“There are not a lot of standards,” Bill Taylor, president, Panasonic Systems Networks Company of America, said during a mobility trends industry panel discussion Wednesday at CompTIA Breakaway 2011. “You’ve got this Wild West of multipurpose devices.”
What’s needed, especially by business users, is someone to bring some semblance of order to an environment where “people expect to be un-tethered from their offices PCs and want to work on any device, from anywhere, with access to the same applications and content as if they were in the office,” said Sean Lessman, chief technologist, Worldwide Public Sector Team, Polycom.
Also participating in the mobility trends discussions were Bill Finn, CEO and president, Finn Digital LLC; Janet Schijns, vice president, Business Solutions Group, Verizon Wireless; and Brian Viscount, vice president, NA enterprise vertical and product solutions, Motorola. The panel was moderated by Larry Lannon, group publisher, Virgo Publishing.
Much of the hour-long discussion was dedicated to the myriad of mobile opportunities available to channel partners and solution providers with the right stuff. They include:
- Customized application development for use within an enterprise,
- “Last mile” solutions for large facilities such as hotels and convention centers where wireless or Wi-Fi networks don’t provide comprehensive coverage,
- Context-aware mobility where smart devices communicate and learn from other devices on the network,
- Video analytics in the enterprise,
- Markets that have lagged in adopting mobile technology, such as manufacturing and in the traceability of food and pharmaceuticals through the supply chain, and
- Data, voice and video over Wi-Fi, especially in retail settings.
“You guys have always fixed small problems and made big money,” Verizon’s Schijns told the audience. “The little thing that's bothering small businesses and large enterprises is how to manage all these devices. They don't want to have IT staff do this. They would rather pay you money to do it for them.”
“People don’t want technology to get in the way, they just want to do their job,” Finn said. “Make it easy and elegant for people to use. If you can educate the company and the employees on it, they're comfortable with it and will use it.”
