Two Exciting Announcements

Friends,

I have two exciting announcements to share with you. For the past ten years Solstice Consulting has been focused on helping enterprises embrace emerging technologies.  For the first time since our firm's inception, we have found ourselves in the midst of a transformational shift in information technology - Enterprise Mobility.  The combination of the intuitive nature of multi-touch interfaces, context-aware smartphones and tablets, the expansion of high speed wireless networks and the proliferation of cloud computing services, has created a new age in human-computer interaction.

Through the adoption of enterprise mobility we have helped companies open new revenue streams, transform their marketing strategies, create new channels of information sharing and even embrace a new definition of the 'workday'.  Since I began consulting in the world of emerging technology over 15 years ago, I have never seen a technology have such a rapid and disruptive impact on business as we know it.  What's even more exciting?  I think it's just getting started.

My first announcement is that going forward, Solstice Consulting will adopt a singular, laser focus on Enterprise Mobility.  Over the past 12 months, we have been retooling our current workforce, while doubling its size with an ingestion of the best mobile technology talent in the country.  We have formalized our enterprise offering into the following mobile service lines, with deep expertise in each of these channels.

Mobile Enablement Services	Mobile Development Services
Mobile Strategy Mobile Design Mobile Security Mobile Infrastructure	iOS Development Android Development Mobile Web Development Cross Platform Development Mobile Testing & Support

Although we have been working in the enterprise mobility space for several years, we are excited to focus all of our talent and thought leadership in this transformational technology.  Also, as Agile is an ingrained part of our culture, we will continue to offer our highly acclaimed Agile Transformation Services.

Our second announcement is just as exciting.  Over the years, we have gotten several requests from our clients to help them in a technology staff augmentation capacity.  Clients enjoy working with our seasoned engagement managers, all of which come from a deep IT delivery background.  They also appreciate our extensive technology community involvement and ability to network and form meaningful relationships with top IT contract talent.  As the necessity for experienced, on-demand IT talent continues to increase, we are proud to announce a new Solstice company:

Solstice Workforce is a formalized expansion of Solstice Consulting's ability to mine the top IT talent in the country. SW leverages the entire Solstice physical and virtual social eco-system and utilizes a unique community-driven sourcing approach to mine talent.  The service is led by a team of engagement managers with a deep IT delivery background and the best technology talent acquisition team in Chicago. Solstice Workforce offers effective and efficient technology staff augmentation across all engineering and operational IT disciplines.

We're excited about the changes ahead, and I want to thank you for your support and guidance over the years.  I am encouraged about the rapid evolution of technology in our industry and look forward to the opportunities it will provide our employees, our clients, our community and our country.

Your Friend,

J

Avoiding Random Acts of Mobility - Forming the Mobility Center of Excellence

Large organizations are starting to suffer from Random Acts of Mobility. This is when disparate departments in an organization commission the development of an app without talking with one another or a centralized technology group.

The pitfalls of Random Acts of Mobility include increased project costs due to duplicate efforts; increased support costs due to the use of disparate technologies, increased security risks and higher risk of project failures due to each department taking on a pioneering role in the organization.

Depending on the organization, it may be unrealistic to think, at this point, IT can quickly form a team to support all mobility initiatives utilizing a consistent reference architecture and unified support organization.  But this shouldn't give the business an excuse to continue down the mobility path firing revolvers into the air;  eventually, it's going to catch up to them.

The short-term answer is a Mobility Center of Excellence (MCoE).  The MCoE is often a virtual group with representation from Enterprise Architecture, Legal/Compliance, impacted or interested Line of Business folks, Information Security and IT Infrastructrure and App teams.  The goal of the group is to start to set some standards around Mobile App Dev Platforms, Mobile Security, App/Server Side Integration, Legal Compliance and App Deployment and Distribution.  This group shouldn't hold up business initiatives but empower them.  If they don't have all the answers they can at least be aware which direction a project is going to go; and the project team, in turn, will have the foresight to know what may need to be refactored in the future so they build/fund accordingly.

It's not difficult to set up a MCoE, and given the excitement around mobile technologies, it's usually not hard to find volunteers for this virtual group. Once this group is in place, it's also easier to identify what work should be done on the enterprsie level vs. the project level.  It also begins to shed some light\justification on what enterprise level capital and expense funding may be required to help facilitate mobile strategy for the organization going forward.

