLC, he added. Because mobile apps – whether enterprise or B2C – also often need to communicate with and access legacy resources (database, policy, security, management), the IBM announcements also deliver special mobile-optimized integration, security, compliance and management, Sutor added.”

    tags: ibm mobile worklight

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My Smarter Planet blog entry on Mobile

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Bob Sutor

The Building a Smarter Planet site just posted a blog entry I wrote to coincide with IBM’s activities at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. The piece is called “For a Business, Mobile Apps Must be Enterprise Class.” I talk about the recent Worklight acquisition and why I would travel all the way from wintery upstate New York in the US to a Spanish city on the Mediterranean in late February.

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Daily links for 02/28/2012

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 02/25/2012

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Beware of mobile’s unintended consequences | ZDNet

    “A successful smartphone app is great, right? Especially when it fronts a system of engagement that lets people click and serve themselves in their moment of need rather than waiting until they can fire up a computer and go online. Or (gasp), dial the phone and tie up some customer service rep’s time in India or Africa or Fargo. The mobile engagement is 10 times more convenient than traditional Web and one tenth the cost of a call center contact. So what could possibly go wrong?”

    tags: mobile forrester

  • 10 Things to Plan for When Developing a Mobile App

    “Many companies have mobile apps at the top of their to-do lists, but while churning out a quick app is fairly straightforward, developing a strategic application or digital “solution” is considerably more complex. Smart planning is essential. Here are 10 things to consider before developing your app.”

    tags: mobile app

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Interview with me on mobile

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Bob Sutor

The February issue of the IBM Smart SOA & BPM Newsletter has an interview with me titled “Delivering value with mobile enterprise technologies.” From the introduction:

We asked the Vice President of IBM Mobile and member of the IBM Academy of Technology to discuss the trends in mobile computing and the advantages of these trends to businesses today. Sutor talks about the biggest challenges that organizations face when building a mobile enterprise, and how they can get started on the right path, including using security controls and standards, to achieve business value from mobile enterprise technologies.

I answered the questions:

  • What trends do you see in regard to mobile technologies and use of these technologies?
  • What advantages do these trends bring to organizations?
  • What are the biggest challenges organizations are facing in integrating mobile technology into their businesses?
  • What can businesses to do maintain security controls?
  • What role do standards play in building a mobile enterprise?
  • How can a business get started with mobile technologies?
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Daily links for 02/24/2012

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 02/23/2012

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 02/22/2012

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 02/21/2012

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • 2011 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced

    “Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is proud to announce the nominees for the 2011 Nebula Awards (presented 2012), the nominees for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the nominees for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book.”

    tags: nebula awards scifi

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Daily links for 02/16/2012

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Lotus Greenhouse : IBM Docs beta

    “IBM Docs is a new office productivity suite for working on documents, spreadsheets and presentations — together — in the cloud. With IBM Docs there is no desktop software. You only need a browser and an account, and you are able to easily create professional looking documents and share them with others. IBM Docs is simple yet powerful – letting you get started quickly, but delivering the advanced features you need.”

    tags: ibm docs

  • Apple Mac OS X ‘Mountain Lion’ takes more bites out of iOS | Apple Talk – CNET News

    “Apple’s giving developers a preview of the next version of Mac OS X today called Mountain Lion. The software, due out this summer, once again brings over features from Apple’s iOS.”

    tags: apple mac os x ios mobile

  • Dojo Foundation Announces Enterprise-Friendly Mobile Tools – PR Newswire – sacbee.com

    “The Dojo Foundation today announced the Dojo Mobile 1.7 toolkit along with visual tools for mobile user interface and mobile theme construction in Maqetta Preview 4. Developers now have a complete set of mobile tools that deliver the cross-discipline, reliability and customization benefits needed by Enterprise teams. Today’s announcement represents a major milestone in delivering integrated design-to-development Cloud tooling, along with a comprehensive open source widget set for the desktop and mobile devices.”

    tags: dojo mobile

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Daily links for 02/15/2012

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Researchers Find Flaw in an Online Encryption Method – NYTimes.com

