Category Archives: Mobile

IBM, M&A Activity, Marketing, Messaging, Mobile, Short Message Service, SMS, Xtify

IBM Acquires Mobile Messaging Startup Xtify

IBM today announced the acquisition of Xtify Inc., a ventured-backed company based in New York City. Xtify provides mobile messaging tools via the cloud to help organizations increase mobile sales and improve brand loyalty. Xtify mobile capabilities will be delivered through IBM’s SaaS portfolio and will run on IBM’s SoftLayer cloud infrastructure.

Xtify will expand IBM’s Smart Commerce initiative helping CMOs, digital marketers, mobile application developers with mobile campaign creation, content targeting, dynamic real-time segmentation and analytics across all mobile device platforms and browsers. Xtify’s technology is designed to deliver real-time, personalized offers via in-app mobile messages and push notifications.

The acquisition of Xtify has implications across IBM’s business: 

  • Xtify will expand IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative to help digital marketers develop relevant push notifications delivered via mobile devices and browsers. Smarter Commerce is among IBM’s most profitable business units boasting more than $3.5 billion in acquisitions since 2010.
  • As part of IBM’s MobileFirst strategy, Xtify will make it easier for developers building mobile applications using IBM’s WorkLight platform to deliver relevant and timely cross-channel marketing messages to customers based on open standards.

Bitrix, Bitrix24, Collaboration, Content Management, Customer Relationship Management, Document Management, Messaging, Mobile, Social, Storage

Bitrix24 Collaboration for SMBs Update Supports Online Document Creation, Sharing

Bitrix has released a new version of Bitrix24, its free enterprise social network and collaboration suite for small businesses. The new release allows users to create, edit and collaborate on documents online, without having MS Office suite installed on their personal computers.

In addition to using Bitrix24 instant messenger for video and group chats, users now have access to video conferencing and screen sharing capabilities. Email connectors to MS Exchange, Outlook, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo!, iCloud and other popular e-mail services have been added to enable e-mail access from Bitrix24 accounts.

Activity Stream has been enhanced with real time updates, smart forwarding, notification options and company-wide announcements, while engagement analytics module (Company Pulse) has been added to provide real time indicators for enterprise social network adoption, identify roadblocks and slow adopters, and show which intranet tools are currently being (under)used by employees.

Bitrix24 has also released a fully functional mobile CRM, which allows creation or editing of CRM entries and invoices directly from the mobile device. The new mobile app also allows using multiple Bitrix24 accounts from a single smartphone or tablet.

“2013 has been a year of significant growth for us, – said Bitrix24 CEO Dmitry Valyanov, – we’ve signed up 90,000 companies, which is well over 500,000 users for the cloud and onsite versions of Bitrix24 intranet. Our workforce grew by 40% to over 130 employees and we opened three new sales and support offices. GooglePlay now lists Bitrix24 among the top 5 mobile intranet apps, along with or surpassing such established enterprise social brands as Jive Software, IBM Connection, VMWare SocialCast and TIBCO Tibbr. We hope to have a million users by the end of the year.”

Bitrix24 is 100% free to any company or organization with up to 12 employees. Bitrix24 paid cloud plans are priced at $99/mo (50 GB) and $199/mo (100 GB), and both come with unlimited users.

HTC One, IPhone 5, Mobile, Samsung Galaxy Note II, Sony Xperia Z, Xperia

Best Mobile Phones for Online Gaming

Gaming forms a big part of the mobile phone industry, and it seems quite useful to answer the question of ‘what is the best mobile phone 2013’ by looking at which handset is the best for games. This slant brings into question processing power, storage, screen size, and app availability, so then, which is the best mobile phone for games in 2013. If you want to make up your own mind, you can play some of the most popular casino games on sites such as online casino UK and see for yourself.

A few contenders spring immediately to mind: the iPhone5, HTC One, Samsung Galaxy 4, Galaxy Note 2, Lumia 920 and the Sony Xperia Z.

Sony have really launched themselves back to prominence with the Xperia range and the gaming credentials of the Xperia Z are very good indeed. For starters there’s a super crisp 5inch HD screen, so visibility is well catered for. Then there’s the 1.5GHz quadcore processor to make sure the phone loads up apps quickly and doesn’t lag when they’re running.