If you have any additional questions or tips on forming a MCoE, feel free to leave them in the comments below or check out our Mobile Strategy service offering.

My Personal Top Ten Business Productivity Apps

I am always evaluating new apps to help me better manage my day.  Here are my favorites that I actually use on a daily basis.  Stay tuned for my follow up blog on what common thread makes all of these apps great.

1)  Evernote - Evernote is awesome.  A free cloud-based note-taking service that has apps on all major smartphone and desktop platforms.  Got a PC, an iPad and an Android phone?  No problem.  Seamlessly syncs notes between everything.  Good-bye notebook!

2)  Drop Box - If you haven't signed up yet, you're missing the boat!  Simple cloud based file-sharing on all platforms.  2GB are free.  Awesome collaboration features where you can share folders easily with other Drop Box users.  

3)  Swackett - Simple free iOS weather program that tells you what to wear in addition to the temp (yeah I need all the help I can get in the morning).

4)  CardMunch - Recently bought by LinkedIn.  Take a picture of a business card and they'll turn it into an Contact for you.  Real people on the other end if their software can't figure it out.  Has yet to fail me. 

5)  Square - Be able to take a credit card payment from anyone.  Great party trick or a jaw-dropper when your buddy needs to "pay you back for that cab later".  Now has new functionality to open up a "tab" at participating merchants.  Very cool.

6)  Mint - Financial reporting.  Getting rid of Quicken never felt so good. Working on plugging our business into it as well to get some of the great expense reporting features that we can't get out of our accounting system.

7)  Ride Metra - If you're a Chicagoan this is the best Metra app I've found.  

8)  Traffic.com app - Terrible app but you can set up your own drives on traffic.com and they have the most reliable data I've found.  One touch access to how wonderful your commute home will be.  Worth the hassle of setup.

9)  TripIt - Automatically scans your email inbox periodically and generates travel itineraries for you based on confirmation emails from airlines/hotels/travel sites. Brilliant.

10)  Siri - Oh Siri, where do I even start? You've changed my world and made me a safer driver in the process.  

What other productivity apps rock your world?

Touch Interfaces - A New Age in Human Computer Interaction

Sometimes I don't think folks realize how big of a transformational event we're going through in IT right now.  For the first time in about 25 years, a new human-computer interaction (HCI) model has taken hold.  From the evolution of the punch card, to the keyboard, to the mouse; Touch has now taken hold as the next preferred mechanism of HCI.   Early adopters are now going to their touch smartphones and tablets "first" when they have a question that needs to be answered.  If it's not accessible from their touch based devices, they are then retreating to their keyboard and mouse driven PCs.  Smartphones are being brought into the field instead of ruggedized laptops.  Tablets are slowly making their way into conference rooms, laboratories, doctors offices, sales meetings and class rooms.  

Touch devices are being adopted more rapidly than any other HCI transformational shift in history; namely because the layer of abstraction between the human need and the machine has been steadily decreasing.  In each shift, computer interaction has become more intuitive.  

Punch cards:  Not so much.  

Keyboards: Well if you spend a semester learning how to type.  

Mice: Kind of intuitive but takes some coordination and practice.  

Touch: Boom, no learning curve.  

I know how to pinch, zoom, swipe and drag because I do it everyday. Everytime I pick up a piece of paper, turn a page in a book, move an object to the side of my desk or open up a file in a file cabinet.  I don't have to learn how to use a touch interface.  There is no abstraction between me and the machine.

The intuitiveness of touch is going to open up HCI to every demographic, regardless of education level or age.  From 18 month old babies to 95 year old senior citizens, touch just makes sense.

Get ready, because we're just getting started.

