There is an interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal on breaking down the walls around IT.  For us, at Dhara, it makes perfect sense – especially when it is done in the context of the mobile workforce. The article concludes that CIO’s need to make decisions and create implementations on how to allow the knowledge of the business to be available to the business users of the company, and not locked away behind the “glass wall”.  This fits into our series that we started last week on the use of tools from the social networking space, and it really fits into our Wednesday series on what we are referring to as a Semantic Plane on top of the data sources of the business.

We will continue to look at social networking tools and Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web as we go forward, but we think that the food for thought from the Journal’s article makes it important to describe our belief on the mobile services that are needed for enabling business systems.  It is our hope that this discussion will be valuable to the CIO in making determinations of what and how to implement this type of mobile computing technology.

From my own experience in the position of CIO, I was successful when I was applying new technology to business problems and driving that business advantage into the marketplace. The company that I worked for in the 1990’s was an early adopter of distributed forms to our widely distributed chain of retail stores.  Because of the technology that we had in place we were able to deploy new structured forms to the stores and collect information and have it posted to a central database on an overnight basis.  Without this technology foresight and implementation, we would not have met the demands of our bank group during a difficult business transition.  The survival of the company depended on the ability to remotely collect the cash paid outs by each store and consolidate and report it on an overnight basis.  If that request was made today – it would probably be “real-time”.

This technology was “cool” back in the early 90’s and most retailers were years away form adopting it.  Today, this forms entry technology has evolved into the underpinning of technology like Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight. And most companies are “years away” from adopting it for the mobile workforce as an entry mechanism for enterprise systems. Last Thursday, Apple announced the 2.0 SDK for the iPhone that will allow much tighter integration into the corporate infrastructure.  Will the CIO’s office push this type of technology to enable the wireless workforce to complete information requests and have them seamlessly integrate into existing corporate infrastructure – or will it stonewall it?  This push, of course, has to be done before a company gets into a “distressed situation”.

If we go back to the WSJ article – our read of it – is that the CIO should be the person inside of the company that is driving this technology – and others for business advantage. 

Today’s CIO is besieged by the economy which is in a tail-spin, as well as rising costs of IT, and the increased need for “compliance”. Typically, when the economy is in recession and unemployment edging higher, one would expect IT resources to be abundantly available and at lower prices. The converse is true in today’s US economy because of a continuing shortage of creative IT professionals.

The most optimal approach for a CIO to take will be to look at all-round efficiencies in IT operations. Considering the fact that a majority of key decision makers are usually mobile and need access to corporate networks while on the move, a mobile access point for corporate business systems is essential.

The mobile phone industry is already pushing software applications onto the phone. Citibank boldly advertises that a cell-phone is all you need to cater to your banking needs. Apple’s iPhone is not far behind in this approach.

Europe and Asia are much farther ahead in the area of mobile computing than USA. This gap needs to be bridged soon.

The advent of 4G technologies is bringing that dream to reality soon. 4G technologies are sometimes referred to by the acronym "MAGIC," which stands for Mobile multimedia, Anytime/any-where, Global mobility support, Integrated wireless and Customized personal service. (for more information on 4G, Click here ).

The day when a cell phone is the only remote computing device any one will ever need, is not to far off.
In order to be not left behind, one should look at technologies like Adobe’s AIR and Micorsoft’s Silverlight.  The time to lay down the plans for integration strategies and technology plans is here now.

If you need assistance – or another set of eyes to look at this area in your business, please contact sales@dharacg.com.

Fred Geiger
www.dharacg.com