The HTC One is very much a critic’s choice when it comes to games (and most other things). The 4.7inch screen is nicely placed in a market that tends towards overly big or overly small. It has a 1.7GHz quadcore processor and it can come with 32GB storage capacity. Anyone who loves an array of games, apps and media should err towards larger storage, and 32GB seems like a good marker.

The Galaxy Note 2 is a spectacular multimedia device, primed as much for films and personal organisation as it is games. This means the screen size is particularly generous at 5.5inches. You can also get 64GB of memory with the potential to double it on what is a real tablet/smartphone hybrid.

Then the likes of the Lumia 920, iPhone5 and Samsung Galaxy S4 all need to be considered on their relative merits. The iPhone5 and Galaxy S4 are the two accepted industry giants and they benefit from huge amounts of games from their respective Android and Apple stores, but then Windows 8 phones such as the Lumia 920 are really taking off as well.

Miscellaneous IT, Mobile, Unified Communications

What You May Have Missed From Citrix Synergy 2013

By Randy Becker, Consulting Architect, LogicsOne

Citrix held its most important event of the year for customers and partners at the end of May. I have been attending these events for many years and this had to be the largest attendance I have ever seen. I was told that 60% were first-time attendees. There was plenty of excitement, and those of you who know Mark Templeton know that he tied in great classic rock to the event. The theme was “Going Mobile,” and what else to lead things off but The Who’s classic “Going Mobile.”

So what were the highlights of the event? Mark talked about two CEO meetings he recently attended. These meetings were focused on DOS and MAC. Yes, DOS and MAC are back, but in a very different way. DOS = Don’t Add Stuff and MAC = Moves Adds and Changes. DOS focuses on doing more with what you have and leveraging technologies that reduce complexity. MAC is reduce the number of and costs associated with moves, adds and changes.

I would say that the predominant message of this conference was providing the mobile workforce the tools (applications) they require to perform their job. This is not a new message; this has been the pervasive message from Citrix for many years. The real twist here is that customers are now really able to work and perform their jobs with devices like tablets from Apple, Samsung, and others. It is my opinion that delivering Windows applications to these devices still has its limitations. It isn’t that they don’t work; it’s that the application may not be conducive to a touch pad device. Citrix offers their Mobility Pack to address some of these limitations, and I have customers successfully using Windows applications delivered by XenApp and XenDesktop to iPads.

So what does all this mean? Well, for one, Citrix recently acquired Zenprise, an MDM solution. Zenprise sits in Gartner’s magic quadrant with Mobile Iron and Air Watch. We have had a lot of fun with this one, and yes, Citrix performed a find and replace on the Z and substituted with a X. This acquisition puts Citrix in a unique position when combined with the rest of the product suite. XenMobile is the complete solution set that Citrix is marketing as an all-inclusive MDM solution.

I think two of the challenges Citrix is going to face with XenMobile are the overlap in existing products, mainly their existing MDX solution set and the complex implementations associated with MDM solutions. The challenge here will be to keep the best of both products and provide an integrated console. I would expect the overlap and integrated console will be addressed in the near future. Don’t get me wrong, I have attended a number of training sessions and I was able to easily build my own XenMobile MDM environment and enroll my iPad and iPhone and push some apps down in an afternoon hands-on session. When I was done, I was even able to perform a selective wipe and remove my corporate managed apps with ease. Citrix spent a little time up front to get the APNS cert squared away. Apple doesn’t make it easy for large corporations to manage Apple devices.

Project Excalibur, now XenDesktop 7, is the most significant release we have seen yet to date, to be released in the June timeframe. Included in this we will now see the integration of XenDesktop and XenApp in one platform. This is a major product change, and the end of Independent Management Architecture (IMA), replaced with XenDesktop’s FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA). This will mean a clean install for XenApp customers, again. To combat the whole XenDesktop is complex, Citrix did an amazing job reducing consoles and simplifying the install. I never minded the extra consoles; it just amazed me that it takes so long to integrate them. As Mark Templeton said, two consoles, eight clicks and 20 minutes and you have a working environment. I’m a strong advocate for proper planning and design, so this is fine for a POC. Spend the time up front before the “20 minutes” to install. Now the two consoles are not 100 percent accurate if you want Provisioning Server (PVS), and I almost always recommend that you include this in your delivery solution.