Performance Tips for Adobe Flex Mobile Apps

I just attended a session at Adobe Max given by Evtim Georgiev and Steve Shongrunden on performance tuning mobile Flex apps.  Since I'm a performance geek, I thought I'd post the tips here

How to optimize your mobile view rendering

1. Avoid heavy components
2. Defer object creation (lazy)
3. Use BitmapImage instead of Image
4. Use Group (with a Rectangle) instead of BorderContainer
5. Reduce nested Groups
6. Use mobile optimized component skins
7. Use ConstraintLayout instead of nested VGroup and HGroup

How to increase your Frames Rates

1. Use cacheAsBitmap on images that don't change often but redraw often
2. Avoid a lot of nested containers
3. Use ContentCache class for caching server side data - cache on by default, queue off by default
4. Use PNG for all images (much faster than jpg/gif)
5. Use Label over RichText over RichEditableText (Label is a LOT faster than the other two)
6. StyleableTextField (turn off edit and selection if not needed) - This is used by LabelItemRenderer and IconItemRenderer (can't use directly in MXML)
7. StyleableStageText - new in 4.6.  Use this very responsive editing and scrolling (used by mobile TextINput andTextArea (can't use directly in MXML)
8. Create ItemRenderes in MXML.  Use mobile-optimized IconItemRendererand LabelItemRenderer
9. Avoid creating heavy ItemRenderers (don't use heavy (text) components.  Turn off autoDrawBackground if not needed.  Avoid Filters/drop shadows.
10. Avoid complex binding expressions (i.e. on scrollable content)
11. Reduce nested Groups

Some other tidbits: Why are Adobe mobile optimized components better?

• Use StylableTextField (lightweight layout)
• More sophisticated ContentCache
• Their configurable (use styles for properties)

What's coming in Flex 4.6?

• On demand scrollbars (created when touch interaction starts) - up to 15% faster for list based views
• ItemRendererFunction recycles, so now it's mobile friendly
• 32-bit rendering in Android available, but 16-bit rendering is faster

Feel free to add any other tips in the comments below.

Have You Ever Tried To Tie Your Shoes With One Hand?

I wanted to let you all know about a 5K run/walk (www.pssweloveyou.com) my wife and I are putting on, at 8:00 AM on September 24th in Glen Ellyn, IL, to benefit Pediatric Stroke Survivors.   As many of you may or may not know, pediatric stroke touched our family 2 years ago when our son, Johnny, had a stroke while he was still in the womb. Thankfully, his stroke was relatively mild and thanks to some awesome therapists, he will make a full recovery.

But many kids aren't so lucky.  Some babies (1 in 4,000) have had more severe strokes in-utero, or have strokes as kids, which are harder to bounce back from.  These kids get some therapy from the state or insurance but it's rarely enough.  Our goal is to raise money to give these kids a chance to be "normal" and get them all of the therapy they can handle to be the best they can be. We can tell you first hand that therapy WORKS.  It's amazing how the brain can be re-wired and re-trained by qualified therapists.  Want to understand some of the challenges a stroke victim has?  Try tying your shoes with one hand.  Or cutting food with one hand.   Therapy will help these kids do the things many of us consider trivial.

I know times are tough out there, but if you have a little extra time or a little extra cash to help these kids, here are some options.

# 1)  Volunteer.  We can still use some volunteers for the race.  This will be about 2 hours of your time and will be a blast.  Mainly we need folks to stand at intersections to keep cars at bay while runners come by.  Handing out water and pre-race registration/packet pick up are also options.  Volunteering will be Saturday morning (9/24) from 7-9 AM and you'll leave feeling like a million bucks, we promise!

#2)  Make a donation.  EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR WE RAISE is going to a charity called CHASA (chasa.org) whose sole focus is helping pediatric stroke survivors.  Their expense ratio is ridiculously low, so if you donate $30, $30 goes to CHASA and ultimately to an hour of therapy for a kid.  Even one hour makes a big difference.

#3)  Run Forest, Run!  (Or Walk!).  $25 gets you into the race, an awesome T-shirt, a day-old Einstein Bagel at the finish-line and a warm, good-feeling inside. Nothing makes you feel better than a 30 minute jog, right?  Come on out and kick off your Saturday with a brisk fall jog down the beautiful Glen Ellyn Prairie Path. By the way, we already talked to Tom Skilling and he assured us it's not going to rain. :-)

For those of you who are already supporting the P.S.S. 5K, thank you!    For those interested you can sign up for #1, #2 or #3 above by clicking the button below.  Thanks for reading this and for all your support!

Mobile, the Driver for SOA?

So SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) was the talk of the town throughout the 2000s, at least by enterprise software vendors.  But SOA adoption was more of a pitter patter than a bang.


