Webalo Mobile Dashboard Weblog

Analyze this

On our final day at WES, our CEO joined people from Salesforce.com, SAP, Pyxis Mobile, Wirelessrain, and Thinprint in a panel discussion about the mobile enterprise. It was prestigious company, but the audience may have been even more impressive -- analysts from the major industry watchers, including Gartner, Forrester, Yankee, Ovum, Burton, and others.

So, after discussions with carriers, ISVs, device manufacturers, and SIs, we had a chance to talk about creating programming-free mobile versions of enterprise applications in front of some very influential people.

Mobilizing the troops

Today, we caused a little stir of our own at WES, announcing that Actuate and Xactly would be using Webalo's Mobile Dashboard to create mobile versions of their applications. Actuate has actually been using Webalo technology for the past year, but now they've automated the enterprise to mobile process even more (using Webalo) and are acting as a reseller of the Mobile Dashboard to their 4000 customers.

Xactly's software lets sales people keep track of their performance (actual versus plan, commissions, etc.), and the Mobile Dashboard will let those same sales people access their performance information on their handhelds.

It's a direction that's in keeping with research findings from the Yankee Group's "Most Important IT Strategies" survey. The researchers found that 41% wanted wireless access to enterprise applications. The same survey found that the same percentage of workers -- 41% -- can be considered mobile and that the current 300 million handhelds in use will double by 2011. (Sorry there's no link; it's accessible by subscription only.)

To Bold-ly go...

Like everyone else at WES today, we were impressed by the new BlackBerry Bold. It's a very impressive combination of technologies and capabilities (all covered in depth in the general and technology press), and it expands the range of things that BlackBerry users can do on their devices.

Because BlackBerry ties in so seamlessly with enterprise environments, the Bold may satisfy both the IT and the end user communities -- the former because the Bold doesn't compromise enterprise security and stability and the latter because it's just plain cool. Not iPhone cool, but cool for a corporate crowd.

From our perspective, the Bold (also called the 9000) is likely to make mobile users even more eager to shift their away-from-their-desks, out-of-the-office interactions to handheld devices. If they can handle phone calls, email, tasks, appointments, and also all their interactions with enterprise applications on a single device, will they still want to lug around a laptop if they don’t have to?

Go WES!

We've been at WES this week -- the largest gathering of BlackBerry users, technologists, and vendors of the year -- and we're learning some interesting things. There are 6000 people at this event, but there are 800 million who use mobile devices and, if they all have the same general interests as attendees at this show, there's going to be a lot of adoption of technologies that personalize users' interactions on their handhelds. That's good for Webalo, of course, so it's been reassuring to hear so much discussion on the subject.

Since greater personalization (involving access to enterprise applications) turns mobile devices into practical, alternatives-to-laptops computing platforms, the devices themselves take on greater value. So we weren't surprised to find ourselves in talks with several wireless carriers who now see handhelds as a lot more than just phones and email communicators.

However, we were surprised that attendees consumed 13000 eggs at breakfast and 700 gallons of coffee!

Mobile Dashboard Appliance Available

The appliance version of Webalo's Mobile Dashboard is in it's final testing and will be available the end of March.  Pricing based on number of end users is similar to the hosted Mobile Dashboard with the addition of a one-time cost of $7,500 which includes the server box.  The server is a high-end rack-mounted server, similar to the servers used for Google's search appliance.  It includes backup hard drives.  There is a simple set of setup screens that guide the IT system administrator in providing an IP address and host name, and integrating the server within the corporate network.  Future updates to the Mobile Dashboard can be easily downloaded through the system administration functionality.

-Phil

Happy New Year!

As 2007 draws to a close, we want to thank our customers for making Webalo's first product, the Mobile Dashboard, a great success.  It's been an exciting year for us and we plan on making 2008 even more exciting.

In the first part of the year, we will be launching the "appliance" version of the Mobile Dashboard.  This will allow companies to host the Mobile Dashboard themselves on a dedicated server within their own data centers.  While most of our customers have readily adopted the use of a secure IBM data center to host the Mobile Dashboard, some of our customers have corporate rules or policies in place that prevent them from using an external hosting facility.  It is for these customers that we are developing the Mobile Dashboard Appliance.  It will operate in the same manner as the current Mobile Dashboard, with the main difference being that the company will host the service rather than IBM, and the service will thus reside behind the corporate firewall.

