The centerpiece of the CompTIA Mobility Community Meeting on day one of ChannelCon was billed as the “Rumble in the Mobile Jungle” and it was as combative as that sounds. With Ryan Morris, principal consultant at MMP Inc. serving as referee, Michael Toto, director of strategic global alliances and alternate channels at Verizon, Kyp Walls, director of product management at Panasonic, and Scott Barlow, vice president of worldwide sales at Reflexion Networks, squared off for the title belt.
In the first corner, Toto presented a new view of the vendor, carrier dichotomy. He asserted that it’s a thing of the past to develop line-of-business solutions to hit certain verticals. Today, companies should be partnering with carriers to enable customers with end-to-end solutions. The winners, Toto said, are going to be those who partner with traditional vendors as well as carriers. Customers and channel innovators should be partnering on both sides of the fence, so it’s essential to bring them together and know who to partner with. The losers, Toto said, are going to be those solving for just one problem.
Toto summarized his remarks by saying a carrier doesn’t want to be “a dumb pipe.” An attendee echoed this by pointing out a lot of people do look at a carrier as just a utility, pointing out that they go to third parties such as Netflix and Hulu for content.
In the second corner, Walls set out to prove that “the future of BYOD is not BYOD.” He began his presentation by establishing that BYOD exists because it gives people the ability to select the mobile device of their choosing and avoids them using two phones; one for work and one for personal use. To illustrate how inconvenient this is, he produced two phones from his own pocket. But he pointed out the challenges of BYOD; listing manageability, productivity and security as foremost concerns. Walls feels these challenges are serious enough that BYOD will soon be a thing of the past, and he was heavily backed on this point by Barlow.
The winners here, Walls asserted, will be the channel, because channel companies sell mobile devices to companies, whereas individuals tend to buy such products at a retail level. He said the losers will be companies that build mobile devices, as they’ll sell less of them, and hackers, since mobile devices will likely be more secure.
The problem with this argument is its circular logic – it sends us right back to the two phones in Walls’ pocket, as he offers no alternative to that conclusion. An attendee immediately pointed this out, saying the death of BYOD “ends with iPads hidden under desks.” Another attendee widened the scope of the discussion, saying the recent example of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden indicates the most important thing to control is not what’s in employees’ phones but rather their minds.
In the third corner, Barlow spoke on data breach standards and compliance. Via a quick poll, we learned pretty much no one in the room knew their own state’s data breach notification (DBN) law. Barlow illustrated how precarious ignorance of these laws can by explaining that if he bought a slice of pizza here, paid for it with his credit card and his credit card number was then sent out as a plain text e-mail or saved on an unencrypted hard drive, “that Orlando pizza shop just violated Massachusetts DBN law.”
According to Barlow, the winners here are going to be those who differentiate their businesses by understanding such complicated compliance issues. The losers, quite simply, are going to be those who don’t do that. An attendee shared that he has just one client who won’t use encryption because it’s inconvenient to his clients. Barlow advised amending his agreement with this client to limit liability based on this. Morris then wrapped the presentation by quipping, “Life would be easier without end-users, but…”
Finally it was time for the judges to weigh in. The audience simply texted whether they agreed or disagreed with the three presentations by texting to numbers set up with PollEverywhere.com – a nice tie-in with the community’s mobility focus. Toto drew response spread widely across agreement and disagreement; perhaps indicating that people are still sorting out how they approach vendor, carrier relationships. Walls got slammed with 20 disagree and only eight agree – seems that those writing BYOD’s obituary are doing so a bit prematurely. Barlow, meanwhile, dominated with 27 agree; the clear winner of the match. He was awarded a set of boxing gloves.
In general discussion following the rumble, Morris commented on the ubiquitous nature of mobility and how those in the room figure into that: “Yes Skynet is coming, and you’re the one’s installing the infrastructure,” referencing the homicidal computer system of the Terminator franchise. It fit with a recurrent leitmotif we’ve seen at ChannelCon of drawing on pop culture to explain the evolution of IT. In his welcome keynote on Tuesday, CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux showed clips from Iron Man, Office Space, Terminator 3 and The Social Network to frame his remarks. Opening keynoter and Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens topped him, referencing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Batman, Star Wars, Dilbert, The Andy Griffith Show, Dragnet and Apollo 13 as he walked attendees through the story of his career.