The first major issue was funding.  How do you get the business to buy-off on an enterprise-wide refactor without offering them any real new functionality?  Sure you could tout the eventual cost savings and interoperability.  But that's a hard argument for CFOs to swallow.

The other issue with SOA adoption was the change management challenge, particularly for large organizations.  It's hard to get dozens of development teams (often geographically dispersed) singing the same song to make SOA work right.

But there were some successful SOA adoptions in the last 10 years and the most successful were iterative, not big bang.  Meaning that over a period of time, enterprise apps would one-by-one, refactor into a SOA model, exposing reusable services across enterprise apps while they incorporated new functionality for the business.

If you're still trying to get your SOA program kickstarted, mobile could be the catalyst you're looking for.  The best enterprise mobile apps aren't writing new business services, but integrating with ones that already exist.  And not every feature needs to be refactored, just the ones that make sense in a mobile context (i.e. iterative refactoring).

So as you begin your enterprise mobility initiatives, think of it as a way to kickstart your SOA adoption as well.  Put some thought into using a consistent set of patterns and technologies when exposing your existing enterprise services to the mobile channel.  You just might get your enterprise "service-oriented" quicker than you think.

Enterprise Mobility: It's About Tasks, Not Apps

Although customer facing apps are real differentiators, I think mobility "behind the firewall" is the real game changer.  Targeted mobile apps to employees can make their jobs more efficient and enjoyable.  But in order to do it correctly, we've got to change how we look at apps.

Historically, we think of applications as monolithic, comprehensive sets of features around a particular domain.  CRMs, HR Systems, Financial Systems, Business Intelligence Platforms.  An employee may keep these applications open on their desktops all day as they do their job. Porting these apps (or even portions of these apps) individually onto mobile devices, is not necessarily the best approach.  The reality is, there are probably only a few real value-added mobile use cases in each of these applications.

Instead I want you to focus on exposing mobile TASKS.  A mobile app's adoption is greatest when they are designed as simple utilities, not full blown applications.  Quick hits.  Something an employee can load quickly, get the information or enter the data they need to quickly, and get out, quickly.

So if you're thinking about getting your employees mobile, think about the mobile use cases that exist across your enterprise applications.  What are the specific items that really make sense in a mobile context?  Maybe it's workflow approvals for some time-sensitive business processes.  Maybe it's a customer lookup utility that shows a quick, consolidated mobile snapshot of customer information across CRM, Account Maintenance, Order Management and SharePoint platforms.  Maybe it's a Point of Service utility that allows an individual to log a call report to a CRM, or a trouble ticket to an issue management system or perform a simple order entry.

Think about building an enterprise app the same way you'd look at building a portlet on an enterprise portal's front page.  Quick snippets of information from various systems.  Simple, contextual, aggregated info, without exposing all of the complexities of the underlying application(s).

The beauty of this?  You can build these mobile tasks iteratively, one at a time.  So dipping your toe in mobility "behind the firewall" doesn't have to be expensive.  Quick hits means that the utilities are not only simple to use, but simple to build.  And with the rapid adoption of mobile apps on smart phones and tablets, your employees will thank you for it, and so will your bottom line.

Need some help setting your mobile strategy (Platforms, Device Management, Standards and Mobile Use Case Identification?) or mobile app development? Let me know and I'll get you in touch with the best mobile strategists and architects in Chicago.

BlackBerry. Is. Dead. There I Said It.

There's been considerable legacy investment by enterprises in Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry platform, and rightfully so.  But the tide is changing, quickly, and companies need to reevaluate their investment in the RIMM platform as they increase their investment in enterprise mobility.

RIMM did a bang up job early on of introducing seamless, secure, enterprise mobile communication, but they have failed to address 3 big movements in the market in the last few years:

1)  Consumer Adoption of Smart Phones/Enterprise's Bring Your Own Tech (BYOT) Programs
Smart phones are set to eclipse feature/basic phone purchases this year.  With Google giving Android away for free, phone manufacturers like HTC, LG and Samsung can introduce smart phones at an extremely competitive price, to the point where carriers offer them for free for new/renewed contracts.  This trend combined with Verizon's iPhone launch and ATT's recent $49 iPhone 3GS plan, makes smart phones primed to become, well, phones.

