I spent a few days this week at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, attending and speaking at the second annual M-Enterprise Summit. The event is billed as an invitation-only, hosted summit designed for senior managers and business executives who want to understand how current and future mobile technology and trends will impact their business and investment decisions. Attendees included 75 select CIOs, Vice President’s and Heads of Mobile Strategy, from major enterprises.
I enjoyed meeting IT practitioners dealing with a variety of enterprise mobility topics, ranging from mobile device and application management, to application development. The daytime sessions and dinner reception afforded me the opportunity to re-connect, even if briefly, with industry analysts and pundits including Kevin Benedict, Senior Analyst at the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work, Jack Gold, Principal and Founder at mobile computing research firm J. Gold Associates, and Maribel Lopez, industry author and Co-Founder of the Mobile Research Council.
I had the pleasure of presenting an interactive case study presentation with a group of attendees from various enterprises. We discussed examples of how AnyPresence customers are using the platform to solve interesting challenges, such as IT becoming an enabler of enterprise app development across multiple business units and varying levels of developer experience, while still governing and managing how those apps access enterprise resources. Our AnyPresence Designer can be used by IT organizations to define app templates, which can then be shared with the organization via a custom web portal, and further configured and customized by other groups and citizen developers across the company.
The highlight of the event for me was the participation on an executive panel called “What's Next in Mobile - A View from the Corner Office.” Moderator, Ken Daniels from Acommence Advisors asked some fantastic questions to engage both panelists and the audience. I was joined by some industry peers, including several from mobile app infrastructure vendors: Chris Perret, CEO, Nacho Cove, Sravish Sridhar, CEO, Kinvey, Ronald Rock, CEO, Point.io, and Richard Rabins, CEO, Alpha Software. Our discussion touched on various challenges related to adoption of mobile apps among the enterprise, the importance of user experience, and what the tipping point catalyst might be for mass adoption of enterprise mobility.
I look forward to keeping in touch with both renewed connections and new ones, and look forward to our next event!