Today IBM announced the intent to purchase, Worklight, an Israeli mobile platform company. From their press release:
In a move that will help expand the enterprise mobile capabilities it offers to clients, IBM today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Worklight, a privately held Israeli-based provider of mobile software for smartphones and tablets. Financial terms were not disclosed.
With this acquisition, IBM’s mobile offerings will span mobile application development, integration, security and management. Worklight will become an important piece of IBM’s mobility strategy, offering clients an open platform that helps speed the delivery of existing and new mobile applications to multiple devices. It also helps enable secure connections between smartphone and tablet applications with enterprise IT systems.
IBM has worked hard and fast to help make mobile a better experience for both customers and end users. Developer will like this because of the full development lifestyle – from server side, to services, to device. How this will be threaded and valued among the likes of Mobile Portal Accelerator and mobile themes, are yet to be seen and I think IBM says it best for itself:
Worklight Builds on IBM’s Comprehensive Mobile Software and Services Offerings
Ubiquitous connectivity provides businesses with unique opportunities to better connect with their customer base, interact with external users and employees in more efficient ways, drive productivity and reach new audiences. IBM’s strategy is to offer its customers a complete set of the software and services they need to effectively bring mobile devices into their business infrastructure. These capabilities include:
Build and Connect Mobile Applications: The explosive growth of mobile has created a fragmented landscape for enterprises to support, often with limited budgets and skills. IBM’s development and integration tools, complemented by Worklight, help clients to develop mobile applications and their supporting infrastructures for a variety of platforms just once – including Apple iOS and Google Android – while offering capabilities to securely connect to corporate IT systems.
Manage and Secure Mobile Devices: As Bring Your Own Device or “BYOD” gains popularity, IT departments are looking to find an efficient and secure way to enable employees’ use of mobile devices in the work place. Rather than implement a separate infrastructure solely for mobile devices, IBM’s offerings are helping customers deliver a single solution that effectively manages and secures all endpoints. These unified capabilities can now extend from servers and laptops, to smartphones and tablets.
Extend Existing Capabilities and Capitalize on New Business Opportunities: The rapid adoption of mobile computing is also creating demand for organizations to extend their current business capabilities to mobile devices, while capitalizing on the new opportunities that mobile devices uniquely provide. For instance, IBM’s software, services and industry frameworks offer clients the ability to use mobile to engage with their customers around growing business opportunities such as analytics, commerce and social business applications.
Loyalty 3.0 is Out
Tue, Jun 18th 2013 6:19a Michael Porter Rajat Paharia just released his new book, Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification. Bunchball is a partner of ours and focuses on the gamification space. We’ve presented with him on this very topic several times. I just picked up my kindle version and will follow up with a review.
For now, feel free to pick up your version. I’ve always found his content interesting. [read] Keywords: linkedin
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Do or Die Questions Boards Should Ask About Technology
Fri, Jun 14th 2013 4:18p Michael Porter McKinsey recently posted a set of 9 questions all board should be asking about how technology is being used in their companies. It’s worth a read for all the questions and the additional detail they provide. I want to focus on the first four and some of the implications.
How will IT change the basis of competition in our industry?
What will it take to exceed our customers’ expectations in a digital world?
Do our business plans reflect the full potential of technology to improve our [read] Keywords:
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Becoming a Customer Company
Fri, Jun 14th 2013 10:18a Michael Porter Vivek Kundra, EVP at Salesforce and former United States CIO, talked about becoming a customer
Quote from IBM 2012 CEO Study
For some time, busienss have been refining and optimizing their networks of suppliers and partners. But something revolutionary has been happening — the sudden convergence of the cloud, social, and mobile spheres — connecting customers, employee and partners in new way.
This will involve fundamentally rethinking how you connect with your customers, partners, [read] Keywords: ibm
application
community
exchange
exchange
facebook
iphone
mobile
office
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Social Uses of Data
Fri, Jun 14th 2013 8:18a Michael Porter I’m at the Salesforce Customer Company tour. Before they started their main session, they brought a couple people up to talk about uses of social. Here are some quick notes on those interviews.
They started with a great example of a company which provides vaccines to a variety of third world countries. They use Salesforce Chatter and sensors in vaccine refrigeration units to track that the vaccines are viable when they arrive. If you want to talk about a use of social that pushes [read] Keywords: notes
12 Technologies That Are Improving at Insane Speeds
Fri, Jun 7th 2013 8:22a Mark Polly Business Insider published an article titled “12 Technologies That Are Improving at Insane Speeds” describing a McKinsey report about technologies that are disrupting the global economy. The image shown here summarizes the 12 technologies and provides a glimpse into the amount of technological improvement provided over the years.
Not surprising to me is that areas that affect Portal and Social are at the top of the list. Mobile Internet is the first example of technology that has [read] Keywords: mobile
security
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Social Technologies: The Business Payoff
Thu, Jun 6th 2013 1:18p Michael Porter I’m at an eWeek Sponsored half day session that focuses on Social Business. Marcia Connor was the first speaker. She’s a Principal at SensifyGroup (@marciamarcia). She focuses on helping people work at jobs that don’t suck.
One of the key problems is the sheer amount of data out there. The internet adds 34 Gigabytes each day. This information deluge means that 1 in 2 business leaders say they don’t have the information needed to do their jobs.
Our brains transf [read] Keywords: connections
notes
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The Social Business Payoff
Thu, Jun 6th 2013 1:18p Michael Porter Jennifer Okimoto, an Associate Partner with IBM spoke about the social business payoff and gave a lot of examples on where it’s happening.
The knowledge based economy was originally coined in 1996. It came with the realization that computers and knowledge change how the work is done. Jennifer highlighted that a knowledge worker is not just someone in a cubicle farm. It could be an oil field worker, a sales person, a chemist., people in health care, and yes, people in cubicle farms.
em [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
email
enterprise
networking
twitter
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What is the pre-requisite skill set for learning Adobe CQ5?
Wed, May 29th 2013 11:18a Robert Sumner I am asked by clients all the time….what pre-requisite skill set is required to learn CQ5? The answer depends on the role.
In the web experience management world, there are several roles to consider: WCM/WEM architect, J2EE Integration Specialist, and CQ5 developer.
First the WCM/WEM Architect:
You need someone who’s done it using other WCM platforms. Someone with prior WCM implementation experience will know what to look for and what to avoid…and will have a good sense for h [read] Keywords: css
development
integration
java
javascript
