There is no such thing as “killer application for HTML5″. And the “owner” of operating system or ecosystem is not the one that needs to create most popular apps. Best iOS apps are not done by Apple. Best Android apps are not created by Google (with exception of Google Maps or Google Now, but those are very specific data-intensive applications relying on completely separate data aggregation ecosystem, based on e.g. location and mapping data).

HTML5 has its perks. You don’t need to install it as native, it is cheaper, and HTML5 standard freeze will eventually ensure that it will be performance-wise on par with e.g. cloud-based apps. But, at the same time, it is similar to other, competing ecosystems, since they all support it. Sencha recently demoed HTML5-based Facebook imitation on iPhone to show that performance-wise there was actually no difference between native app and HTML5. Don’t build your hopes on a dedicated ecosystem for you which is based on HTML5; that’s not going to happen.

I have been studying for some time the concept of a Design Ecosystem, which is related to operating system / software ecosystem in terms of how things are built for them. While Apple/iOS still leads the game, Android’s power comes from a vast mass, and they can more quickly integrate design innovations from external applications to core design style. Apple does this too (e.g. rubber band effect in lists), but their update cycle on design and HMI guidelines for iOS is much slower. Thus, Android may catch up in 2014 with iOS in terms of Design Ecosystem competition. I think Apple knows this and Jonny Ive’s nomination to not only ID, but UI/UX chief relates to this.

How to differentiate an HTML5 app? Differentiation can be positive or negative; performance being the usual metric. Best opportunities are in cloud-based, SNS integrator applications that have the massive data advantage, and can leverage “smartness” being outside. Think applications like “Path”, or those News or internet compilation/parser apps, which are in dire demand to be updated to next level (Zite, Flipboard). Also cloud-based productivity apps aimed at consumers are good focus areas (Zoho, photo sharing apps). But I would not try to aim for differentiation as such, because that is old thinking for competitiveness and, as said, other platforms can have the same easily. HTML5 apps that can have push notification support from the operating system are also something interesting.

There are always significant UI innovations such as Ixonos SuperApp, which can be based on HTML5 only. We have really one the most beautiful HTML5 apps around made for KONE, how to design an elevator. That kind of “Catalogue App” would be good to be HTML5 based.

The device manufacturers are not the ones who create the ecosystem, they enable it for external companies. This might be hard to understand and accept. BUT what they can do is to build a smart way to focus on certain kind of apps and do those really well, formulating winning style guides and accumulate an easy global distribution channel (for example, based on Ixonos Experience Store). Then have the analytics data constantly monitored, and basically pay first apps to be done specifically for their specs in HTML5, and let somebody else, not the manufacturer, to facilitate this. From strategy to action.

Twitter: @paihonen

Sami Paihonen is Vice President of User Experience Design at Ixonos.

Digitalization is a mega-trend that challenges many of our traditional business models and value networks. It breaks through old limitations of physical world and enables the execution of several unforeseen business models. We all know companies like Amazon.com, eBay, Apple and Google today. But looking backward in the history these companies have succeeded to climb among the top of global consumer brands virtually from scratch only in ten years. This would have been impossible without digitalization.

Digitalization is not just substituting atoms for bits; it affects our daily lives and business models thoroughly. Digitalization cannot be measured by the density of digital technology. Digitalization is not relevant only for consumer businesses, even if the hurricane of digitalization has raged largely in consumer-driven industries such as telecommunications and media. In essence, digitalization is about implementing new ways to connect physical and digital resources to create more competitive – even disruptive – business models.

The fundamental elements of common digital technologies have been proven already. Recent advances in Internet, information processing, telecommunications, wireless and sensor technologies are generally available and can be applied by anybody without substantial capital resources. The digital density of our life is very high, and still increasing.

