Mobility needs an architecture

Giving employees access to data and processes while in the field is becoming increasingly popular. IT often responds to this need by creating device-specific mobile applications for each specific function or process. But as the number of devices and applications grow, this ad hoc approach can become unmanageable. Darren Besgrove, Director at BlinkMobile Interactive, discusses holistic mobile service delivery platforms as an alternative.

Smartphones, tablets, high-speed wireless networks and cheaper data costs have helped to make mobility an accepted and increasingly expected part of the everyday business landscape. Alongside the growing number of requests by corporate users to their IT departments to provide access to email, the company intranet and office files, there is now a recognised need to provide field staff with mobilised corporate applications to replace paper-based processes and to incorporate workflow and alerts.

One of the big problems facing enterprises considering mobility is the bewildering number of technologies available. How do you judge what’s right or best for your needs?

Buying apps may seem like the easy solution but long term, a profusion of mobile apps is only going to create an IT management nightmare. If you think back to the 80s and 90s, companies often allowed departments free reign to purchase and deploy software. The result was a confusion of applications that couldn’t talk to one another. Information was locked in silos, which in some instances only served to increase effort. Eventually, management realised that IT required a more coordinated approach. Integration became the mantra and the focus turned to creating a cohesive information architecture.

In a similar way, mobilisation must be viewed as more than a single app. It’s a strategic corporate decision. Selecting how a mobile capability will be developed and delivered is an integral part of the overall information service delivery strategy. It will have ramifications for the number of staff and the type of skills required to deliver the service, application or site; the time to deliver; and the cost of development and ownership.

Writing your own

So if purchasing apps isn’t the way to go, what about developing them in-house? The problem with this is that most phone apps provide limited, very specific capabilities. They are a different class of solution to that required by an organisation seeking to deliver a complex raft of services through mobiles.

Each major phone operating system (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows 7 mobile, Symbian, MeeGo) has a set of development libraries that allow you to create applications for that phone. Unfortunately, using one of these libraries will limit your ability to deliver the solution to other phone operating systems.

If you do decide to use the development libraries, or even higher-level application development builders, the only way around this problem is to develop on multiple operating systems concurrently. It’s a costly effort that requires a development team (or partner) and consideration of how you will continue to add functionality and services in the future.

Just as IT came to realise 20 years ago, a more manageable approach is to focus on architecture. So when thinking about mobility, what is really required is a framework that will enable development of different applications for delivery across all mobile phone operating systems.

Simplifying and accelerating delivery

There are a number of possible framework solutions for organisations to choose from, starting with the simple-to-use but inflexible point-and-click class of building products, rising to the programming-level tools on offer in cross-platform and bridging frameworks. While the frameworks typically offer higher-level features and more rapid development of web applications, the projects can take weeks or even months to deliver and they require specialist staff with a high level of skills.

To solve this a new class of service delivery platforms has emerged, one that is distinguished by high-level building tools, encapsulated services (such as video handling, location-based services, logging, reporting, payments, advertising, route finding and so on), and an integrated delivery architecture for a wide range of devices.

Sitting above the framework, a service delivery platform provides all of the infrastructure and administration that would normally need to be programmed, creating an 'instant' delivery environment. It's an elegant solution that delivers generalised, commercial-grade services suitable for delivering a range of mobile solutions.

It's undeniable that in some circumstances ad hoc deployment of an app may be necessary, but for any enterprise that wants to be responsive to customers, staff or business partners, while at the same time minimising ongoing effort and maintaining IT control, a more holistic approach is essential. Designing mobility into the IT architecture is the best way to ensure a robust, integrated and well-supported mobile strategy capable of evolving and delivering well into the future.

What to look for in an architecture

Firstly, an architecture should allow you to ‘mobile enable’ data and services that you’re already serving to your web environment without redeveloping new applications or mobile-specific sites. It should allow for deployment of information services to basic devices that can just handle SMS, through to the latest smartphones, tablets and media players, without having to program specifically for each one.

While your architecture should allow for the easy redeployment of your web, intranet and other business systems, it’s important that the navigation and interaction model of a mobile environment should be thought of as quite different from the way you use a website on a full-size screen. There’s far less space for a start, and users don’t want to have to go through lots of levels to find the function they want.

Therefore, being able to model a mobile interface to and from your core applications for only those functions a mobile user needs is a must. Also, being able to model these ‘mobile interactions’ in a consistent and intuitive way, regardless of the number or complexity of the core systems being accessed, is an important distinction as organisations seek to ‘turn on the tap of mobility’ to those areas of their staff and customer community that need it most.

Applied architecture

Tweed Shire Council, on the North Coast of New South Wales, provides one example of how an organisation used this architectural style of thinking.

The council used a mobility platform to provide a simple but powerful information service to its ratepayers. Thinking carefully to identify the sorts of information that people would want while away from their PCs, the council ‘mobilised’ its event calendar, the library systems, its status information on roads, beaches and sports grounds and a limited number of ‘most used’ aspects of council information that would normally make the customer service phone ring.

In addition, the council included access to its tenders and contracts as well as the development, planning and property status systems for developers, builders and their clients. The platform allowed the council to deliver all these services, where almost every piece of information is just two clicks away, to many types of mobile phones, without having to write, maintain or host any application or additional mobile site.

The council hasn’t limited its mobilisation efforts to its ratepayers or suppliers alone, though. Together with its asset maintenance planning partner, it has mobile-enabled its asset capture and condition reporting system so that inspectors can use their mobile phones or tablets to retrieve existing records and capture new information in-field. This is plumbed directly into the partner’s system, which also passes the information into the council’s asset maintenance system.

*Darren Besgrove is a director and owner of BlinkMobile Interactive with management responsibility for sales, marketing and operations. He has over 20 years' experience in the IT industry and was formerly Managing Director of Media3, a company providing marketing support and business consultancy to the IT industry. Darren is on the NSW Committee for the Pearcey Foundation