Mobilising your enterprise in the New Year
Now is a good time to explore your options for mobilising your enterprise applications in the coming year:
Mobile Devices: Borrow (or buy) some of the latest mobile devices and feel for yourself which device fits your mobile application best. The hottest devices today include BlackBerry Pearl, Nokia E61 and Ultra Mobile PC.
Mobile Middleware: Consider implementing a Mobile Middleware software package that can adapt your enterprise applications for mobile devices. Examples of Mobile Middleware: MobileAware, Good Technology, Sybase.
Custom Mobile Applications: A custom-developed mobile application may be sufficient for mobilising your enterprise. Just remember to keep the user interface and business processing simple because mobile devices are not really meant to run heavy applications. Talk to your systems integrator about developing your mobile application in J2ME or .NET Compact Framework.
Mobile Data Access: With 3.5G (HSDPA) and WiFi becoming widely available, consider adopting these fast networks for speedy remote access to your enterprise data. And remember to secure your data connections.
Mobile Multimedia: Now that we have huge storage capacity in mobile phones and PDAs, we can actually carry our documents, audio and video files everywhere we go. The newer phones even allow you to connect them to projectors and share your files at meetings. Watch out for my next article in which I'll talk about converting your video files to the portable 3GP video format.
Have a Happy Mobile New Year!