We are already living in the world where each thing or device can be given a unique name and identifier (RFID, IP/IPv6), and they can be seamlessly connected to a global communication network that works almost at the speed of light. These tangible but digitized resources can be programmed to receive information and commands as well as express themselves actively. We can already now utilize enormously scalable computing (cloud computing) power to analyze increasingly bigger amount of real time sensor data, and enrich that into valuable business information. We can already now use this enriched business information to make business critical decisions instantly. Did you know that fully automatic high-frequency stock trading¹ (HFT) performed by computers (robots) accounts to over 70 percent of total equity trading activity in the US today? The share of HFT was almost non-existent in 2007.

Even being an engineer, I dare to say that the technological edge of digitalization is not so interesting. Many fundamental digital business technologies have been implemented and proven even in a global scale. The question is not whether digital technology is still advancing, but if it is a business barrier anymore. Indeed, another side of digitalization is more interesting – new potential business models. What new connections between digital and physical resources could create remarkable competitive edge? What combinations reveal to be disruptive innovations that may change whole industries and business laws? A concrete example is additive (3D) printing² – that seems to be making widespread breakthrough very soon. How will additive printing have an effect on current manufacturing processes, logistics, mass-customization or product design? On different industries and value chains? Can we outsource spare part manufacturing to the customer – even to consumers? Is additive printing a threat or opportunity for after sales business? Maybe it is both.

I’m not alone with my thoughts, but we seem to be in very similar major turning point as economy was in the late of 1700s. Industrial revolution started in those years and eventually changed almost every aspect of daily life – from skills and processes to value networks and business laws. The major driving forces of industrial revolution in the 19th century were several disruptive innovations like steam engine, spinning machine, steel making, electric power, incandescent bulb, and so on. The challenge of  disruptive innovations is that they can be rarely discovered from a market survey. Nobody could define the need for incandescent bulb before it was invented in the mid-1800s. None of technology consultants in the 2000s was able to define an iPad tablet before it was invented. We easily face innovator’s dilemma in our daily business operations.

Digitalization comes to the agenda of CEOs one way or another – sometimes unexpectedly and unwanted like a nightmare. Digitalization, in essence, is about connecting and combining physical and digital resources in new ways, and therefore it will provide unforeseen ocean of opportunities for new and even disruptive business model innovations during this decade and beyond.

For more information:

Jari Kekkonen, Business Development Director, tel. +358 50 342 1521, jari.kekkonen@ixonos.com

¹

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading

²
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/analysis/3d-printing-set-to-hit-the-mainstream/1014835.article

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/the-big-story/the-rise-of-additive-manufacturing/1002560.article

In the era of feature phones, there was a race of who would make the smallest mobile phone. Every year, new models came out from major manufacturers, smaller and lighter. With smartphones, the race has been for the biggest display size and most powerful processor.  In Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona we saw the most astonishing new candidates for the greatest smartphone on the planet.

And in so many ways, they all looked the same.

Does this mean that the smartphone race in its current form is over? Apple’s iPhone 5 was a mild disappointment, and reception to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 was lukewarm. (Someone called it Samsung’s “iPhone 5”.) What will then be the Next Big Thing for the mobile device industry?

I am more curious about where the Next Big Thing will come from.

Each grand wave of mobile devices has had different champions. For analog mobile phones, it was Motorola. For digital mobile phones, the king of the hill was Nokia. Nokia’s supremacy was incredibly strong and long. With smartphones, the champions are now Samsung and Apple. In market shares the only constant is the change – why would it stop here and now? But the next champion does not have to be another industry giant who muscles their way to the top with sheer R&D power or marketing money.

Think about skiing in 1980’s. All major downhill ski brands introduced new fancy ski designs every year, but the features were quickly copied by others, and there was very little difference between the leading companies. But one company, working out of a garage in Vermont, made something very different. That company is Burton, the leading manufacturer of snowboards. Ski companies ignored Burton too long, and completely missed the opportunity.

Will similar innovation leap, out-of-the-box thinking, happen in the mobile phone industry? Is it wearables, some smart context-sensitive technology, truly seamless connectivity to your home and car (“ubiquitous five-screen connectivity”), or something else? Will it come from someone outside the industry, like Burton did?