    “The flaw — which involves a small but measurable number of cases — has to do with the way the system generates random numbers, which are used to make it practically impossible for an attacker to unscramble digital messages.”

    tags: security

  • World of Minecraft: Gamers Recreate WoW in Minecraft | PCWorld

    “Minecraft’s open-ended creation has made it possible to recreate places and objects inside its virtual world. We’ve seen Minecraft renditions of Hyrule, the Death Star trench run from Star Wars, and even the first level of Super Mario Land. Now, one gamer used the virtual world of Minecraft to recreate Azeroth, the titular world in the massively popular World of Warcraft.”

    tags: minecraft wow

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Podcast now available: Enterprise Mobile Management and Security

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Yesterday my IBM colleagues Caleb Barlow, Vijay Dheap, Naveed Makhani and I recorded a podcast called “Enterprise Mobile Management and Security.” In it we discussed BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), mobile management, mobile security, why mobile is posing new opportunities and challenges for IT departments, what’s new about mobile, and IBM’s announced acquisition plans around Worklight.

You can listen to it several ways:

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Upcoming podcast about Enterprise Mobile Management and Security

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Bob Sutor

On Monday, February 6, at 4 pm et, I’ll join my IBM colleagues Caleb Barlow, Vijay Dheap and Naveed Makhani to discuss “Enterprise Mobile Management and Security”. As you might expect, I’ll also talk about IBM’s planned acquisition of mobile application vendor Worklight.

Visit the podcast website for more information about listening in. Here’s the excerpt for the session:

Mobile devices are rapidly becoming the end-point that drives business results. With the increasing trends in “bring your own device” and mobile threats doubling in 2011 how do you responsibly embrace mobile while protecting your security and IT infrastructure? In this podcast Caleb is joined by Bob Sutor, Vijay Dheap and Naveed Makhani to discuss the trends in mobile along with IBM’s intention to acquire Worklight.

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Daily links for 02/01/2012

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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IBM: Going Mobile with two big announcements

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Today IBM announced some important enhancements to its Mobile strategy for supporting customers looking to grow and transform their businesses, whether they are B2C, B2B, or B2E.

IBM Advances Mobile Capabilities with Acquisition of Worklight

From the press release:

In a move that will help expand the enterprise mobile capabilities it offers to clients, IBM today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Worklight, a privately held Israeli-based provider of mobile software for smartphones and tablets. Financial terms were not disclosed.

With this acquisition, IBM’s mobile offerings will span mobile application development, integration, security and management. Worklight will become an important piece of IBM’s mobility strategy, offering clients an open platform that helps speed the delivery of existing and new mobile applications to multiple devices. It also helps enable secure connections between smartphone and tablet applications with enterprise IT systems.

IBM Announces New Software to Manage and Secure the Influx of Mobile Devices to the Workplace

From the press release:

IBM today introduced new software to help organizations better manage and secure the explosion of smartphones and tablets in the workplace, while also managing laptops, desktops and servers.

IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices helps organizations support and protect the growing mobile workforce. Through this software, firms can use a single solution to secure and manage smartphones and tablets, as well as laptops, desktop PCs, and servers. It manages Apple iOS, Google Android, Nokia Symbian, and Microsoft Windows Mobile and Windows Phone devices.

The software extends security intelligence to deal with the growing threats from mainstream adoption of the BYOD trend. Organizations can install the IBM software in hours, remotely set policies, identify potential data compromises and wipe data off the devices if they are lost or stolen. The software helps configure and enforce passcode policies, encryption and virtual private network settings.

Why I think this is important

After spending the last several months speaking with customers, I’ve concluded that 2012 will be a very significant year for Mobile in the enterprise. I think this is the year when customers will decide on the mobile platforms and tools that will carry them into the middle of the decade, and begin to discard earlier experiments.

The old category of MAP or MEAP (Mobile Application Platform or Mobile Enterprise Application Platform) is not sufficient anymore. Customers need everything to build, run, connect, manage, and secure mobile applications. Remember that we’re not just talking about the apps on the devices (and there are many devices), but also the backend server infrastructure necessary, and this needs to be enterprise-ready. By this I mean that it needs to scale and you must be able to integrate it with the services, applications, processes and data that are essential to your organization.