The two primary consoles are Desktop Studio; this is where you perform all of your configuration and Desktop Director, the place you go to manage and support your users. The interface to Desktop Director ROCKS! We continue to see Citrix develop support tools that makes everyone’s lives easier, including the users. XenDesktop also allows for easy publishing of single applications on desktops, so if you need backward for forward compatibility this is even easier than before.

XenDesktop 7 also has better integration with high-end video adapters from NVidia and two new K adapters for two different purposes. We are now seeing that you need Graphic Processors for even Knowledge Workers in VDI using standard office applications. This is different than the need for high-end graphics cards for software like Solid Works and AutoCAD. Two different requirements and two different cards and solutions that can be integrated, check out these cards from NVidia.

Web Interface is now dead with the release of XenDesktop 7. It has been replaced with StoreFront. Customers should be focusing on moving to StoreFront even for existing deployments. No big changes here for the end users. On the back-end there are significant changes in terms of flexibility and scale. To make it easy for users, one can download Citrix Receiver and all they need to know to get setup and access to applications is their email address. This auto provisioning is amazingly easy, and I highly recommend that this be included in any implementation.

There was some significant news on the NetScaler front. A new code update, HDX Insight, an additional high-end model and an expansion of the partner solutions running on NetScaler SDX. SDX is physical hardware, with a hypervisor using virtualized NetScaler instances with dedicated hardware to each instance. Partners like Palo Alto and BLUECAT will be able to leverage the SDX platform. More to come on these announcements but we can all see where this is going. Cisco and Citrix have formed a very strong partnership including the NetScaler as a Cisco Validated Design (CVD). Cisco is now using the NetScaler as their go to Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and XenDesktop on Unified Computing System (UCS). Customers are also going to be able to add HDX Insight for the NetScaler; this will give additional monitoring visibility into all traffic flowing through the NetScaler including High Definition User Experience (HDX). For those of you not familiar with HDX, think of HDX protocol as ICA on steroids.

One announcement that didn’t get much attention is the Mac Desktop Player. I think this is part of XenClient and allows for the checking out of a Windows desktop. Almost everyone that has a Mac uses some type of virtualization layer to run Windows on a Mac now. I assume we will see more information on this once it goes into tech preview.

In summary, some key takeaways:

  • Citrix Redefines Enterprise Mobility with XenMobile Enterprise
    Citrix XenMobile Enterprise Edition combines mobile device, app and data management, a unified corporate app store, mobile productivity apps and “one-touch” live support into an inclusive solution for delivering mobile services to business. Worx App and Citrix MDX app container technology to add features like data encryption, password authentication, secure lock and wipe, inter-app policies and micro VPNs to mobile applications.
  • Citrix Continues to Expand Enterprise Mobility Strategy with XenDesktop 7
    XenDesktop 7 is the first release of Project Avalon, a multi-phased initiative to deliver Windows as a cloud service. XenDesktop 7 offers integrated Windows app and desktop mobility, easier deployment options and simplified management, all delivered through a new, cloud-style architecture. Current XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp customers will find the new architecture easier than ever to deploy, manage and support. XenDesktop 7 represents the state-of-the-art in app and desktop virtualization, enabling any business to mobilize Windows apps and desktops and deliver them as a cloud service to any device. XenDesktop 7 breaks the bonds between application workloads and delivery infrastructure so that multiple versions of Windows Server and desktop operating systems may be run side by side, including newly enabled support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.
  • HDX Insight with NetScaler Insight Control
    This is a really powerful tool to give admins and support personnel full end user experience visibility for the HDX protocol, as well as other applications being delivered by the NetScaler. HDX Insight runs as an appliance and collects data on the NetScaler using AppFlow.
  • ShareFile Mobilizes and Secures Enterprise Data Everywhere
    With the Synergy announcement, Citrix is uniquely positioned to mobilize user data everywhere, including data within SharePoint and network drives and public cloud storage on Microsoft Azure, while providing IT with comprehensive control to secure enterprise data everywhere.
  • Citrix announced new Citrix ShareFile innovations for mobilizing and securing enterprise data, including StorageZone Connectors for SharePoint and network drives, new Citrix-managed StorageZone options with Microsoft Windows Azure and unique integration with Citrix XenMobile.