Ixonos doesn’t create products to the market ourselves; we help our customers to create fantastic products. But we have some cool concepts on our drawing board…

Twitter: @anttiaumo

Antti Aumo is Vice President Marketing at Ixonos. He enjoys a life-long love affair with technology that enriches people’s lives in a meaningful way.

Smartphone integration to car and in-car apps have been hot topics in In-Vehicle Infotainment for a while. Today we have different solutions for implementing in-car connectivity – some are better, some are worse. One thing is for sure: during the past two years the industry has learned a lot and people have formed strong opinions about in-car apps. Here is my view, based on many discussions and industry conferences:

1. There shall not be a significant ecosystem for developing In-Car applications
2. More and more consumers still want certain applications and services to be available in their car, and these should not distract the driver

For a wide ecosystem to emerge, there are too many restrictions on developers, such as driver distraction regulations (which are different in each region), the car OEMs’ HMI guidelines, brand identity interests and car OEMs business interests. There is too much fragmentation:  the variety of software platforms used in IVI Systems, the sizes and numbers of displays the apps need to support, and various input mechanisms like touch displays, knobs, steering wheel controls, voice recognition and perhaps in the future also gestures. All this does not make developing and selling in-car applications appealing for a wide developer community. The effort for reaching sales volumes is too high, which leads to high app prices – and the consumers are not used to pay tens or hundreds of euros for apps these days.

The demand for in-car apps is still strong. As there is no growth potential for an ecosystem filling this demand, who then will bring all the In-Car apps to the consumers? It will be those, whose business is not relying on selling apps, but who need the apps to support their core business. I am talking about car OEMs and service companies, such as TuneIn, Spotify, TomTom and so on. These are the companies who need to invest into developing the applications. It will enhance their competitiveness in the future.

So, the car OEMs will create their own apps, and service providers theirs? Not in all cases. The more popular the service is, the higher is the consumers demand for its availability in cars. The more the customers demand a certain (unique) service, the more it is the car OEMs, who have to provide this service in their cars instead of the service provider itself. Let me put it this way. I don’t think Facebook or Twitter (you might question the use of these two in cars anyway!) need to develop their own client versions for GM, Toyota, Daimler and so on. But, non-dominant service providers must do the client versions themselves, to get into as many cars as possible to win market share. In this group we have for example the Internet radio providers and navigation service or app providers.

Whatever the application would be and whether it would run on a smartphone or head unit, one thing is for sure: it must provide flexibility in customizing the HMI. Still, when we talk about common services such as Internet radio, email, media players and calendar, I don’t expect any big differences in uses cases and features of these applications between the car OEMs. This makes is possible to utilize the same engine for the application, as long as you keep HMI customizable. Of course, you must be flexible to adapt for car OEM specific features too. This shouldn’t be rocket science for developers, who have done their homework and keep the UI and engine separated in the architecture.

This is also an area, where Ixonos offers its expertise and over 15 years of experience in mobile software development for its customers in automotive. Together with the best of the best people and smart connectivity solutions such as IVI Connect it is possible to introduce stunning new services in cars in a very efficient way already today by utilizing e.g. HTML5.

Car fever… that exciting moment where you are dreaming, and planning the next car that you would like to purchase.

You are browsing car websites, going from one dealer to another, comparing different brands, different models, checking which car is bringing you the most value.

Many criteria are affecting the final selection: pricing, comfort, warranty, consumption, security, and today more than ever, connectivity.

According to IMS Research, the market for connected cars will see a 650 per cent growth from 5.4 million units in 2010, to exceed 40.5 million unit sales in 2017.

We all want to benefit from useful services, to enable new use cases, to feel that my new car is making a difference.

But new technologies must not come with a sacrifice. I don’t want to worry about interoperability issues, low performance, empty eco-system, or non user-friendly use cases.

We want to have a connected car with support through years to all major smartphones and brands, with impressive response time, with useful services, with the possibility to identify ourselves with our car.

