Focus on Enterprise Operational Excellence To Accelerate Transformation

Originally published on the IDC Community blog

IDC research shows that a unified approach between IT executives and managers and LOB  and product teams accelerates transformation outcomes, notably around speed, quality, and customer experience outcomes.

By placing emphasis on four core areas: leadership, collaboration, culture, and metrics; enterprise executives can unite IT and LOB to streamline digital transformation (DX). The main goal is to create an environment where the organization can continue changing down the line, minimizing the interruption of workflows, sustain the changes, improve measurement capabilities,  and encourage better integration between and among teams of talent, company culture and policies.

Creating a proper leadership team is the first step to success in DX and that leadership team must consider how participating teams will collaborate and/or integrate. They must push through difficult cultural and political issues that arise during the planning and implementation processes. Further, they need to create the “right culture” that will allow their organization to overcome adverse political, technology and process situations.

Are you treating your Enterprise Mobility like the power grid, or like an Angry Birds app?

“The most costly disruptions. . . . Always happen when something we take completely for granted stops working for a minute.” – Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen)

Image: Michael S. Woritz

When we think of those disruptions, things like the power grid or the water supply come to mind. These are things that have been part of our society for so long that we just can’t imagine them not working. And when they do go out, like in the case of a power outage, it is extremely disruptive and needs to be immediately addressed. I had my power go out about 2 weeks ago due to a transformer blowing out during some construction work. My whole neighborhood shut down and everyone went outside to figure out what was going on, only to see street lights out, traffic acting like ants that had someone step on their path and a general sense of confusion. The real issue was that power is so reliable and so taken for granted that its failure is something completely out of the ordinary in our society and is rarely due to the systems running the power grid, but, as in this case, caused by something extraordinary like the construction accident.

Read the complete article on the IDC Community.

Going to Barcelona with Mobility on my Mind

As a California native who grew up near the beach I like to say that I run on salt water and sun. So when December hits, I can’t think of a better place to be than the wonderful city of Barcelona with the sea breeze coming off the Mediterranean keeping me going. That’s why I’m so happy that we are returning to Barcelona for HP Discover again this year, and it’s looking to be bigger and better than ever. I’ve been working with the Mobility team on a lot of the planning and there is just some great stuff going on in this space. Be sure to check out all my sessions and everything HP has to offer in the mobile space! I’ve jotted down some of my thoughts as we get ready to head for the Med once again and continue the Enterprise Mobility journey.

Check out the full blog post on Apps for Mobile

‘BYOS’ Should Replace BYOD

I learned a lot of things at Mobile World Congress this year from the various vendors and exhibits. The quality of the information I gathered was top notch, but the most interesting discussions came outside the venue. Whether we were on a break or out to dinner, we were discussing the future of mobile.

Don’t be overprotective about BYOD

If you are a parent today, you live your life in fear. Everything needs to be sanitized with 99.7 percent anti-bacterial soap to protect your kids from the germs that surround us. The corporate world isn’t much different in their thinking  when it comes to Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policies. We have security and IT executives who are scared to death that viruses from the outside are going to walk in on their employee’s smartphones and attack their networks.

I recently wrote a post on informationweek.com that talks about what precautions you need to go to in protecting your networks from BYOD. I  encourage you to read it here.

Mobile Developers Must Focus On Tasks, Not Apps

“They said I could only….”

Those are five words that don’t tell us anything, but can say so much. They say that the speaker wasn’t able to quickly articulate what he wanted the audience to hear; they say his thought was lost before it even started. They also say this could be a Webby Award acceptance speech. In fact, it was a Webby Award acceptance speech from The Onion in the humor category. But it got me thinking how business people need to change how they go about developing requirements for apps in the mobile world.

Read Full Article on InformationWeek

Mike’s Almost Famous BYOD Recipe

Image courtesy of Flickr user Christian Cable.

I was just listening to John Stewart interview NY Times writer Michael Moss about his new book Salt Sugar fat and he said something that struck a chord with me. He was talking about the science of creating food and something called the “Bliss factor.” That perfect balance that will ensure that the products are a smash hit with consumers. That’s where I want to go with BYOD policy, I’ve been searching for that perfect mix of hardware, software and education that will protect my IP yet give my consumers that rush they get when eating a Twinkie. OK, I know it’s a bit of flight-o-fancy to think that a BYOD policy can compare to a Twinkie (they are coming back!), but why not, why not venture out on that quest, at least for a little bit.

Is 2013 Ready for HTML5?

Sometimes it takes a while for something really good to catch on. Take for example the critically acclaimed TV show Arrested Development. This show was filled with a great cast, good writing, was smart and was funny. The critics loved it but the American public, hmm not so much. Maybe it was the lack of laugh tracks, or people just didn’t want to have to think about their comedy, regardless the show was dropped from network TV after 3 seasons. Now after a 6 year hiatus, the show is being resurrected by Netflix. So what does Arrested Development have to do with mobility? Well nothing, however, it got me thinking about HTML5 and how 2013 may finally be the year that it truly finds its footing and gets the respect it deserves.

Looking back on the last couple of years, HTML5 was poised to take over everything.

HP Discover Panel Discussion: Empowering the mobile workforce: BYOD and beyond

My panel discussion from HP Discover is now available on-demand from the HP Discover 2012 website. It was a great discussion led by Neil Miles, HP’s Mobility Solution Manager, with Kitty Chow from HP’s Technical Services Marketing, Lars Koelendorf  HP’s PSS Life Cycle Marketing Manager, Ajay Gupta the Director of Notebook Product Management and myself. We talked about everything from how to mobilize the enterprise to HP’s latest offerings in the mobile space.

If you attended the show, simply log in, otherwise a quick registration is required to view the content.

Link to Panel Discussion Video.

Business or IT, Who Owns Your Mobility?

There has been a trend over the last decade or so for IT to take more control of the reigns and dictate what is available to their customers (e.g., employees), but with the explosion of mobility, this trend is facing an uphill battle. According to a recent survey by app central, “68% of respondents indicated that their organization had made one or more custom mobile apps available to them.” This number alone shows the prevalence of mobility in today’s enterprise, but the more interesting, as frankly more frightening to IT, is that according to 67% of respondents, the budget funding those mobile apps was coming from Business units, marketing or executive leadership. Now in the time of restrictive IT budgets this may seem like a godsend, but what it is showing is that the business is moving forward with or without IT and when IT does not control the budget for the app development you can be sure they aren’t controlling the roadmap for that app development.