Tag Archives: Mobile

Digital Transformation: Path to Improving Your Business

This is an open letter to businesses and agencies attempting to transform their enterprise through the use of digital technologies. Each organization is at a different point along this path in an effort to engage customers, suppliers, and employees through digital technologies in order to remain competitive and profitable. I would like to suggest some ways to accelerate that transformation.

New Technologies

Management consultants Bain and Company suggested in a recent article that there are six basic design rules that can accelerate a company’s digital transformation. These include breaking boundaries, being open, inducing insights, and being user-friendly. I would like to add a couple of others that I think will help move you down the road to your destination.

Internal Partnering

Many companies are reworking their internal and external processes to achieve efficiency and build a digital presence that will hopefully draw customers. Even my local hardware store and ice cream shop have websites. They are for the most part static pages with information like location, phone number and store hours but at least that keeps me from having to dust off the yellow pages. They have taken the first steps towards moving to a digital world.

Whether you are moving back-end infrastructure, applications and software to the cloud or experimenting with a web presence for the first time, it is important to partner with your technology department. As a business, you know WHAT you want to do but the employees in your information management department know HOW to do it. Partner with them at every turn to combine business knowledge and technical knowledge. I suggest you even consider embedding some technical people in your business. This is a great way for them to learn more about your needs so that they can custom design a solution for you. We used to worry about technology people “going native” if they were embedded in the business, but now I think that crossover is necessary and will result in better and more effective solutions.

External Partnering

One of the design rules from Bain is to focus on the user experience. What better way to do that than ask users themselves? Sometimes this requires getting out of the office and asking customers their opinion of a new mobile app or a change to your website or even a new digital product that you are considering. I will be the first to admit that traditional surveys leave me cold. Every time I get near the local Home Depot store my smart phone asks me to rate my recent visit. I never comply. If a business I frequent were to put a device in my hand and ask me to try out a new digital product I would be much more inclined to reply. There are different ways of partnering with and surveying customers, but it is important in order to design a user experience they will accept.

Thoughts

Wherever you are on the digital transformation continuum, I hope you will consider these ideas to make your journey smoother. They can help you in implementation and customer engagement. How is your digital transformation progressing? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

In Case of Emergency: Weather Warnings, Amber Alerts, and National News

Cell phone alertI am traveling in southern Idaho and I got to thinking about the technology necessary for modern emergency notification and response. I got an AMBER Alert on my cell phone to watch for a vehicle involved in a kidnapping. First of all, I had never heard my phone make a noise like that and second, I didn’t even remember signing up for AMBER Alerts. That was the first alert I ever got, so I was intrigued by the infrastructure necessary for emergency notifications and I did some research to see how it works.

Emergency Notification

With the proliferation of cell phones, emergency notification becomes a lot easier and can be localized. In addition to the AMBER Alert I got this week, I also heard a tornado warning and flood warning from other cell phones. These all come through a program called Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA). WEA enabled cell phones from mobile carriers to automatically send these alerts through local cell towers. If you are in an area that broadcasts an emergency alert, then you will receive the message. Possible messages include AMBER Alerts, messages from the weather service, and emergency messages from the President of the United States. According to FEMA, you can opt out of weather and AMBER Alert messages but not messages from the President.

This makes it possible to broadcast to many people at the same time outside of the traditional television and radio emergency broadcast system. With the shift away from watching live television or listening to the radio, the broadcast system has adapted to reach us wherever we are.

Emergency Response

As with emergency notification, emergency response has been updated as well. Since cell phones can broadcast GPS signals, your call to 911 can be traced to your specific location, even if you don’t know where you are. This is most important when speed is critical for emergency personnel to reach you. Again, the system has adapted to our lifestyles and current technology. With enhanced 911, wireless and wireline calls are routed through a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) where your information and location are detected and relayed to safety personnel.

Thoughts

As we become more mobile and rely more on mobile devices, it is good to know that our emergency systems are broadcasting and collecting information through these devices. It may feel at times as there are few places left where we can get away from being connected but in an emergency, that’s a good thing.

Do you have any experience working with emergency systems? Are there still updates that would make it even better? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

How Safe is the Cloud?

padlocked cloudA lot of attention lately has been paid to the security of the cloud, particularly Apple’s iCloud service. There have been recent high profile celebrity hacks resulting in the sharing of photos that were thought to be private. The question I have been reading in the last couple of weeks, even in my local newspaper, is this: Is the cloud safe? The answer, maddeningly, is yes and no. This blog post will cover the definition of the cloud and how you can make the answer to that question “yes.”

Defining the Cloud

The cloud is really just a term for offsite storage. It is a convenient place to store files, whether they are photos, contact lists, or e-mails, so that you can access them from multiple devices in multiple locations. Say, for example, you take a picture from your smartphone and wish to view those same pictures from your tablet or your laptop or share them with friends. Rather than carrying those pictures around on a hard drive to view them on different devices or show friends, those pictures are stored in a common place, in the cloud storage. The cloud goes by different names such as iCloud, Google Drive, Google+, and Microsoft OneDrive. It also goes by names such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter. Basically it is a common place to store, retrieve, and manipulate your files. The question then becomes: What if you want to take a picture but NOT store it in the cloud?

It’s All in the Sync

The key is to understand when your device is synchronizing with the cloud or with another device. In Android, for example, there is a Google Drive app that is an interface to help you download and sync files between your Android device and the cloud. You can also swap files between Android and your Google+ account or between Android and your Dropbox or Box account using a simple app.