Now what if?

What if this can be a standardized solution?

What if the smartphone in my pocket can help my car trip to be more comfortable and secure?

What if the brand and operating system of my smartphone, the physical way of connecting, or even the location of the services and media content are not an issue?

What if my car has already been released, and I want to upgrade to this technology right now? Can I just purchase an existing aftermarket low-cost accessory and enjoy up-to-date navigation?

Most importantly, what if I do not have to make any sacrifice, and can enjoy a smooth user experience?

What if this solution exists and is already going for mass deployment?

I will cure my car fever, and I will purchase this car!

I will look for IVI Connect, from Ixonos Automotive, a solution integrated by Car OEMs and Tier1s globally.

Recently IMS Research found out in their study that 38% of new car buyers want to buy applications in their cars. In the summary, IMS Research stated that this numbers was lower than they expected and raised a question, whether the industry should re-consider the effort and strategies in bringing applications into cars. I disagree with this conclusion. If you ask consumers about the future you probably will not find out what kind of services or solutions become popular in the future. I bet 15 years ago no consumer would have described Spotify as the solution for listening to your favorite music. I don’t know how the questions were put together in the study, but asking consumers whether they are willing to pay for applications in their cars will definitely lead to different answers than asking whether consumers are willing to pay 50 Euros for Navigation in their cars (instead of buying a factory fitted high-end head unit with navigation for at least 2 000 Euros). Having said this, 38% to me is actually quite high!

Today people use apps from their smartphones when driving. They do, even though most of us know how dangerous it is. People are texting, using social media and browsing the Internet while they drive. A report from USA Today revealed that in the US, almost 50% of drivers have browsed the net while driving. This sets a challenge to the industry. People seem to do this, so we should provide a safe way to do it. For this we must capture the most important needs of e.g. accessing Internet while driving. Could we provide the same information in a safer way? For messaging and social media we have already many examples of text-to-speech solutions for vehicles.

Will applications in head units then become a significant business? Yes and no. When it comes to just selling apps, I don’t think that too many will make a fortune of just selling the In-Vehicle applications within the next five years. Developing applications to cars is much more restricted and complicated than developing mobile apps. The software platforms for head units are fragmented and will be for the next couple of years at least. The driver distraction regulations need to be taken into account, different input methods and Human-to-Machine-Interfaces (HMIs) and in many cases also the vehicle manufacturer’s interests. Basically the developers should support Linux, QNX, Windows, Android and RTOS based systems and have different UIs and input mechanisms for different vehicle manufacturers. Handling all this becomes too expensive vis-a-vis the potential volumes and revenues. Just because of these restrictions I don’t believe that there will be hundreds of different applications for in-vehicle use within the next five years. If you have apps for navigation with real time traffic information, enjoying music, searching, communicating and saving money (e.g. eco driving) you already have the most important in-vehicle use cases covered from driver’s point of view.

One question is which applications and services should be in the head unit? Really located in the head unit? I don’t believe that the majority want to put their email accounts and Facebook accounts into cars, which are used also by others. You could talk about ‘private apps’ and ‘public apps’. With private ones there is always some private information, such as user accounts, address books, messages and calendar events. These private applications are today in mobile devices, usually smartphones and so should it be also in case of in-car use. Public applications, such as FM Radio, audio controls, internet radio and media players could be located in the head unit.

In-car apps could be located in your smartphone and your head unit. Ixonos is developing its Ixonos IVI Connect™ solution for integrating mobile devices with head units. There are already different ways to integrate the smartphone with the head units. MirrorLink™ aims to have a standard way to do this, but there are proprietary solutions as well. As a driver I prefer to a solution which allows me to keep my phone in the pocket instead of connecting cables every time I enter a car, and to have an optimized user experience for my car’s head unit.

