Mobile Board Meetings : With Mobile Multimedia Communications we’re now in
a position to stream video, “real-time” business intelligence, sales pipelines,
logistics and critical event information direct to powerful mobile devices. During the
next 3 to 5 Year phase of Mobile Evolution, Chief Executives could initiate “Board
Meetings” with fellow Directors, at any location, 24/7, across multiple geographies,
and then stream video links, and live business intelligence too all attending the
virtual meeting.
Mobile Operations Room : An analogy that we sometimes use is the
battleground war room or operations room based around the US DOD developed
C4ISR Command and Control Architecture from the late 1990’s. However, in the
case of Enterprise Mobile Communications we actually have a “Virtual Operations
Room” that can be actualised by any senior manager once a critical event is
detected by the live On-Line Analytical Process Applications (OLAP – Business
Intelligence Software).
Location Proximity Advertising : The latest mobile devices already have built-in
GPS Systems for navigation. This allows a new generation of proximity advertising
based upon your distance to specific locations such as hotels, shops, &
restaurants. The Price per Click can then be dependant according an algorithm that
incorporates your distance to the advertiser’s venue or geographical location.
“Real-Time” Sales Force : This projected mobile application allows sales
management access to the full sales pipeline, as well as inventory, on-line orders,
and multimedia access to the field sales force. In summary, it would serve as a
complete management decision package, as well as for customer & partner
negotiations
Business Intelligence : At present, most corporations have installed data-ware
houses and CRM applications, as well as advanced on-line data-mining
applications. However, static executive dashboards are no longer sufficient for
running the real-time 21st century corporation. The next generation of applications
will be event drive, with the resulting alerts being routed directly to executive
decision makers through intelligent mobile devices.
Mobile Travel Secretary : As a relatively simple application, we could imagine
an expert system configured as an on-line agent for Expedia, Travelocity or
LastMinute. The executive completes his/her Mobile Board Meeting, but needs to fly
directly to, say, Moscow, that evening. The mobile application manages the flight
bookings, transit to/from airports, hotel reservations, and any necessary changes to
the Executives Diary for the following days after this possibly disruptive urgent trip.
Open-Source Office : During Feb 2007, Google launched its own low cost On-
Line Suite of Office Applications. These could interface to a wide range of Business
oriented Open-Source Applications for Mobile Devices. This in turn would easily
accelerate the re-structuring of business towards the almost flat peer-to-peer “self-
organising” architecture – more akin to a meshed network than staff hierarchy. This
will ease the penetration of mobile business applications, although will create a
new generation of issues relating to information access and security management.
Multi-Media Intelligence Conferencing – The latest Nokia N95 Devices and
Apple iPhone give a glimpse of the tremendous power of the new generation
devices for both business executives and general consumers. Soon there will be
lower-cost multi-channel video streaming for Skype-like mobile conferencing,
coupled with the secure links to real-time business intelligence streamed from
corporate data centres.
Ultra-Mobility – As a final theme, we introduce that of “Ultra-Mobility” in which
your full office support is available through your mobile device, including secretarial
functions, travel bookings, Board Room Conferencing, as well as the Virtual
Operations Room. Of course, the real-time information will be streamed over GSM
or Wi-Fi networks, whilst the local template applications will be run within the
device. This computing model lies at the heart of Web2.0, and leading proponents
such as Google that see future business applications being run through a
combination of networked super-fast server farms and user device intelligence.
The combination will support a new generation of “Ultra-Mobile” Business Users
through their multi-functional mobile devices. Within 10 Years, these are destined
to be more powerful than today’s multimedia laptops & Gaming Machines!