This adoption has lead to knowledge workers pushing for support of iOS and Android platforms on their corporate networks.  Many enterprises are supporting this through BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) programs; whereby instead of purchasing phones or plans, companies provide a stipend to employees for their own device purchase and usage.  This is not good for BlackBerry.  Why? Take a look at the last 5 months of Mobile OS Stats.

Couple that with RIMM's recent lowered guidance on 2011 numbers and analysts agreement that there is no where to go but down.

2) The Introduction of Mobile Device Management Platforms
Mobile Device Management Platforms (MDM's) are replacing the need for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.  Companies like MobileIron and McAfee's Trust Digital offer the same capabilities with additional functionality like remote wiping, mandatory OS and app updates and secure tunnels into the enterprise across all major smartphone platforms.

3) Advancement in Other Mobile Operating Systems and Mobile App Platforms
Let's face it, BlackBerry's OS is behind.  It's slow, clunky and hard to use in comparison to iOS and Android. It's app development SDK is immature in comparison, it's upgrade paths are horrific, and it's App World model is unrefined.  Thus, app developers (enterprise and independent) have flocked to Apple and Android's App Platforms.  This is evident in the number of apps in the various app app stores.  Apple/iOS roughly 350,000, Android roughly 100,000 and BlackBerry roughly 10,000.  That's an order of magnitude difference.  BlackBerry's recent news that their new tablet will support Android apps (kind of) is about as symbolic of a white flag as you can get.

Where's It All Going?
Is RIMM going away?  Not right away.  But the OS (and Apps) running on BlackBerries most likely will be going away.  As a comparison, Nokia, who has the most popular smart phone platform in Europe and Asia, called Symbian, recently announced they will be embracing Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS going forward.  They recognized that Symbian, despite it's current market share, was too far behind the other smart phone OS's.  They also recognized that at the end of the day, Nokia is a device manufacturer, not a software company.  BlackBerry should/will do the same thing.  I would anticipate BlackBerry phones running on Android or Windows Phone in the next 12 months.  If RIMM doesn't make that shift soon, then they will be going away.

As you look to refine your mobility strategy, consider the points above.  Most enterprises are starting down the trail of mobile app development, not just externally, but internally, and that means they need to pick the OSs they're going to develop on.  So we're not just talking about phone purchases anymore, we're talking about software capital investment.  Be sure you're building on a platform of the future, not the past.

-J

J Schwan is the VP of Product Development for Solstice Consulting.  His team helps companies with mobility strategy, MDM selection and mobile app development.

Solstice Launches “Bottega Sol”, Mobile Product Development Studio

Solstice is pleased to announce the launch of Bottega Sol, a sister corporation of Solstice dedicated to building mobile solutions for businesses and individuals that make their lives more efficient and improve interactions with their customers.

After building great mobile products for Solstice clients over the years, Solstice engineers have come up with a few ideas of their own.  Bottega is where those ideas manifest into real products. 

Bottega will utilize Solstice’s proven Agile Software Development Methodology and Mobile Product Management philosophy to launch products quickly, and iterate as customer feedback defines the future features of the products.

Bottega’s products will be sold on a subscription basis, with no-long-term contracts, utilizing a Mobile as a Service (MaaS) model.

Bottega’s first flag ship product will be MiGym, a mobile platform built specifically for the fitness industry that will provide health club members with the information they need about their gym on the go.  MiGym will be a free app in the Apple App Store (launching 3/17).  Gym owners will pay a nominal monthly fee to expose their gym’s schedule, promotions and other information through the app.  Gyms can also use the platform to launch their own branded mobile app in the App Store for a higher monthly fee.  MiGym will officially launch at the International Health and Racquet Club Association Convention next week in San Francisco, CA.

Other Bottega products include MiContacts, a mobile contact management solution and MiBusiness, a mobile marketing platform for service-based businesses to reach their customers through the mobile channel.

Existing and future Solstice Consulting clients will benefit by having access to the intellectual property being developed by Bottega Sol, helping their mobile products get to market faster.  Solstice employees will benefit by having alternative career paths and the opportunity to cross-train themselves on newer, emerging technologies.

We invite you to visit bottegasol.com to learn more about the Company and meet the team.