All in all, a successful event!

Guest Post, Mobile, Mobile device, Mobile marketing, Mobile payment, Payment, PayPal, Point of sale, POS, Smartphone

Mobile Payment Future Is Tied to Services

Guest Post by Nick Nayfack, Director of Payment Solutions, Mercury Payment Systems

Consumers are already using their smartphones when they shop. They just need the incentive to take the next step to making a purchase with their phone. According to Google, some 79 percent of consumers today can be considered “mobile shoppers” because they use their smartphones for browsing for product information, searching for product reviews or looking for offers and promotions. Today’s merchants see their customers browsing their store with smartphones and know that mobile marketing is no longer an option, it’s an imperative.

There is a clear opportunity to target avid smartphone users, as well as provide merchants with the ability to turn their point of sale system into a marketing engine simply by capturing their customers’ phone numbers. By creating a point of sale environment where processing becomes prospecting, mobile and alternative payments become a natural extension of the convenience and value that merchants and consumers are looking for. Not only can consumer use their phones in store to gain product information or exclusive offers, they can skip the checkout line by paying with their phone.  In this environment, mobile payments gain adoption because of the valuable service it provides to both the merchant and the consumer.

What is it that is driving merchants to adopt mobile point of sale systems (POS) – doubling their implementation in the past year – and consumer rapid adoption of smartphones – while mobile payments has yet to experience the same growth curve? The slow speed of adoption can be tied to two gaps in the current payment landscape: convenience and value. Merchants are adopting mobile POS systems because of their affordable pricing, the ease of use, and the ability to tie value-added services like loyalty programs and gift options to their customer’s checkout experience. Consumers are looking for more value for their money and more likely to sign up for opt-in marketing at the cash register or loyalty programs if they feel like they are getting something in return.

Where is the value in Mobile Payments today?

1. Information is Still Key

Consumers are using their phones now mostly to find product information, restaurant reviews, and discount offers.  90 percent of smartphone shoppers use their phone today for “pre-shopping” activities. The most common are price comparisons (53 percent), finding offers and promotions (39 percent), finding locations of other stores (36 percent) and finding hours (35 percent).  In contrast, consumer in-store purchases from a mobile device are still in the minority (~16 percent), but show promise for fast and exponential grow.  As such, if you want consumers to use your mobile payment application, there must be a tight alignment with other frequently used mobile applications (i.e. mobile search.)

2. Remember Your Basics

Key players in the mobile payments space need to make better UX by applying principles learned from the web many years ago: mobile-specific design, clear calls to action and one shopping experience across all platforms.  Beyond the UX, there needs to be clear and repeatable value to the consumer. Special offers or incentives could be paired with your current purchase history to make one-click purchases attractive from mobile devices. From a historical perspective, Amazon introduced this concept several years ago in the e-commerce world with links that provided suggestive purchases based on the buyer’s current purchase (e.g. others that bought this book, also bought the following). While m-commerce has different considerations such as limited time and high distraction of users, there can be some lessons learned from the past.

3. Find Today’s Value

POS developers will succeed today, and in the future by helping merchants to obtain and analyze information about their business and customers. This requires coordinating with an acquirer or processor that has rich historical data to help analyze transaction history, and other data. In this way, merchants can then personalize the consumer experience for new cost benefits or improve operations for cost savings.

Lastly, as mobile evolves, new data points will provide richer context (e.g. location, social context, sku data) and merchants will have even more reference points to deliver a personal consumer experience. In this way, personalization is the key value that is coupled with convenience.

Nick Nayfack

Nick Nayfack is the director of product for Mercury Payment Systems. He is responsible for developing best practices in mobile commerce with industry peers in order to help enable merchants and consumers to navigate technological “ease-of-use.” Nick is also a member of the Electronic Transaction Associations (ETA) Mobile payments committee.

