Is corporate #mobile App development too expensive?

The other day, a fellow Enterprise Architect was lamenting on how the sticker price of “mobile enabling” applications was giving pause to business stakeholders. The business partners who were queuing up with proposals for mobile enabling applications in the portfolio were assuming this capability would automatically move forward along with regular upgrade and maintenance cycle.

When presented with the cost of enabling applications for smartphones and tablets – ability to download from app store, running natively on multiple devices, form factors, securely connecting and integrating data with the corporate back end – most users were stumped. The argument from business stakeholders is understandable: if Apple store can boast of 1.2 million apps, and there are similar number in the android, Amazon and Microsoft ecosystems why can’t my corporate IS push a few hundred of our applications to myCorp-App store?

Explaining the rational for the high cost of mobile enablement cannot be easily condensed to an elevator pitch. Many of the “older” applications used by corporate users, especially the ones that came before iPhone and iPads – circa 2007+ – had not been designed for the new user experience. There is growing awareness that mobile enabling such applications will come at a cost that is not “cheap” in the corporate IS context. Part of the cost is the user interface redevelopment/refactoring. The other real, but hidden cost is the ‘technology debt’ – the need to upgrade legacy systems before they can be mobile enabled. (Those of us with a few gray hairs from our years in IT will remember preparing similar business cases a decade ago when there was a push to web-enable corporate applications.)

The good news is that we are already at a “trough of disillusionment” (apologies Gartner) when it comes to mobile enabling corporate applications. In a sense, corporate IT is already climbing the “slope of enlightenment,” especially since most new products are already being designed with mobile usability right out of the door. And for new application development, mobile enabling is not an icing on top but an integral part of the design.
Pockets of business stakeholders are also coming to grips with this slope of enlightenment and are willing to pony up the costs, especially when it comes to enabling applications required by mobile workforce – for consultants on the road, sales reps and also applications that enable field workers like UPS drivers, gate agents walking around busy airport checkin areas among others.

In many cases, where cost is a constraint, business users are accepting simpler options, say redesigning websites to be html5 compliant, that would work on “most” devices and form-factors, not necessarily with “all” the bells and whistles of an app from an apple store.

It is a matter of time before corporate IT climbs up the “Plateau of Productivity” when it comes to mobile enablement. But I am sure by then business would already be aspiring to the next cool trigger of the “Peak of Inflated Expectations,” not necessarily in the usability space

Enterprise Architects and a tip for Entrepreneurs on mobile strategy

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who is wetting his toes in the mobile app development space, following the time honored startup tradition by hiring a few developers proficient in mobile technologies to dream up the next killer application. The hope is: build it and they will come. Dreams of mobile entrepreneurs are buoyed by stores like “Mobile app growth exploding, and shows no signs of letting up

The conversation reminded me of the NYT article on mobile application boom from a few months ago (“Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living”) One could spend time pondering the odds of entrepreneurs beating others in the mobile gold rush, or if we are already at the tail end of one, but that's not the point here.

To seasoned industry watchers, Enterprise Architects, and those in the “buy” side of technology, there is a parallel to the mobile-world crystal-ball-gazing: the dot-com-boom and bust from over a decade ago. We are probably encountering a parallel with a torrent of news and “activity” in the space, ranging from partnerships – Microsoft (MSFT) and Nokia - to stories of market darlings imploding and struggling to survive with a fierce battle for #3 spot  (Interestingly, just this week, Blackberry board announced it is up for sale!). And if one were to draw a few lessons from the “history”

1.    A few persistent – and lucky – entrepreneurs will not only survive and thrive but lead us to game changing innovations well after the bust: Amazon, Priceline, ebay are just a few examples

2.    Capturing hundreds of thousands of eyeballs, and page hits was the currency of dot.com. Parallel to this in mobile space is the quest for cool-app with hundreds of thousands of downloads from an app store

3.    Innovation in the space continues much after the bust - Facebook, twitter, istagram all came much after the dot.com bust

4.    Corporate IT catches up with entrepreneurs. Though much of the tools techniques and technologies of web-enablement are now mainstream, architecting and developing scalable corporate E-commerce portals and integrating web applications with back-end systems continue to be the holy grail of software development. (my earlier blog on the topic). The parallel between eCommerce/dot.com era, circa 2000/2001, and the dynamics of mobile ecosystem is obvious. Corporate IT is getting over the novelty of mobile hype cycle and BYOD. However, most IS shops are just starting on the long journey of mobile enabling corporate applications. 

