Can Software as a Service go mobile?

The opportunity for Mobile SaaS is huge, as computing moves from the desktop to mobile devices, it is a natural evolution that software delivered to the desktop follows that migration.

One of the key tenets of SaaS is that the software can be delivered anywhere, as needed, but that anywhere comes with a caveat that is very significant in the mobile world.

The assumption made is that the desktop is always connected to the Internet, usually via a broadband connection. This assumption cannot be made about mobile devices.

To be truly successful, mobile solutions have to adapt to changes in connectivity. The key to their success is handling this gracefully.

As an example, consider mobile email, the most mature mobile SaaS offering. My BlackBerry copes brilliantly with being offline, allowing me to send, reply, sort and organise my emails wherever I am, coverage or not, seamlessly synching when connectivity is restored.

The iPhone Exchange integration however is far less robust, complaining when coverage is lost and regularly restoring emails I’ve deleted and sending emails multiple times.

So the implementation is one thing, but the architecture these applications rely on, conflicts with traditional SaaS implementations where the application is delivered page by page via a web browser. If there is no connectivity then client software is required on the device which then has to be kept up to date.

This is where the iPhone wins hands down. The iTunes Application Store seamlessly ensures software is up to date whenever the device is synched with the owners PC. Salesforce.com, the self-proclaimed poster-boys of the SaaS revolution have an iPhone app sitting alongside their BlackBerry version that enables offline access to your corporate sales data.

So implementation is key and working offline is critical but this software based solution brings another problem, multiple platform support.

As soon you start shipping software you have to cope with the plethora of devices and platforms that are out there. The beauty of a pure web-based model is that this is irrelevant, however offline working precludes this. So application developers have to focus on a few key handsets that they believe will be most used by the target market for their application, which probably means Nokia S60.

Google have produced an alternative with a technology called Google Gears. This allows a web browser to store information on the PC for later synchronisation, even better news is that they have a version for mobile devices. The bad news is that this only works on Windows Mobile.

However, this may not be all bad. Microsoft have done a very good job of making Windows Mobile the platform of choice for organisations wanting to extend their business apps into the mobile space. They provide a rich and mature set of development tools based around their .NET framework which enable developers to use the same languages and tools that the use to develop desktop and web applications to develop mobile applications. The same cannot be said for the iPhone and the S60 platforms.

Windows Mobile itself seems to be improving with every release and the manufacturers are producing more and more desirable handsets for it.

Another interesting development to match is Microsoft’s Live Mesh, a technology that seamlessly synchronises your data across all your devices. This can be pictures, music, video etc, but there is no reason not to include business data in this mix. Imagine working on a business workflow app on your desktop, stepping away from your desk and being able to continue on your mobile device at exactly the point you left off.

It’s for these reasons that I believe that Windows Mobile represents the best bet of the platforms to support Mobile SaaS, especially for business apps.

Mobile working back from Cannes - another coverage on trains rant

Following on form my post Mobile working to Cannes, I'm not going to report on the whole trip but I have one observation from the return leg.

For a number of reasons I ended up flying back to Heathrow then getting a cab back to Nottingham. Complete carbon disaster compared to the outbound leg.

Sitting in the back of the cab I fired up the laptop, plugged in the Vodafone USB modem and was greated with very good coverage for a good proportion of the journey up the M1. Given that most cars contain only one person and thus cannot take advantage of this data coverage, this makes the lack of a decent mobile service on the nation's inter-city rail routes even more criminal.

Is the M1 is benefiting from intersecting more urban coverage? It seems wholly wrong that where it is safe to use mobile coverage you can't (the train) and where it isn't (when you're single handedly piloting a tonne of metal and plastic) you have more than you can shake a stick at.

One of the people I met last week, who worked for a UK operator was explaining to me that much of the issue rests with Network Rail and their desire to cream as much out of the network operators as possible for putting rail-cells on their property.

He was actually advocating nationalising the cell infrastructure and let the network operators provide services on top. Not sure of the merits of this given his complaint about a monoplistic player preventing the establishment of the infrastructure.

If this is the issue, I do think there is a case for the government to step in and require Network Rail to facilitate the establishment of a network of cells to give full and reliable coverage to at least the intercity routes. I'm sure the train operating companies would be prepared to get involved if it meant providing better facilities to their customers.

This would also serve to increase the attractiveness of the train as a viable transport option to businesses. Thanks to this nation's obsession with personal transport, trains have to try much harder to attract passengers. Providing customers with the facilities to support proper mobile working would tip the balance for many people.

And who knows, we might just get a few more cars off the roads in the process.

Mobile working to Cannes

I decided to take the train to Global Messaging 2008 in Cannes,France. Last year I did it overnight which was sort of fun. This year I'm heading down during the day and seeing whether it's possible to do a days work while I spend the day travelling.

So armed with a my Sony Vaio, Vodafone USB Modem and BlackBerry I attempted to spend the day travelling but so that no one would notice.

