Andrey Golub

Received via e-mail from J. Gerry Purdy, VP & Chief Analyst of Frost & Sullivan.

 

 

Mobile & Wireless Enterprise 2008

The Frost & Sullivan Mobile & Wireless Enterprise 2008 conference (MWE) was held March 3-5 at the Miramonte Resort in Indian Wells, CA (Palm Springs area). Approximately 175 attendees gathered at this wonderful resort destination to discuss and learn abut the latest in mobile and wireless products and services.

MWE included keynote addresses by HP, Enterprise Mobile, and Genesys Corp, and Fireside Chats with Professor Howard A. Schmidt, Former White House Security Chief (conducted by Dan Golgberg), and with Mike Williams of TeleManagement Technologies (conducted by yours truly). There were five breakouts covering Mobile Resource Management (MRM), Converge Communications, Security, Mobile Office, and Mobile Devices.

One of the highlights of MWE was the series of on-stage technology demonstrations, during which 25 companies were each given six minutes on-stage to demonstrate their products. Attendees voted on each demo with a score of 1-5, and the top demonstrations as rated by the attendees were:

• BlueFire Security 4.29 re: security for handheld systems

• Catcher – 4.28 re: rugged small form factor notebook

• Panasonic 4.02 re: rugged notebooks

• Formotus 3.9 re: development of mobile applications

• Alcatel-Lucent 3.88 re: integrated mobile communications console for users

• Gearworks 3.8 re: mobile application development

• Datria 3.69 re: voice enabled field service applications

Another highlight of the conference was an excellent case study provided by Mark Saxonerg, Service Technology Manger for Toyota. He described the problem that all Toyota service dealers face: more cars have onboard computer systems that need to be serviced, as well as often ‘re-flashed’ by the dealer. And service manuals have exploded due to the exponential increase in the integration of technology in new models. Their old system, which was somewhat mobile and used a handled system, would take a technician over an hour to re-flash a customer’s vehicle computer.

Toyota worked with Panasonic to develop a new system that saved over and hour a day and resulted in their ability to re-flash over 30,000 cars a day. The systems were anticipated to yield a payback in 18-24 mounts, but were so successful that they earned a payback in six months.

I’ve enclosed a few photos from the conference here, including one spectacular photo from the balcony of the resort. Click here for an online album of 39 photos from the conference.

Producing a conference like this takes hard work by a number of people, and I’m pleased that the attendees all said they enjoyed and received value from the event. Face-to-face conferences allow for direct interaction that you don’t get online, but, of course, you have to go through the trouble of going through airport security and spending a day of your time getting to these beautiful places. While lots of information is available on the Internet, face-to-face conferences will always offer value as long as the producers are careful to put together the right agenda and get the appropriate people to attend.

MWE ended with the Mobility Awards banquet on Tuesday, March 4th. A panel of independent analysts and members of the press voted on mobile products and services in over 50 categories. Of these, 22 companies were able to come to the conference to accept their award.

Tom Wheeler, General Partner with Core Capital Partners and past President and CEO of the CTIA, gave a wonderful banquet keynote describing how wireless is part of the ‘new networking’ that is distributing commerce and communications away from central hubs that have characterized commerce for the past 200 years. It’s part of a fundamental paradigm shift in our society.


Written by:

J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.
VP & Chief Analyst
Mobile & Wireless
Frost & Sullivan

Keywords: Frost & Sullivan, Gerry Purdy, Mobile, Wireless, Enterprise