Therefore the modern Mobile platform needs device-side and server-side application development and lifecycle tools; support for multiple devices and mobile operating systems; mobile application an device management; security capabilities from the devices all the way to the back-end; and scalable, transaction-capable connections to the IT systems on which your organization depends for its business. This is what IBM is demonstrating today in these strategic announcements in addition to its existing products and solutions.

Join me today in Tweetchats

I’ll be using Twiiter today for 2 one hour sessions to discuss these announcements with Scott Hebner, VP of Marketing and Channel Management for IBM Tivoli.
The first session is planned for 10:30 to 11:30 AM ET and the second for 1:00 to 2:00 PM ET.

Both sessions will use the hashtag #ibmmobile. My Twitter name is @bob_sutor and Scott’s is @SLHebner.

You can follow us via your usual Twitter client or else use the Tweetchat tool at http://tweetchat.com/room/ibmmobile.

Also see these blog entries

IBM mobile infographic

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Daily links for 01/26/2012

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • AT&T to offer Nokia Lumia 900 for $100 on March 18 | Signal Strength – CNET News

    “The new Lumia 900, which had been announced earlier this month at CES for AT&T’s network, will sell for $99.99 with a two-year service contract starting March 18, sources with knowledge of the launch plans told CNET. The Boy Genius Report first reported the pricing and launch date of the device as part of a leaked road map from AT&T the site said it received.”

    tags: nokia mobile

  • Board Your Plane with Your Smartphone – Forbes

    “The technology developed by OBS and SITA does not require an actual NFC chip to function. Instead, the companies’ innovation allows boarding pass data to be written directly on an NFC-enabled SIM card, which will likely lead to greater consumer adoption. Customers won’t have to purchase an NFC-capable phone to use the technology, and the card will be readable even when devices power off.”

    tags: plane smartphone mobile

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Daily links for 01/25/2012

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/24/2012

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • iPhone 4S wooing lots of Android, BlackBerry users | Apple – CNET News

    “Specifically, 50 percent of the rival phone jumpers polled by CIRP upgraded from a Blackberry, 39 percent from an Android phone, and 10 percent from a Palm device. Only 21 percent switched from other mobile phones or picked up an iPhone as their first cell phone. And a full 43 percent of all iPhone 4S buyers upgraded from an older model iPhone.”

    tags: iphone android blackberry

  • Not Quite Smart Enough – NYTimes.com

    “The idea is that consumers can control the devices, which can communicate wirelessly, with their smartphones, tablets or televisions. So the owner of a smart refrigerator could check what’s in the refrigerator on a smartphone, and in some instances, send photographs to be displayed on the refrigerator’s LCD screen.”

    tags: m2m wireless mobile

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Daily links for 01/23/2012

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/20/2012

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Red Hat releases third version of its Enterprise Virtualisation platform – Update – The H Open Source: News and Features

    “As before, the RHEV hypervisor, which is only a few hundred megabytes in size, virtualises using KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) and integrates many RHEL core components – however, the new RHEV uses components from the current RHEL version 6.2 rather than RHEL series 5. Consequently, the new RHEV-V offers many improvements that have been available in RHEL 6 for some time – for example, guest systems can now access up to 64 virtual CPU cores and up to 2 TB of working memory. Technologies such as vhost-net, Transparent Huge Pages (THP), x2apic and KSM (Kernel Shared Memory) are designed to improve performance and increase efficiency.”

    tags: Red Hat virtualisation

  • API Management Service Apigee Acquires Mobile Data Platform Usergrid | TechCrunch

    “Apigee, a provider of API management products and services, which we’ve referred to in the past as a “Google Analytics for APIs” has acquired the mobile cloud platform Usergrid. For those unfamiliar, Usergrid helps to make mobile app development easier by providing the APIs needed to manage data, users and events. The company provides these kind of core APIs for the backend so mobile developers can speed their time to market.”

    tags: api management mobile

  • Big Business, Big Linux | ZDNet

    “It used to be that Linux gained its market-share from cannibalizing Unix servers. That seems to no longer be the case. According to this study, in the last two years 71.6% of new Linux deployments have been in brand new applications and green deployments. By comparison, 38.5% were migrations from Windows and 34.5% were from Unix.”

