Going nowhere

Despite years of promises, enterprise application vendors have yet to fully embrace mobility.

By Steve Ulfelder
Network World, 11/15/04

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When it comes to mobility, the major enterprise application vendors are going nowhere. At least that's what one $50 billion consumer goods manufacturer found when it tried extending Siebel Systems' applications to field workers. The attempt went so poorly for this Fortune 500 manufacturer that, despite a major investment in and devotion to Siebel enterprise software, it turned instead to a vendor that specializes in mobile tools. "When it comes to mobile applications, Siebel certainly hasn't kept up," says a senior IT manager at the company who requested anonymity.

Porting Siebel's rich applications to the tiny form factors of handheld devices is "challenging," concedes Jeff Summers, vice president of marketing at the vendor. But, he counters, several upgrades in the latest release, Siebel 7.7, are aimed at mobile users.

A feature called TrickleSync automatically synchronizes mobile clients whenever the software detects a network connection. IT can enable TrickleSync centrally, cutting users out of the loop. Another change reduces the number of transactions replicated to mobile clients, shortening sync time and trimming the mobile database size, Summers says.

Increasingly what today's corporations want is the ability to make up-to-date business data available to employees, customers, suppliers and business partners when and where they need it. Ideally, that means the number-cruncher working at her desktop computer at headquarters, the PDA-toting service technician out in the hinterlands and the sales representative polishing up some PowerPoints while connected via laptop from a hotel room each would pull information directly from the same CRM database while working in user interfaces suitable to their computing devices. And in this world, any changes these users make would kick back instantly to that central source so the data stays real-time.

But reality bears little resemblance to this ideal, despite the obvious importance of mobility and the effusive lip service enterprise application vendors pay it.

Many critics (analysts, specialty vendors and users alike) say the major vendors' concentration on the desktop makes it difficult for them to tweak their offerings to suit field workers' needs. "A task performed by a guy out in the field doesn't necessarily match an application designed for tasks performed by information workers in the office," says Prakash Iyer, CTO and senior vice president of products and services at Everypath, which makes software for mobile workers. Specialty mobile vendors such as Everypath, Eleven Technology and Dexterra say their advantage over the Oracles and PeopleSofts is that they begin with the field worker and work backward.

Everypath built its application for pharmaceutical sales reps taking into account the astonishingly short sales cycles that prevail in that industry - 30 seconds to 4 minutes, as reps frantically pitch busy doctors during elevator rides or in lobbies, Iyer says. The Everypath application includes only a limited subset of data, but that data can come from the seller's ERP and CRM databases - it's the information the sales reps themselves say they need. Conversely, an equivalent tool from a large vendor could force users to choose from their ERP, CRM or salesforce automation applications, and might make quick sales calls difficult by presenting extraneous information, Iyer says.

Of course, major application vendors are quick to point out their own advantages, such as the manageability gained by sticking with a single supplier. "We offer the ability to centrally manage all the devices, directly from the same SAP management console already in use," says Howard Beader, director of SAP solutions for mobile business. Moreover, IT can centrally manage which users receive which applications, based on user roles, geographic location and other factors.

To be sure, some of the limiting factors are beyond vendor control. Updating the database in real time can be an expensive proposition and a foolish goal if wireless transmissions are a factor because connectivity can be spotty.

Many consultants and system integrators recommend that companies rely largely on cradle synchronization at first, with an eventual goal of moving to real-time communication.

A hybrid approach works well for Pepsi, says Tim Curran, CEO at Eleven, which provides the company with a wireless retail application. At Pepsi, field reps who stock store shelves "do a cradle-attached-mode sync that maybe takes 10 minutes" during the morning. But they transmit orders back to distributorships in real time (or as soon as they can get a network connection from their remote devices), he says. "To get those supply-chain advantages they want to get that inventory data to the factory ASAP," Curran says. Pepsi declined an interview.

A third way?

The shortcomings of application vendors' mobility offerings might make IT managers feel they've got two less-than-ideal choices: bite the bullet and run unsatisfactory mobile versions of enterprise applications, or go with third-party mobility solutions and live with the added complexity, integration and support.

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While corporate users figure out the best ways to synchronize their data, enterprise vendors are working to improve their sync offerings. Siebel has TrickleSync, while PeopleSoft teamed recently with Intellisync to address a problem spot in its mobile strategy for the Enterprise and EnterpriseOne software - synchronization that required user initiation.

With Intellisync, users now can access the PeopleSoft applications without worrying about whether the data is synched with the server; the Intellisync tools handle the synchronization invisibly. Intellisync Mobile Suite comprises an e-mail accelerator, data- and file-synchronization tools and systems management software. The suite is compatible with laptops; tablet PCs; Windows Mobile-based smart phones; and handheld devices based on the Pocket PC, Palm OS and Symbian operating systems.

Still, it's hard to escape the conclusion that ERP vendors' lack of progress toward the mobility ideal has disappointed, even alienated, some corporations. Such was the case for Gold Medal Bakery, a user of SAP's ERP software.

This private-label provider of baked goods in the Northeast began using the ERP application in 2003. Shortly thereafter, it eagerly began exploring if it could take advantage of SAP's mobility solutions for its 70 sales reps. However, "it looked to us like [SAP] was in the concept stage," says Joe Walsh, sales operations director for the Fall River, Mass., company. "Any info we could get was vague, and we didn't see a lot of working models in the real world."

That prompted Gold Medal to research smaller vendors; the company opted for a suite of specialized mobile applications from Eleven. The company decided that additional effort needed to integrate Eleven's Smartretail software for mobile workforces would be more than offset by the applications features and interface, Walsh says. These were superior to those available from SAP at the time, he adds.

Responding to these scrappy mobile application specialists - which analysts see as potential acquisition targets - the big enterprise players are touting the ease of integration a user gets by sticking with one vendor for enterprise applications in and out of the office.

Oracle has built mobility into its standard application server and database products so customers can build unique applications for their field workers on top of Oracle's mobile architecture, says Jacob Christfort, CTO with Oracle's Voice & Wireless Division. Enterprise buyers get the technology by default, facing no additional license fees.

"With back-office [users], there's a lot of information being exchanged, and it's being sent back and forth to many departments," Christfort says. As a result, companies place a premium on the standardization of data provided through the enterprise software. But data format standardization isn't so important for field workers and sales reps using mobile devices, he contends. "You're out there at the end of your spoke - you're not so worried about standardization out there. . . . Mobile workers are in the physical world, and the physical world has some rough edges."

SAP, too, has added mobility to its application development platform (called NetWeaver) so enterprise customers can create their own mobile applications. But SAP's approach differs from competitive strategies on the client side. SAP requires that a Mobile Infrastructure client (consisting of a Web server, a database layer and business logic) be installed on each mobile device. When remote users access applications using PDAs, they work with the most recent data. Changes they make then are replicated back to the central data source.

"This gives IT a lot of flexibility because they're not tied to an" operating system, says Michael King, a Gartner analyst. Thus, an application written for a Pocket PC also can run on a laptop, a tablet PC and any device that supports Java.

Despite the progress big application vendors have made, it's difficult to remain patient waiting for them to deliver true seamless mobile solutions. The benefits - among them less integration, rapid access to a true single data source and confidence in the long-term survival of the provider - are clear. Mobility is becoming too important to hold off for a utopian blend of seamlessness, ever-present real-time communication and infinitely flexible interfaces.

Ulfelder is a freelance technology writer. He can be reached at sulfelder@charter.net .

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