3 trains required (if you ignore 2 stop on the RER in Paris):

1. Nottingham to London St Pancras
2. London St Pancras to Paris Gare de Lyon
3. Paris Gare de Lyon to Cannes

Nottingham to London - East Midlands Trains

This first leg is well known to me. I was able to use the power point to keep my laptop battery topped up but no WiFi and mobile coverage is shocking as usual. I've pretty much got used to not being able to do anything connected while on the train to/from London. That said my BlackBerry does an excellent job of exchanging emails when coverage allows.

Same goes for voice calls. Pointless trying to have a conversation.

It's always perplexed me as to why the mobile network operators have not invested in coverage for train lines. Little sardine cans of punters desperate to be communicate or consume content because there's nothing else to do.

conclusion: 3/10 great to have power, connectivity shocking

London to Paris - Eurostar

Aarrgh no power. Luckily I've invested in another battery for my laptop as the spare battery that came with my now 2 year old Vaio couldn't make it to Paris (the original battery gave up long ago). I guess though that a lot people's laptops will survive the 2hr journey so this shouldn't be too much of a hindrance.

I remember when Eurostar first opened and the trains seemed so glamorous, now they just seem tired and sadly lacking in basic facilities. Power points being one.

If they are trying to provide a business service then power is a must and I think WiFi would be a key asset. GNER (now National Express) seem to have done a great job on the East Coast Line, why not a premium route like London - Paris.

However this was when the Vodafone modem came to the fore, especially on the French side. I got 3G coverage almost all the way from Calais to Paris. I actually managed to use some web applications. Properly review some emails, respond completely. It was like being at my desk at home.

Voice calls no problem.

conclusion: 7/10 connectivity pretty good though WiFi would be beter, could really do with power

Paris to Cannes

This was going to be the real test. The first 2 legs are less than or about the 2 hour mark. If all else failed you could probably catch up with things at a coffee shop at one of the stations. 5 hours of whizzing through the French countryside was really going to put this experiment to the test, and it did.

I had high hopes for this train trip. The French being well known for their super fast train service, tearing round the country brimming with socialist pride. I imagined it would be well setup for the travelling business person.

I booked way ahead so travelled first class and was greeted by a nice big seat on the top deck (thought that might be better for mobile coverage) with my own power point.

No WiFi again, but as we left Paris I was hopeful as 3G coverage remained but this soon gave way to 2G, which in turn gave way to very patchy indeed. For large chunks of the journey it was unworkable. Especially as it seemed to stop connecting automatically, maybe that's a roaming setting.

Voice calls were also tricky, especially given they seem to be frowned upon in the carriage. Nothing like a mobile phone etiquette faux-pas in a foreign country to endear yourself with your fellow passengers.

conclusion: 6/10 power and seat great, data coverage varied

So is it workable? Certainly Eurostar, though more on the French side than the British. Given they've shortened that bit recently, I guess it's less of a problem ;-). The key at the moment is to know your route and know how to work round it's foibles.

Having used the WiFi on the East Coast (London to Edinburgh) line it's difficult to understand why other rail operators aren't putting it in across their fleet. You look in any rail carriage these days and the number of laptops as just mushroomed. Couple that with WiFi capable phones and PDAs and there's an army of people that would be quite prepared to pay an additional charge for WiFi while they travel.

I might be getting a little carried away, but I wonder if the government has any view on the national productivity hit of having people stuck on trains, unable to access their work. Could a government subsidy drive adoption as well as our GDP?

Live Mesh

I had the 'honour' at being at the launch of Microsoft Live Mesh yesterday.

It promises a lot: ultimate, seamless connectivity for all devices, cameras, PCs, smartphones, even Macs. Unfortunately at the moment that's all it is, promises.

I have been given access to a special invitation preview, that I've signed up for but hasn't yet yielded an account. From what I can make out though, at the moment all it is is file storage. Put some files in the cloud and access them later. useful, but not ground-breaking.

Now, I know there is more than that to come, but at the moment that's it. It feels to me like a rushed announcement before the ink is dry on chapter 1 of the Live Mesh novel. I'd expect to at least get to the end of the first act.

Just KISS and it'll happen

It’s a maxim we try and keep at the forefront of our minds when developing our services, it’s core to the XP methodology we live by. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is something that is often overlooked in the technology industry.

In the presentation I saw from Avaya at IP07, they were demonstrating how to get your employees to make their mobile calls through the corporate PBX. The overwhelming message was make it simple, that’s what will make users adopt it.

Their two recommendations were

• Avoid dual mode like the plague, it’s too difficult and therefore people work around it
• Do a deal with you network operator whereby all calls to and from your company’s PBX are at flat rate

Taking point 1 initially, this is signals to me that the traditional FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) approach of WiFi or Bluetooth while in the home zone and then traditional GSM/3G when out of range is being accepted as not viable.