In 2008 we will also be significantly expanding the Mobile Dashboard service to include other corporate data sources, e.g., backend Web Services applications, Website interfaces to applications, and corporate databases.  Please send us an email or give us a call and we'll be happy to brief you on our plans and schedule for 2008.

We wish all our customers, partners, investors and friends a happy holiday season and a joyous 2008.

-Phil

Customer Question – Security

I am often asked about security, e.g., in transmitting information between the Mobile Dashboard service and the mobile devices, and how we ensure users get the correct reports.  Security is a very important issue, so let me itemize the security features in the Mobile Dashboard.

1.     End users receive their own reports and no others.  Each end user has a username and password which is entered into the Webalo client on the user’s device.  When the device syncs with the Mobile Dashboard, the user is authenticated by the service and that user is sent only those reports that the user has been designated to receive.  Administrators (using the Mobile Dashboard website) set up reports and explicitly specify which users are to receive which reports.

2.     Uploading reports.  Reports uploaded to the Mobile Dashboard are secured using HTTPS.

3.     Emailing updated reports to the service.  Emails may be encrypted using TLS encryption.

4.     Transmitting reports to mobile devices.  Transmissions use Twofish encryption (a symmetric key block cipher).

We realize that security is of utmost concern to our customers and we will continue to provide the latest security technologies.

-Phil

CTIA Conference

The major wireless conference CTIA was held in Orlando this year and it was a major success for Webalo.  In addition to having our own booth, we had a stand in the Nokia booth and the Mobile Dashboard was a featured application in the RIM (BlackBerry) booth.  I gave a presentation at the Smartphone Summit (a day-long series of presentations and panel discussions) on how the Mobile Dashboard easily enables delivery of business intelligence reports to mobile users.  On the final day of the conference former presidents Clinton and Bush (Sr.) spoke how mobile devices had impacted their lives.  Bush repeatedly talked about the importance of his BlackBerry and how it has become his principal computing platform.  This is very much in line with what we’re seeing with C-level executives down to line managers who are using their mobile devices more and more as their main computing device.  Providing critical business intelligence information to mobile devices is the next logical step in enabling these devices to deliver information that mobile users need, quickly and effectively.  CTIA was a strong validation of Webalo’s business proposition.

To view the Smartphone Summit speakers and presentations, go to http://www.smartphonesummit.com/presentations_sps07orlando.php. My talk can be found in the 4 pm session entitled Customized Smartphone Solutions For Your Business.

-Phil

GMA Orlando

These are exciting times - as we roll out our service we're seeing a wide variety of users. One area I'm particularly excited about is the impact we're having in the retail market - our ability to easily stream key performance indicators and other forms of operational data in an accessible and readable form to the mobile devices of regional management and other field based operating staff, is delivering a next generation level of productivity improvement into the real-time retail operating environment. Next week we're off to the GMA event in Orlando with our partners (AT&T, Cisco, IBM, Intermec & Nielsen) to showcase this capability - we'll also be streaming Nielsen grocery product data to the Intermec Windows Mobile devices being used by the conference attendees - its a compelling use of our service and we'll post more information on this over the coming weeks.

Peter

Customer Question - Updating Webalo Client

We recently updated some of our Webalo managed clients (the Webalo software that users download to their devices).  A couple of users asked about this and wanted to know what to do to obtain the new clients for their individual devices.

The Webalo managed clients are designed to notify users (on their devices) when they need to download a new client version.  How the download occurs varies by device.  In some cases you will be asked if you want to download the new client and you simply follow the directions.  In other cases, you can access the Update Client option on the Webalo Options screen.  Or you can simply download the update in the same manner as you downloaded the client initially, i.e., by pointing your device's Internet Browser to http://w4bi.com/ua and then following the instructions on that Web page (including confirming that you want to overwrite the existing client).

Webalo does update its managed clients from time to time to add features based on customer feedback and new capabilities.  Downloading new clients is easy and takes only a minute or so.  Your stored information, e.g., username and password, are retained in the client update so there's no need to reset any of your stored options.

-Phil