What is then the business for in-car apps? Now that we have smartphones involved, we can bring the car into the consumer’s phone in addition to bringing the phone’s features to the car. I believe we have not seen the best yet, but there are already nice ways how car makers have brought their vehicles into smartphones by providing information about driving habits, vehicle status and service. There are also solutions where you can remotely control some functions of the car, such as heating and locking/unlocking the doors. Smartphone applications can provide new kind of information for the car manufacturers, which should help them in marketing and serving better the consumer’s needs and improve brand loyalty in the future. It is not about selling apps, it is about utilizing them! Keep private apps in the phone and minimize the need to sync and configure on many devices. Think how to utilize the content and features of the mobile device in the car, but also vice versa. Having also the car in the phone introduces plenty of new opportunities to extend the car owning, driving and traveling experience. Did I mention that there is a great solution for achieving this already?

JavaOne is the annual largest Java developer conference, held in San Francisco. Since Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010, the conference has been hosted by Oracle.

This year’s conference theme “Make the Future Java” was instilling the bigger picture. As noted in a Keynote session, there are different aspects to making the future: a) ensuring the platform stays competitive and b) making sure the process for platform development works well. Since the Java platform and standards are evolved in a collaborative manner, the health of the community is key to long term platform competitiveness.

Though currently popular, Java is widely viewed as facing challenges:

• Java is considered old-fashioned by some new generation developers who prefer dynamic languages and web technologies. In particular, Java language syntax is thought to be too verbose, and things like missing closures is a showstopper for many.
• Java platform evolution stagnated when 4.5 years passed between Java 6 and 7 releases, with little progress in the development of core language or platform. Innovation happened mostly elsewhere, such as in OSS communities.
• A platform risks losing market share and getting fragmented if the pace of innovation is not fast enough. This was one reason why Android is not Java (ME) compatible. Java is currently losing market share as a smart phone platform. Platform fragmentation risk posed by Android may be an even more serious challenge.

Java platform evolves through an open and collaborative process, the Java Community Process (JCP), which governs the rules for creating Java standards. The JCP process is considered as one of the core strengths of Java. But is it also slowing down innovation? Standards are hard to change afterwards.

Community

Oracle is a huge company with vast amounts of resources in-house. But no one IT company can be self-sufficient, and long term success of Java is tied to the larger developer ecosystem. The ecosystem needs commitment from the developers and partners to stay healthy. Oracle needs to make sure Java is the platform where developers want to invest their human capital also in the future. The importance of community engagement was visible throughout the conference which, in my view, is an acknowledgement from Oracle of the huge role the community is playing. But it’s not just the conference keynotes where this was present: Oracle has been working on this for some time with several initiatives.

Recent changes in the Java Community Process (JCP), that governs the rules for creating Java specifications, require expert groups to conduct their specification work in a very open and transparent way. By making OpenJDK the Java SE reference implementation (RI), Oracle has leveled the playing field for other Java SE vendors, as now Oracle’s Java implementation is only one Java SE implementation that has to conform to the specification and RI. Oracle has been able to engage IBM in OpenJDK instead of Apache Harmony, which I think overall will reduce the risk of fragmentation and benefit the whole Java community.

Active participation by Java technology licensees, vendors, open source and application developers seems to be encouraged. One concrete initiative for engaging developers is the “Adopt a JSR” program. The purpose of this program is to prevent bad specifications from happening by engaging ordinary developers in the specification process.

Roadmap

An important part of the Java roadmap is the release strategy. Feature-based release cycles can lead to unpredictable schedules when problematic features or scope creep can make the release dates slip. This happened during Sun Java stewardship and, many in the community feel this led to uncertainty about the future of the platform. Often it’s better to make regular releases, so that a single missing feature doesn’t hold back the entire release. To tackle this issue Oracle has stated their commitment to more regular major platform releases.