    tags: linux windows

  • Apple’s new iBooks Author targets e-book creators | The Digital Home – CNET News

    “Dubbed iBooks Author, the free Mac OS X application lets authors create textbooks and other books with simple drag-and-drop mechanisms. According to Apple, the application gives authors basic templates to quickly create titles that offer both text and interactive elements such as videos and images. To add multimedia content, iBooks Author lets users drag and drop content onto pages.”

    tags: apple author creators

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Daily links for 01/19/2012

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Role reversal: Apple’s the corporate standard for mobile | Mobile Technology – InfoWorld

    “But 2011 was the tipping point. iPhones now have more users than BlackBerrys within corporate environments, and Aberdeen Group mobile analyst Andrew Borg notes that many organizations have figured out how to handle the Apple security model comfortably, lessening the dependence on BlackBerry Enterprise Server outside of a small percentage users with special security requirements. Additionally, iPads became the corporate standard, with Windows-like market share, for tablets the same year. In fact, Aberdeen Group says that 96 percent of businesses have at least one iPad in use. Who’d have thunk it?”

    tags: apple mobile blackberry

  • Apple’s iOS, BlackBerry tops among business users | Mobile – CNET News

    “Among the more than 700 IT professionals polled for a Check Point study (PDF) out today, iOS accounted for 30 percent of the collective traffic on their networks. But RIM’s BlackBerry was hot on Apple’s trail with 29 percent. As BlackBerry has long been a corporate standard, the rise of iOS is a clear sign of the consumerization of IT in which employees want to use the same devices at work that they use at home. The trend is even more notable since Apple gears its products for individual consumers with little focus on the enterprise market specifically.”

    tags: apple ios blackberry

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Thoughts on mobile management

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Bob Sutor

What does it mean to manage a mobile device, say a smartphone like an Apple iPhone or one with Google’s Android operating system?

At the lowest level, the device level, you might want to

  • establish a policy for length and structure of passwords
  • set or reset a password
  • detect whether the phone had been jail-broken or rooted
  • configure device-wide VPN
  • set power management policies
  • manage the low level security of the filesystem or other local storage
  • wipe the device entirely or reset it to factory settings

Above that, at the application level, you might want to

  • inventory the device for installed applications
  • install or update applications
  • set security policies for use of the applications, their data, and their network connections
  • selectively remove an application or its data
  • configure application-specific VPN
  • manage anti-virus and other security tools for browsers and other applications that access the web
  • manage installation and use of an enterprise application store behind a firewall, private hosted outside, or via external sites like the Apple iTunes Store or the Android Marketplace

The first list of items, with additional functions, is part of Mobile Device Management, or MDM. Note that people do sometimes confuse “MDM” in this context with “Master Data Management.”

The second collection is part of Mobile Application Management, sometimes shortened to MAM.

The first thing to notice is that what I deemed “management” often has a lot to do with security, especially when the phone is used to access enterprise data and systems.

Second, in practice, those who provide MDM functionality often provide some MAM functionality, and vice-versa. That is, a vendor might say “I can give you an enterprise app store but can also wipe devices.”

BYOD, or “bring your own device” complicates things because I probably do not want the organization for which I work to impose overbearing policies that affect my personal use of my phone. I certainly don’t want them to wipe my entire device if I leave the organization juto remove all traces of enterprise data or network access.

So the line is blurry between MDM and MAM, and I think we should get rid of the distinction altogether. That is, let’s just talk about Mobile Management and combine the two categories above. It will simplify things, remove the imprecision of the definitions, and bring better clarity to what vendors do and do not offer.

So if we can agree that Mobile Management consists of 27 common capabilities (for example), a vendor that offers 5 of them can be more fairly compared with one that offers 25.

