key architectural aspects of a enterprise mobility solution

Innovation | Design | Engineering

Understanding the Key Aspectsof

Enterprise Mobility Solutions

roshan [at] mindstix.com

© 2011 www.mindstix.com

About… So! You are ready to kick-off your next big

Enterprise Mobility initiative… This presentation highlights key questions to be

considered when building robust enterprise mobility applications.

Answering these questions will help you validate if your solution is really enterprise ready.

Help you make the right decisions about your technology architecture and solutions partners.

Before you jump the gun, consider this…


Platforms! Platforms! To achieve a significant market adoption,

your solution needs to target at least 4-5 platforms: iPhone Android Blackberry Windows Mobile Perhaps, Symbian too

Are you going to engineer for all?


Platform Challenge Each platform lifecycle would include:

Design > Develop > QA > Deploy > Support How easy is it to find the right engineering

talent for each platform and orchestrate these teams?

5X engineering costs? 5X time to “go live”? Isn’t it more effective to adopt cross-platform

architecture and significantly reduce the effort and time-to-market? Yet, achieve the rich experience of native mobile apps…


Device Marketplace! New device models in the market at a

phenomenal pace! Varied feature capabilities, display resolutions,

storage, interactions, performance. Will your enterprise mobile app seamlessly

work in such a fragmented marketplace? How will you ensure that your app investments

work on future /upcoming devices? How will you test your app against such a wide

market of devices?


Usability! Much smaller form factors. Fragmented form factors: Tablets,

Smartphones (4-inch to 10-inch). Multiple interaction models: Touch, Swipe,

Keypad. Much lower attention span. Naturally, a great mobile User Experience is

harder to get right! Users expect that “Wow” factor in your

enterprise mobile apps today.


Usability! Conventional UX models of desktop and

web applications do not directly apply. Is your UI simple and action-oriented? Does your usability team have expertise

in mobile UX? Can your mobility team rapidly mock

mobile interfaces so you have a better sense of your product?


Mobile Security Can I rapidly integrate my mobile app with the

enterprise authentication mechanisms: Oracle Virtual Directory / LDAP / AD Single-SignOn (SSO)

Do I have the plumbing to support multiple user roles and RBAC (Role-based Access Control)?

Does my mobile app save data in a tamper-proof encrypted store on the mobile device?

Secure communication with backend Web Services?


Enterprise Integration Enterprise Mobility solutions are not point-

solutions! Solutions have to integrate with a fairly

complex 800-pound gorilla: The legacy enterprise IT eco-system.

Mobile solutions have to co-exist and ride of top of your enterprise IT infrastructure.

Does your team have expertise in both, mobile clients platforms & enterprise backend?


Enterprise Integration Have you considered these few likely

integration points: SOA / ESB Infrastructure Enterprise Directory Services Enterprise Web-Applications Cloud Services / Cloud APIs Reporting / Analytics / Monitoring Services Enterprise ITES Services Security Policy Managers


Offline Access When was the last time you complained of

your mobile carrier dropping calls? Is my enterprise mobile app usable and

responsive if: Network connectivity is absent? (15-hr

Flight?) Network latency is very high? Network bandwidth is limited?

Is the app architected to behave intelligently between online vs offline scenarios?


Synchronization How does the on-device app stay synchronized

with the enterprise backend? Are you re-inventing the synchronization

mechanism for each app from scratch? Is the sync-mechanism incremental? Is the sync-optimized to reduce the amount of

battery consumption and bandwidth consumption?

In case of collaborative mobile apps, how does the sync mechanism deal with concurrent-updates by multiple users?


Mobile > Cloud Integration Too slow to get past enterprise-IT hurdles

to make your app a reality? Can you be much more agile and move

mobility infrastructure to the cloud? Why reinvent? Leverage cloud services:

Queueing Caching Storage Content Delivery


Mobile > Cloud Integration How well does your mobility backend

infrastructure scale? Does the team have the cloud expertise

to integrate with Cloud APIs: SalesForce OAuth Paypal Social Media APIs


Adoption and the “Wow” Factor! Most mobile users have experienced rich

apps from public app stores. Users have exposure to consumer-friendly social media.

Users expect that same experience to be extended to enterprise mobile apps today!

“Rich experience”, “Sharing” and “Collaboration” are no longer alien concepts in the enterprise domain.


Adoption and the “Wow” Factor! Where is the “wow” factor?

Interactive charts and graphs Real-time data streams to mobile apps Rich dashboards Real-time notifications Real-time collaboration capabilities Employees sharing mobile apps with peers

(analogous to a social-sharing model) – Increasing app adoption in your enterprise.


Support Systems Launching your enterprise mobile

applications is half the battle! What is the support eco-system for this? Can uses raise support tickets from the

application itself to the Enterprise IT support?

Do you have the backend L1-L5 support workflow in place for your mobile app?


Application Analytics Do you need to embed in-app analytics? Will these analytics help you track user

behavior & improvise the mobile UI experience?

Will these analytics help you track the real ROI of your mobility solution?

Do you have dashboards / reports to view these analytics?


Application Analytics Some analytics you may want to track:

How are users interacting with the app UI?

Which screens users spend the most time on?

Which screens do users feel stuck? What is the average latency to pull new

data into the mobile app?


Testability How can you test across a large number of

scenarios: Variety of carrier networks Large number of devices Varying network conditions Various security vulnerabilities

Load testing the mobile backend infrastructure before you roll to production?

Does your solution provider offer expertise in mobility testing?


Summary… Look at your larger eco-system! Not just

a point mobile solution. What is your net-ROI? Rapidly prototype your mobile user

experience. Ensure that your technology architecture

is cross-platform and future-proof. Ensure you ability to track, analyze and

measure mobile applications on the field.


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Enterprise Mobility @Mindstix

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Understanding Business Mobility NeedsMobile Product ConceptualizationThinking-hat & Innovation in MobilityMobile User Experience Design

iPhone / AndroidBlackberry / WinMoHTML 5 Standards Compliant AppsCross-Platform Hybrid Mobile AppsMobile Testing

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@Mindstix

Executive Team………………………………………..……

Roshan Kulkarni Pune, India roshan [at] mindstix.com

………………………………………..……

Dinesh Brid Pune, India dinesh [at] mindstix.com

………………………………………..……

Contact usWe’d love your feedback @ +1 650 331 1141

Strategic Advisors………………………………………..…

Arvind Narain San Francisco, U.S.A.

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Kshama Grandhi Stockholm, Sweden

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key architectural aspects of a enterprise mobility solution

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