The next major Java version, Java 8, is scheduled for Q3 2013 with public developer builds available already for testing. Some highlights include Lambda expressions (closures), parallel operations on core collections API, a new JVM based JavaScript implementation and Java ME/SE convergence. Java 9 is currently scheduled for 2015. Release content is still open, but the release is planned to include the Jigsaw modularity mechanism for the JVM as well as the bundled class libraries. This would make evolving the platform and libraries easier in the future, but allow optimizing application memory footprint, thus enabling SE and EE applications to be run on smaller devices than today. In cloud environments reduced footprint allows higher tenant densities. Java vendors Red Hat, IBM and Oracle demonstrated their interest in polyglot programming support, or the practice of using several different programming languages for implementing a software system. A major part of the plumbing required for good polyglot support was included in Java 7 and incremental improvements are expected to follow.

In the Enterprise development space, the previous platform version, Java EE 6, was released in 2009. Java EE 7 is scheduled for Q2 2013 and the release themes are continued developer productivity and HTML 5 support.

Java ME / Embedded

There was a strong focus on embedded platforms and tools at JavaOne this year, with a lot of airtime being devoted to it. Previously, Java ME has been the platform for limited devices, such as feature phones. Now, the focus of Java embedded appears to be on “Internet of Things” and headless microcontroller and low-power device platforms. Focusing on the embedded, and not the mobile space, seems only natural given the current market realities: Java ME enabled phones have been losing market share and ME will likely continue losing ground.

Traditionally ME and SE/EE development were regarded by developers to be very different, and were performed by people with different skill sets. To address this problem ME and SE platforms will converge both on platform and API level (in Java SE 8 timeframe). The merge of JCP executive committees for ME and SE will help the platforms from diverging in the future.

One area with high expectations is the emerging ARM micro server market. Java 7 has released for Linux on the ARM platform, so it’s possible to run Java based programs for example on a Raspberry Pi system.

Conclusions

Emergence of the embedded market and convergence of standards and platforms will provide interesting opportunities for Java developers in the coming years. If “regular” Java developers are able to do embedded development effectively, there will be a huge number of potential developers for that space.

Oracle has stated their intent in pushing the Java platform forward at a steady pace to make the roadmap more predictable. Useful and interesting new features and modifications have been identified for the core language, runtime platform as well as APIs for the Java pipeline. It’s reassuring to see that Oracle is investing in changes with possibly more far-reaching implications, such as Jigsaw modularity. Many people are also working on extending Java platform’s reach over other programming languages.

Despite challenges Java still has a strong position as an enterprise software development platform. It has potential to grow as a viable ecosystem and technical platform also in the future. Oracle has been taking decisive steps to move the platform forward. But it’s not just Oracle’s Java: a lot of organizations and individuals have invested in the platform more collaboratively than before.

Public cloud, private cloud, enterprise cloud, managed cloud, virtual private cloud and hybrid cloud. These are just few examples how cloud service providers call their offering. Confusing? I want to take this chance to set the background scene for Ixonos Elastic Cloud™.

Gartner predicts that by 2017 the CMO is going to spend more on IT than the CIO*. The question arises, is CIO no longer the best person to lead IT investments? Not necessarily, if the radical difference between customer-facing online solutions and internal IT systems is not taken seriously.

In many organizations IT governance models and best practice processes have been derived from the requirements of internal IT systems such as ERP. Internal IT systems are by nature built to support and automate critical business processes. Strict change management is in place since ERP changes typically reflect a change in otherwise standardized and mission-critical business processes. 5-30 years lifecycle with long-term commercial support and deep vertical industry knowledge are among top technology and solution partner selection criteria. Cost-efficiency precedes user experience, since the user base – company’s own employees – is well-known and the users are forced to use given tools anyway.

These same management and development principles might have been applied to external customer-facing online services for many years: same governance model, same logic in technology and partner selections, same stickiness in change management and same dismissing of user experience. This is unfortunately still the situation in too many companies today.

I hear the same message from our customers in Finland, UK and US that have succeeded in online service business: we need to flip our traditional IT governance models and decision criteria. Successful companies do not compete with pure cost-efficiency, better service or product functionalities or streamlined business processes. Time-to-market, genuine multi-channel strategy, superior customer experience and continuous innovation and learning (read: lean principles) are the key. But does this sound more like the agenda of a CMO?