What does it mean to Enterprise Architects? Taking a Gartner’s PACE model view, organizations without a strong mobile strategy may be considering platforms to support mobility to be a System of Innovation (SOI), at least initially. After pilot and initial rollout, these may move to being yet another System of Differentiation (SOD) and eventually when the usage matures, System of Record (SOR). The implication is on several fronts including guiding investment, need for piloting and lining up architecturally significant use cases for mobility.

My response to my entrepreneur friend? follow the money. Vendors are already converging on platforms with three letter acronyms MDM, MDS, MADP etc etc. Mobile platforms are also converging around iOS, Android, Windows mobile and/or BlackBerry 10... and so is the application ecosystem. Which leads us to the opportunity: mobile enablement of corporate applications using standardized techniques. Entrepreneurs may be able to use the learnings and skills from mobile app development ventures and turn and "sell" those skills to corporate IS departments looking to mobile enable their application ecosystem.  

Larger SI vendors are already positioning practices around “mobile enablement,” while niche players showcase their agility and skills in the space. The opportunity is for System Integrators, large and small that can help seamless transition of corporate applications to mobile devices running on multiple platforms on “any” form factor.

Bottomline: Rewards from working with corporate IT may not be as instantaneous as developing the next-killer-app-netting-million-downloads but will certainly be lucrative, especially for those who can carve a niche in this dynamic space.

Parallels between dot.com era and mobile application gold rush

There was an interesting article in New York Times this weekend that made me reflect on mobility gold rush and takeaways from the dot.com boom-and-bust we experienced not so long ago. (#NYT: As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living)


The theme of NYT story reads almost identical to several stories chronicling the dot.com and eCommerce gold rush during late nineteen nineties. The author, David Streitfeld, picks two distinct examples of entrepreneurs in mobile app development space to highlight success and struggles. If we distill the key takeaways from that “era,” a few patterns emerge

• Dot.com era: Legions of developers joined the dot.com gold-rush but only a few entrepreneurs created blockbuster tools or websites and successfully cashed out early by selling them for multiples of million dollars (remember Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail, Pierre Omidyar of eBay?). 
• Parallels in Mobility era: NYT Article quotes Ethan Nicholas who made more than $1 million on an artillery game mobile app. Nicholas is an early mover in the mobile era if you will. Of course, the real blockbuster in all this is Apple’s iPhone and iPads application eco-system that other technology companies are trying extremely hard to emulate.

• Dot.com era: The dot.com one burst in Year 2000 leading to a huge wipeout of investments and dreams of a generation of techies.  
• Parallels in Mobility era: Nokia, Research in Motion continue to flounder – at least the stock market thinks they do - while even tech giants like Microsoft try to find their way around the tectonic shift to mobile computing and applications.

• Dot.com era: Despite the bubble and bust, a few really successful businesses with innovative business models – eBay, Amazon, Google, priceline et al – took off and continue to grow and thrive 
• Parallels in Mobility era: Not sure if the story of Shawn and Stephanie Grimes in NYT article would fall into this category yet. Their efforts to develop breakthrough products have cost $200,000 in lost income and savings. Their apps have earned less than $5,000 this year. This said, the mobile-app ecosystem is huge. Apple alone claims to have paid out over $6.5 Billion in royalties to mobile app developers and entrepreneurs in the past few years.

• Dot.com era: technology globalization and offshoring boom. The dot.com gold rush was not restricted to the US alone. It continued around the world: India, China, Brazil, Europe all have their favorite dot.com boom-and-bust stories. 
• Parallels in Mobility era: A good percentage $6.5 billion in royalty payment by Apple went to application developers overseas, a micro-offshoring boom if you will.

There are other similarities between dot.com and mobile application segments with learning’s for entrepreneurs too. eCommerce has become mainstream with most – if not all - brick-and-mortar companies and retailers embracing additional channels to reach out to service and sell to customers. Hundreds of thousands of smaller entrepreneurs, consultants and programmers continue to survive thrive servicing and e-enabling enterprises large and small. And few innovative models continue to emerge. In the past year alone, Facebook went forward with a multi-billion-dollar IPO, and went on to buy photo sharing service Instagram for $1bn.

Just like in the e-commerce gold rush boom, the gold diggers with a spade - mobile application creators - continue to struggle to make a Living, searching for the next blockbuster …. While the spade sellers like Apple who staked out the landscape early continue to thrive. Other tech majors continue to learn from and emulate Apple’s model. Google (with android ecosystem), Amazon (with its kindle ecosystem and ecommerce engine) and Microsoft (windows 8) have taken a playbook from Apple and are competing to create similar ecosystems for application developers.