While there may be some cost benefit, it’s not significant to overcome the user experience hurdles that the current dual-mode handsets put in front of users. People just want to make calls, and in actual fact are prepared to pay more to make them more conveniently.

In the business context the question of cost is even less of an issue to the end-user. Generally their company’s paying, which leads nicely onto point 2.

If a company can negotiate a fixed cost deal for any calls made from employee mobile phones back to the PBX it becomes economic to route all calls through it. Suddenly full routing, tracking and recording is under the control of the company. Calls outside the company can take advantage of fixed line pricing instead of costly mobile agreements, especially when calls are made internationally.

However there is a problem. In order for this to work, the user has to download, and use an application on their phone. The application then accepts the number dialled, calls the company’s PBX and requests that it establishes the call to the destination.

Suddenly it’s no longer simple.

This does get round the call quality and coverage issues presented by offerings from companies like Truphone. Using the existing mobile network, with 99+% population coverage means people should be able to make the calls pretty much where they want.

The problem is, users don’t want to use applications; they want to use their phone. They are Normobs, why would they want to navigate the applications menu on their phone to make a call when they can just key in the numbers.

A company may be able to convince/incentivise some hardened road-warriors to use an application like this, but the whole workforce, IMHO not a chance.

The mobile operators could technically provide this service to their corporate customers but I don’t see the economics stacking up for them. Fixed rate deals are just something else that’s turning them into a dumb pipe, not something they’ve spent billions of pounds over the last decade or so to achieve.

I do find the many approaches to try and circumvent the mobile network operators intriguing, many are very innovative but I don’t believe any yet will be adopted by the Normob (Normal Mobile User).

Therein lies the strength of the mobile network operators position. Unless you KISS people are not prepared to change.

IP07 - Please call someone

Popped into IP07 this week, the annual exhibition covering the convergence of voice data and video over IP networks. This produced a pretty eclectic mix of exhibitors. To give you a flavour:

• BT and Thus with their managed network services,
• Dialogic with their telephony cards,
• Microsoft of course (what it must be like to have a marketing budget for attending every show almost irrespective of relevance).
• Symantec and IPSwitch offering network monitoring management tools (we use WhatsUp)
• Nokia with all sorts of device management offerings as well their obligatory sexy handsets in glass case
• eFax with the internet faxing service
• Coms, a hosted VoIP provider
• Nortel, Mitel and Avaya offering their particular take on the next generation PBX.

It is to this last group I turn for an interesting insight.

I attended presentations by both Mitel (about Presence) and Avaya (about connecting mobile devices with the corporate PBX) and both had a recurring theme:

Please make voice calls.

People are increasingly using email and text messaging to communicate rather than picking up the phone. If you sell voice systems, this is bad news.

There was talk of the scourge of email trails and how organisations are becoming paralysed as people covered their backsides and cc’d the world. People are using email to hide but are being increasingly overwhelmed by more and more messages. If everyone just picked up the phone, they claimed, life would be better and things would get done.

Picking up the point about hiding, the man from Avaya did have the decency to mention voice mail, the original communication avoidance tool.

There will always be people who want to avoid direct communication but this can be for a number of reasons, not necessarily just because their work-shy.

I use a mix voice calls, email and text to better manage my communications. The choice is a function of the information to be exchanged, my availability and location as well as that of the other party.

Voice calls are if I want to discuss something now or just want to make the communication more personal

Emails are if it’s something that I don’t need an answer to straight away or I’m expecting the other person to consider or research a response

Text is when I’m mobile or I know the other person is, or I don’t know where they are. If it get’s complex or drawn out I’ll generally move over to a voice call or email from my BlackBerry

Receiving and answering a voice call is incredibly interrupting. It stops you dead in your tracks, preventing you from completing what you are doing. Interrupting someone while they’re mind is elsewhere forces them to readjust their thinking and as the caller, you have to negotiate the preamble while this happens before you can have an efficient conversation with the other party.

Email and text on the other hand allow the recipient to complete the task they are currently undertaking. This is far more efficient for both parties.

Send them an email or text and you give them a chance to respond coherently. I’m not saying they will, I’ve fired off far too many reactive emails and texts in my time, but they can.

Whether they do or not is a function of them not the communication method. Impromptu voice calls promote this kind of behaviour.

CSIRO Irrigation Information to Growers via SMS

Had a meeting today with one of our clients Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to discuss how they're using the service.

The particular team we are dealing with take data from weather stations across their irrigation areas in Australia. They use this weather data to calculate the effect on crops and their subsequent water requirements. The issue was, getting this information out to the growers.

SMS is the perfect medium for this as growers tend to be in the field and internet connections are scarce. Internet connections are scarce where the need the information the most, in the field.

So an SMS message is sent to the growers containing advice about water quantities to use based on recent weather conditions.

This service has both economic and environmental benefits. Water costs growers money so using the correct amount is very important. Australia is also going through a major drought so any efficiencies help keep as much water in the environment, where it is also needed, as possible.