Customer-facing online services are different to typical internal IT solutions, as our customers cannot be forced to use our online solutions – they can always walk away and choose better services. Companies need to get their customers excited, again and again. Online application or service changes should be primarily driven by user expectations and behavior, not our business processes.

Strict change management should be replaced by ability for continuous change and agile production. The latest proven web and mobile technologies should be applied in order to provide a foundation for optimal user experience and “wow” effects. Don’t design built-to-last online service architectures, since typical lifecycle of many online solutions is a maximum of 2-3 years today. The expectation level of end users rises all the time, and it already reflects world-leading consumer web and mobile services, such as iTunes and DropBox. There is no longer difference between business and consumer users – we all are consumers.

This is where Ixonos Elastic Cloud enters the picture. Ixonos Elastic Cloud is primarily for enterprises with existing data center or application infrastructure, which is not optimized for the requirements of scalable and continuously changing customer-facing online services or digital solutions.  Ixonos Elastic Cloud provides secure and high-performance private computing, storage and networking infrastructure on a pay-as-you-go basis – designed specifically for the needs of demanding online services. The best thing is that it does not require any changes or investments to established on-premise infrastructure or IT governance model. You can consider it a logical extension to your existing data center; integrating seamlessly to the existing network topology and providing all critical capabilities to develop, integrate, test and deliver globally scalable online services.

We know that Ixonos Elastic Cloud helps CIOs to radically increase their organization’s capability to support infrastructure and process requirements of modern customer-facing online solutions. In order to make things even easier and faster, we announced today a unique online self-service for planning, managing and controlling Ixonos Elastic Cloud capabilities and resources, up to complex application server production clusters.

*Source: By 2017 the CMO will Spend More on IT Than the CIO, presentation by Gartner, VP Marketing Strategies, McLellan Laura, 2011

For more information

• Jari Kekkonen, Business Development Director
  tel. +358 50 342 1521, jari.kekkonen@ixonos.com

The creation of cloud strategy can be a challenging exercise for many businesses today. How to benefit from cloud capabilities and services while ensuring the continuity of existing business operations? Which cloud service providers will be the winners? Which train should we jump in? Or is it better to do nothing? These are questions that many CIOs are pondering these days.

There are many cloud services and solutions available today for different kinds of needs. Many cloud services (especially SaaS) are designed for very specific functional purposes while other ones (IaaS and PaaS) may provide wider infrastructure or platform capabilities. In many companies, business users have adopted SaaS applications for business use without any kind of help from IT organisation. It is not rare that IT organisation has been totally unaware of these introductions, causing CIO more gray hairs.

SaaS solutions have been the easiest entry point to cloud services. SalesForce.com is one of the most popular CRM solutions today, paving the road for wider SaaS adoption. IaaS has also been adopted especially by many new businesses without existing infrastructure burden. Multiple startups have kicked off new software business without any capital investments to data center or server side computing infrastructure. Established enterprises have also started considering the benefits of IaaS and even PaaS.

However, adoption of IaaS can be tricky for companies that have outsourced their existing server infrastructure to traditional hosting or infrastructure provider and tied themselves to strict multi-year hosting contracts. The hosting provider may not be flexible or willing to hand over a share of their business to more cost-efficient and flexible IaaS alternative. This is a real situation in many large enterprises today, which is pity since cloud computing is here to stay. It is only a matter of time when traditional hosting or infrastructure providers will lose a share of their business if they do not start adapting to new business environment or innovate new cloud-based alternatives.

Cloud is not a black-or-white choice or forced marriage – and it should not be. Nor is IaaS a silver bullet to all your infrastructure needs. Instead, there will be demand for dedicated high performance server hosting in the future, even if virtualized and highly automated computing infrastructure will take a major stake of computing needs.