No doubt that vendor proving minimum capability will embellish the description by adding “but we do it from the cloud!” (grin)

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Daily links for 01/18/2012

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Mobile

Virtual Worlds

  • WonderBuilders Develops Singapore Games Village

    “WonderBuilders, Inc. has created a virtual world called “Singapore Games Village.” Announced as part of the Media Development Authority of Singapore’s new Games Solution Center (GSC), this virtual world allows locally developed games to be showcased to prospective publishers who can then select the titles which they wish to license. The Games Village includes customizable game kiosks. Each kiosk displays games that can be played in a browser or on a mobile platform. The game kiosks are multi-user. As one person plays a game in-world, other remote participants can watch the game play and talk about the action. Users can also take turns playing the game.”

    tags: singapore games virtual-world

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Mobile BYOD is not unbounded

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Bob Sutor

BYOD, or “bring your own device,” is an important topic in today’s discussion of mobile in the enterprise. Employees buy their own smartphones or tablets, love them, then bring them to work and want to use them to access company data, systems, and applications.

For the CIO, this represents an opportunity to save money by not having to pay for and provide devices, but opens up many questions about how to allow secure access and management of the enterprise portions of those devices. I’m here at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando, so it shouldn’t surprise you when I say that many of IBM’s customers are looking at Lotus Traveler for secure access to email, calendar, and contacts on mobile devices, for example.

BYOD does not mean that any employee can bring any device to the office and demand that it be allowed access to the company’s digital infrastructure. That said, if the CEO brings in his or her sexy new smartphone, the CIO may feel more inclined to make that work.

In practice, CIOs will say that certain devices running specific mobile operating system versions, augmented by security and management software and policies will be allowed access to the company’s network. That is, “bring your own device” really means “bring your own device as long as it is one of the following.”

Many enterprises already support Blackberrys, so that will be relatively easy. There’s not too much variation among Apple iPhones and iPads beyond the major version numbers. So while a 3g phone might work, I think many enterprises will insist on a 4 or 4s phone, probably running the latest version of iOS.

Android is more problematic because there are many handset providers and many versions of the operating system. Expect individual handset vendors to negotiate directly with CIOs to allow use of their devices in the CIOs’ companies, even if those devices are bought by the employees.

The wildcard here will be Windows Phone and the devices that support it. While Apple iOS and Android are very different, both technically and culturally, Windows Phone is different yet. While Mango is quite nice looking, as I saw from the Nokia team at Lotusphere, will individual purchasers and CIOs wait until Windows Phone 8? Will the rate of adoption allow it to be accepted into the enterprise any time in 2012 or might it even be 2014 before the demand is sufficient for supporting it inside companies?

My advice to CIOs is this: if you support Blackberrys, you will need to support them for the foreseeable future. The newer iPhone and iPads will need to be given enterprise access because of their marketshare and the demands of senior management. For Android, pick a couple of handset vendors, perhaps based on a survey of your current employee users, and settle on the level of the operating system you will support. Educate yourself about Windows Phone, but the above combinations are probably of more immediate and higher priority.

Also see: “10 predictions for enterprise mobile for 2012″

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Daily links for 01/17/2012

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Harnessing the Power of Enterprise Mobility presentation now available

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Bob Sutor

My presentation for Lotusphere 2012, Harnessing the Power of Enterprise Mobility, is now available on SlideShare and embedded here:

Lotusphere 2012 – Harnessing the Power of Enterprise Mobility

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IBM Mobile Team at Lotusphere 2012

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Bob Sutor

It’s an artifact of today’s spread out worldwide working culture that many people in large companies never get to meet each other if they work in different locations. I’m down at IBM’s Lotusphere conference this week talking about Mobile for the Enterprise, meeting with partners, doing press interviews, and having discussions with learned industry analysts. There are also several members of the extended IBM Mobile Team here as well, so I’m going to try to photographically document their presence.

In this first installment, from left to right we have Dirk Nicol and  Christian Hunt from my mobile team and Yakura Coffee from my WebSphere Foundation team. They’re manning peds in the Solution Showcase and, if you are at the show, I encourage you to stop by and pay them a visit. This is the first time I’ve met Yakura and Christian though we’ve worked together for over half a year.

members of the IBM team

Note the snazzy shirts. I’m not sure if they glow in the dark, but, by rights, they should.