Developers have done their best to make these apps intuitive and user friendly, but they have also masked the complexity of moving files back and forth to the cloud or to another device. As a result, some smartphone users just push the “sync all” button, which duplicates all files to the cloud. This is great for backup, but it also means that your files are now in a less secure area than just your phone. As recent events show, there are still some vulnerabilities in the cloud, and occasionally a cloud service is breached and personal data is compromised. One answer to this is to employ an application such as Encdroid for the Android OS, which encrypts your files and makes them more difficult to hack. Another solution is to understand where your files are and how they are getting there.

Thoughts

My challenge to you this week is to review your files and take an inventory of where you are storing everything. You may have signed up for a Google+ account and forgotten about it. When you get that new Android phone, however, you can bet the good folks at Google have a record of that account and would be happy to send all of your files to be backed up there. Be a savvy technology user and make sure you understand whether you are vulnerable and in what areas. In the end, that knowledge will make you and your data safer.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

IT Trends: How Will You Access Your Data in the Years to Come?

shutterstock_91611515I have been thinking lately about information technology trends and I want to highlight a few in the blog this week. This helps me to keep up on the latest in technology and I hope that it helps you as well.

The Cloud

According to a recent list from Gartner, one of the emerging trends over the next couple of years is that the cloud will become the most important data repository. This will have significant impact on IT organizations in the fact that devices such as PCs and laptops will be merely a window into the data and the applications. The computer will not actually house information; it will all be hosted in the cloud. Laptops could become simple terminals and more computing will be pushed to the tablet, which could serve the same function. With this push to mobile devices, the desktop PC could drop out of the scene completely. Device management will change dramatically, especially as employees become even more mobile.

Mobile

Another trend identified by Gartner is an increasingly mobile workforce. This includes not only telecommuters, but also those working in a progressively 24/7 world on company-issued devices as well as on personal devices. The line is blurring between the two, and IT organizations need to get a handle on who and what devices have access to their proprietary information. This goes beyond a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy and enters into the area of network design with an eye toward mobile security.

Security

With the movement towards the cloud and mobile devices, Sophos—the network and server security vendor—predicts there will be more attacks on personal and corporate data. They also predict mobile devices will leave personal data more vulnerable to theft, particularly through the use of apps. With larger numbers of employees working remotely and passing corporate data across their mobile devices, this trend spells trouble for the IT organization. The spotlight will be on them to keep the corporate data safe on the inside and keep viruses and intruders on the outside. More emphasis will be put on security, particularly the mobile variant. The upside to all of this is an increase in opportunities for security professionals. According to Robert Half, the staffing specialists, security professionals are one of the technical specialties in highest demand. If the trend towards mobile and cloud computing continues, this demand will become even more acute.

Thoughts

One of the benefits of trend spotting is that it points to where future opportunities lie. There is a need now for security professionals, cloud computing professionals, and those that can integrate mobile platforms with enterprise applications. If you are at a crossroads in your career, I would explore one of these areas. If you are just starting your IT career or education, I think any of these will be solid fields for years to come, with options to branch out into the periphery. Have you seen any other IT trends worth noting? Let me know. I will highlight other trends in future blog posts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Always On, Always Connected

I had the chance to camp for the last two weeks at a very large jamboree on the East Coast. While it was nice to disconnect for a while, I experienced some unexpected angst about being out of the digital loop. To be clear, the camp was well connected with wi-fi but I chose to concentrate on camping as opposed to being distracted with the normal stream of correspondence and news. It got me thinking about how hard it is to break out of the “always connected, always on” world. Is it good to leave it behind once in awhile and focus on the process of living, or is the angst that I experienced normal?

Mobile Computing

With the advent of smart phones and other portable computing devices, we are now connected 24/7. No longer do we turn off our computer and go home for the day or turn off our computers and go to sleep at night. Our computers are on all the time and we are on all the time. It is common to see people walking down the street glued to a small screen as opposed to being aware of and enjoying their physical surroundings. On this same trip, I was in a beautiful gothic cathedral and witnessed people engaged with their devices rather than enjoying their magnificent surroundings. Why even go out if you are more present in the digital world than you are in the physical world?

Hyper Connectivity

In a 2011 article in Family Circle, Christina Tynan-Wood discussed the balance between always being connected and being present. In the article, Tynan-Wood describes a recent family vacation to a remote cabin. When they arrived, they discovered that there was no cell signal. Panic set in. She states: “The uncomfortable feeling that we were missing out on something important overtook our intentions to enjoy downtime together.” I believe that more and more we tie ourselves to our network and feel the satisfaction of being needed in that network. In doing so, however, I wonder if we are missing out on the sheer joy of being present in the physical world?

Being Present

I am trying to strike a balance between being connected in the digital world and being present in the physical world. In a May 2013 article, social strategist Amber Naslund suggests that finding that balance is a personal choice for each individual. The author states: “…the way I use my phone or my computer or my iPad is my own, and when I’m the only one affected, doing so doesn’t make me less present, it just makes me present in a different way, on different terms, in a different context. It’s every bit as real to me.” Maybe the secret is to focus on one task and one conversation at a time.

Thoughts

Is being connected 24/7 the new norm? Can you be connected and present at the same time? Have you found the perfect balance for yourself? Do you ever experience angst about not being connected enough or not being present enough? Let me know your thoughts.

 

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT topics that keep him up at night.