For any company it is wise to start cloud journey by identifying business areas where you could benefit most from flexible, cost-efficient and scalable computing resources. It is also highly recommended to look for IaaS provider and its underlying cloud infrastructure that could be smoothly integrated to your existing application infrastructure and network architecture. High performance network level integrability creates many options for migrating whole applications or only some part of application architectures to cloud, while keeping rest on-premise. There are also cloud companies that provide both globally scalable IaaS and managed server hosting together under single service level agreement (SLA). This kind of hybrid service model brings yet more options to infrastructure planning and safe cloud adoption.

We at Ixonos take the hybrid service model (we also call it extended data center) approach as well. Ability to provide both managed hosting and enterprise-level IaaS under single SLA is strategically important for us. We think this is also good for our demanding customers that are seeking smooth step-by-step roadmap to cloud services.

For more information

• Jari Kekkonen, Business Development Director
  tel. +358 50 342 1521, jari.kekkonen@ixonos.com

If you don’t have an app, you do not exist in mobile space. As everyone knows, apps are the best way to provide your services to mobile audiences. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that you have a mobile strategy linked to your digital strategy as well as a clear understanding of your targets and your experience roadmap – how apps tie into your digital brand experience. You need to think about how to reward loyalty and harness marketing via social networking services, what the following releases on the road map are and how to maintain and update the base segment. This shouldn’t be different from other business development or similar projects you are working on. Basically, apps can support your existing business and act as marketing and loyalty tools as well as drive traffic to brick-and-mortar real world stores. However, perhaps the most interesting option would be to create new business based on mobility enablers like location, context and direction.

Once you know why you want to create the app, and you have the concept ready, you should consider the possible business models. Will the app be free, i.e. subsidised by other business or ad revenue? Should there be a freemium model, a subscription, perhaps a paid app or something else? The next topic to consider is the target segment: who are the customers, why would they choose you and what is the competition? Understanding and segmenting the customer base is also extremely important, as different people use different devices. This is where things often go wrong; the first apps may be created for iOS and Android even though customers might be using simple Java-enabled phones. Going directly to smart TVs and gaming consoles might also make sense. Even the smartphone game can be complex: for example, Symbian and BlackBerry combined have almost 70% of the market share in the Middle East.

Getting the business case, concept and customer segmentation right are the time consuming parts. When the groundwork has been done well, technical implementation is more straightforward. The key question there is whether to go native for each platform or utilize cross-platform technologies like HTML5 to reach a wider user base and a larger variety of devices. Unfortunately, there are still some challenges with cross-platform technology compatibility and it may not always live up to the promise. Selecting a right partner is important to make sure that your app’s usability and performance are on the right level and can be maintained to support future devices and functionality. You also need to consider whether to have the app use your existing web infrastructure or perhaps run it on a cloud.

The next hurdle to tackle is the publishing. First of all, managing global deployment with localization across multiple versions and platforms is a huge challenge. In addition, Apple’s App Store and the Android Market both have more than 500,000 apps and Nokia Store has more than 100,000 apps. How do you make your app visible to users and get downloads, where and when should you run your marketing and how do you ensure that your app is preferred to those of your competitors? Without downloads, there is no business case. Unless you have a unique idea and content that no one else can access, someone else might build a better app using your content and find a way to monetize it. It is amazing that the most popular Twitter and Facebook apps are not built by those companies themselves. Usability is really king in the digital world and even more in mobile, where the screen size is limited.

In addition to selecting the key smartphone and other platforms, it is a good idea to keep tablet users in mind as well. What works on a smartphone most likely does not work well on a tablet, and people tend to use the two in different situations and environments. Cars are also connected, through various technologies such as MirrorLink. Most TVs sold are Internet enabled, but you can also get your apps and services on the big home screen with a game console. The real opportunity lies in integrating all these different devices and ensuring a larger presence in your customers’ everyday life.

Mobile business opportunities are emerging and most of the technology is already in place. Now is the time to create the concept that will change consumer behavior.

For more information, please contact:
Roope Suomalainen, Director, Experience, tel. +358 50 564 5988, roope.suomalainen@ixonos.com