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IBM Mobile Technology Preview v3, now with iOS support

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Bob Sutor

IBM just released the third drop of the IBM Mobile Technology preview at ibm.co/ibmmobile, with details of the update on the tech preview blog.

This release includes updates to the mobile application manager with social feedback, SMS support, tools, and, perhaps most important, support for Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. The first two releases supported Android only.

This drop also includes the latest version of the Liberty Profile for the WebSphere Application Server. It’s a great example of how we think customers will use the Liberty Profile and OSGI in action.

The Mobile Tech Preview is our way of giving you a glimpse of what is going on in the IBM labs around the area of mobile application development, tooling, security, and management.

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Daily links for 01/16/2012

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Jerry’s 2012 Technology Trends (WebSphere: Into the wild BLUE yonder!)

    “Happy 2012! I enjoy kicking each New Year off with a posting of my top technology trends. These trends represent areas in which we are driving new technology innovations into our WebSphere and Software Group portfolios. Last year, I accompanied my trends with a rock and roll video. This year, I am practicing what I preach. Given Social Business is one of my top trends; I’ve placed the detailed description of the trends on a Facebook page, which I hope will allow richer social interaction around these topics. I am also using a prototype SMS-based app, which is aligned with our Mobile for Enterprise trend, to allow you to review, rate and receive notifications, when I publish new information on these trends throughout the year.”

    tags: technology trends websphere

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Mobility and Endpoint Management at Pulse 2012

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Pulse banner

From March 4 through 7, IBM will be holding its Pulse 2012 conference at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. One of the main streams of the event will be the Mobility and Endpoint Management track, and I’ll be a member of the keynote panel kicking off the discussions.

With the ever-increasing number of endpoints organizations must manage – physical and virtual servers, desktops, laptops, point of sale and mobile devices – it is imperative to gain visibility, control and automation. These devices simultaneously represent security risks, employee productivity, and new business opportunities. Join us at Pulse 2012 to hear from your peers and IBM experts on how to minimize risks, increase productivity, and increase innovation.

Mobile devices in particular have a very large impact throughout the organization today. Their rapid adoption over the last several years has significantly increased the “consumerization of IT” and forced IT departments to adopt Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies. At IBM we understand this goes well beyond the devices themselves though – it impacts network traffic, internal software development and custom applications, employee collaboration and use of social media, and much more. We are enabling businesses to build mobile applications, run and connect them to backend systems, manage their devices and applications, and secure their businesses on mobile – all to help our customers create new business opportunities and extend existing business capabilities.

You can register today for the conference and don’t forget to mention Mobile as one of your main interests in attending.

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Daily links for 01/12/2012

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • IBM Sametime – Apps on Android Market

    “We are very excited to bring you IBM Sametime for Android! This gives you access to IBM’s award-winning platform for Unified Communications on today’s hottest Android devices.”

    tags: mobile lotus sametime android

  • AT&T offers HTML5 SDK for third-party mobile Web app developers

    “AT&T is planning to launch a store for mobile Web applications that run in the browser. The company has released a set of JavaScript APIs and a software development kit (SDK) that provide Web developers with access to certain mobile network features. Platform fragmentation has long been a major concern for AT&T. The company has repeatedly expressed frustration with the difficulty of making applications that work across the full spectrum of poplar mobile operating systems. Previous development frameworks that had the potential to unify the mobile application landscape, such as Java ME, largely fell short of expectations. AT&T is hopeful that standards-based Web technologies will finally solve the problem and provide a ubiquitous target for third-party application developers.”

    tags: mobile at&t developers

  • Canonical CEO: Ubuntu tablet OS will battle Android, iOS | Open Source Software – InfoWorld

    “Jane Silber is on a mission to get the Ubuntu Linux distribution onto mobile devices and TVs, rather than be stuck on desktop PCs. The CEO of Canonical (which makes Ubuntu) took over from the previous CEO, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, in March 2010, but has been with the company since shortly after its 2004 founding.”

    tags: ubuntu tablet

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Daily links for 01/11/2012

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/10/2012

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Mobile

  • PhoneGap 1.3 Adds Windows Phone 7 Support – Mobile and Wireless – News & Reviews – eWeek.com