Android, Heroku, JQuery Mobile, Mobile, Mobile device management, Parse

AnyPresence Updates Its Mobile BaaS

AnyPresence today announced the general availability of its fourth generation enterprise backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform solution. AnyPresence targets enterprises looking to solve the challenge of leveraging cloud backend services for mobile application development, by establishing scalable infrastructure that makes it easier to cost-effectively mobile-enable their business processes.

“AnyPresence continues to raise the bar for what to expect from an enterprise-class backend service platform”, said Anirban Chakrabarti, AnyPresence CEO and Co-founder. “Unlike other MBaaS solutions like Kinvey, StackMob, and Parse, AnyPresence was optimized for enterprise use cases, such as hybrid deployments and IT data source integration, from day one. Furthermore, because of our unique no lock-in architecture, CIOs can rest assured that AnyPresence can adapt to their existing development processes, resources, and IT infrastructure going forward.”

This latest release adds significant development accelerators and integration with best-of-breed technology partners, to further reduce enterprise app development costs and time-to-market. Among the list of enhancements delivered and already being used by customers are:

  • Application Cloning: For organizations looking to build multiple apps that have common core functionality with only minor variations, this powerful feature allows them to create a copy of an existing app along with all data source, object, and user interface definitions, saving significant development effort.
  • Automated App UI Testing: Developers who use AnyPresence to generate a starter mobile app user interface (UI), now get the added benefit of functional test scripts for native iOS, native Android, and jQuery Mobile web apps. These test scripts can be run to ensure the app is interacting with backend functionality as expected, saving time in testing and improving reliability.
  • Custom Server Extensions: While developers have always been able to add custom code to objects within AnyPresence, they can now create re-usable “Extensions” that can be shared across teams or lines of business. This also enables third parties to encapsulate their services as official AnyPresence Extensions, enabling a marketplace of add-ons that can be used across the AnyPresence customer base.
  • Enterprise App Store Integration: AnyPresence now supports the ability to deploy apps to employees directly via enterprise app stores powered by Mobile Application Management (MAM) or Mobile Device Management (MDM) vendors. Apperian EASE is first MAM partner solution to be integrated directly with the AnyPresence Designer.
  • Cloud Infrastructure Management: For the default cloud backend server deployment to Heroku, administrators can now control the performance characteristics of their app, and choose from hundreds of Heroku add-ons, directly from the AnyPresence Designer. This seamless integration enables developers to plan for the required capacity and usage of each individual backend server instance, and manage them from one central location.

Big Data, Mobile, Mobile device, Mobile network operator, SAP, SAP HANA

SAP Pilots Service to Unlock Value of Mobile Data

SAP today announced the SAP Consumer Insight 365 mobile service, a pilot initiative of a new cloud-based offering aiming to unlock the value of big data. The service will be powered by the SAP HANA platform and will allow enterprises to gain insight from the analysis of massive amounts of aggregated and anonymized consumer data residing in operator networks in real time. This market intelligence will ultimately allow brands to strengthen relationships with consumers through more targeted and context-specific marketing efforts.

“The rise of the always connected mobile world is creating a new source of data that has the potential to provide deeper insight into consumer behavior,” according to Guy Rolfe , global mobile practice leader at Kantar Mobile. ”The challenge is that this data is on a scale not seen before, therefore any service that can address this will create a new empirical data source that will not only complement existing research methodologies, but will also enable brands to better connect to consumers.”

There are more mobile devices in the world than there are people. The proliferation of mobile devices has significantly changed the way people communicate, live and engage with each other at work and in their personal lives. As more consumers get connected around the world through mobile devices, smartphones and the Internet, all of these interactions create massive amounts of data. The sheer volume and scale of this data has made analysis difficult.

With SAP Consumer Insight 365, data from operator networks will be analyzed through advanced analytics providing population level insight as well as high-definition detail through an intuitive Web portal, without drilling down into user-specific information. All mobile network operator data will be stored discreetly and individually partitioned within a global network of SAP data centers.