Enterprise apps landing on Google Glass by 2014
Google Glass and the enterprise may not be an ideal match — I've personally met it with a good hearty dose of skepticism after my try-out with the technology — but that's not to say there aren't people out there giving it a go anyway.
One Manassas, Virginia-based technology company aims to have a series of enterprise apps for Google Glass available by early 2014, and recommends that other businesses should at least jump on the internal testing bandwagon sooner rather than later.
In a video interview with the IDG News Service, Dan McNelis, co-founder of Dito, which specializes in providing services for Google applications, said his company is in the "early stages with customers on identifying the specific requirements and use cases where they're going to want to develop applications for Glass."
Dito is also developing "Glassware," the sort of apps that plug directly into the Glass API and function like any other Glass app.
Currently, McNelis' firm is working with an unnamed construction company that is interested in building business information modeling applications. A finished app could offer a first-person point of view that allows a construction worker to move around a site in a virtual three-dimensions simulator, he described. In such a scenario, because Google Glass is modular, it could be integrated with hard safety hats for those working on industrial sites.
McNelis said for others who are considering developing apps for the new wearable technology, "be wary of the fact that especially if you're building enterprise applications, it's smart to start thinking about it.
"But I wouldn't recommend an organization pushes all in and makes it a core part of their business around apps. It's still early days for that."
Once things become more mature in terms of ecosystem and the technology becomes more developed, McNelis said, it would be an ideal time to begin "dogfooding" their own apps within their enterprise setting for their own internal testing, to determine the benefits or drawbacks of the gadget.