    “Among the more popular tools for pulling off this Web-powered multi-device strategy has been PhoneGap, an open-source mobile-development framework from Nitobi Software, which Adobe acquired in October. When Adobe announced the acquisition, the company said it planned to donate the PhoneGap code base to Apache, where the project will go by the name Project Cordova. (It was briefly named Project Callback.) PhoneGap 1.3 began shipping in December, with Windows Phone 7 support as its headline feature. WP7 joins iOS, Android, BlackBerry, WebOS, Symbian and Bada in the PhoneGap-supported platform lineup.”

    tags: mobile phonegap

  • AT&T unveils a new API platform for HTML5 apps | Application Development – InfoWorld

    “Developers must rewrite native applications to run on iPhones, Android smartphones, Windows Phones, and BlackBerrys. HTML5 simplifies things for developers by letting them instead build apps that run in a browser accessible by any smartphone. HTML5 apps look and act similar to a native app. By 2016, 85 percent of smartphones will have browsers capable of running HTML5, Christopher said, citing a prediction made by Strategy Analytics.”

    tags: html apps mobile

  • Hybrid HTML5 Apps Are Less Costly to Develop Than Native

    “It seems like a fairly straightforward question: As a developer, business and enterprise, do I develop Web apps, native apps or some combination thereof? Answers to that question are anything but simple. Who is your target audience? What is the purpose of the app? There are a series of diverse questions that must be answered before jumping right into development. “

    tags: hybrid html native apps mobile

Virtual Worlds

  • Vivox spreads fast through OpenSim grids – Hypergrid Business

    “The process is simple. Applicants get a set of papers to sign — basically saying they won’t share their access codes with anybody else — and then add a few lines enabling Vivox to their opensim .INI file. The voice never actually passes through the simulator — the voice stream goes directly from the viewer, to the Vivox data centers, and back again — so there is no additional load on the region.”

    tags: opensim business voice

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My talk at Lotusphere 2012

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Next week is IBM’s Lotusphere conference in sunny and, I hope, warm Orlando, Florida. For those of you attending, I’ll be giving a talk called “Harnessing the Power of Enterprise Mobility” on Monday, January 16, from 11 to 12 AM. The session number is 1582A and the room is Swan – SW 7 – 8. The abstract is

It’s hard not to talk to an enterprise customer these days without getting into a discussion about Mobile. By 2012, the shipment of smartphones and tablets is expected to exceed that of traditional personal computers, including laptops. Enterprise CIOs want to use these personal mobile devices to give better access to their internal data and processes for employees, as well as enabling better purchasing and support services for their customers. Complicating this is the variety of devices used, employees who wish to use their own devices at work, application level and device management, cost controls, and security concerns. In this session, Bob Sutor will discuss his views on the foundational needs of enterprises for a mobile application platform, mobile device management, and security along with comments on how IBM can help you become a social business that leverages experts wherever they are working.

I’ll also be hanging out at the Enterprise Mobile booth from time to time, talking about the IBM Mobile Technology Preview. Stop by and say hello!

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Daily links for 01/09/2012

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Bob Sutor

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Daily links for 01/06/2012

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • NASA opens it Open-Source Code Doors | ZDNet

    “As William Eshagh, who is spearheading the project wrote on the NASA open-source blog, NASA is first “focusing on providing a home for the current state of open source at the Agency. This includes guidance on how to engage the open source process, points of contact, and a directory of existing projects.””

    tags: nasa open source

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Daily links for 01/05/2012

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Bob Sutor

  • Apple launching iPhone 4S in China, 21 other countries on Jan. 13 — Apple News, Tips and Reviews

    “The iPhone 4S will then be available in 90 countries in total, making it Apple’s “fastest iPhone rollout ever,” according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The new countries getting the iPhone on Jan. 13 include Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.”

    tags: mobile iPhone apple

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Daily links for 01/03/2012

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Daily links for 01/02/2012

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Bob Sutor

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Monthly disclaimer

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Bob Sutor

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions, especially if they are about the guitar, fishing, gardening, carpentry, porch building, and musical tastes.

Blog entries before 2010 are in my Archived Blog.

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