In this week’s case study, a large enterprise transportation services company faced many of the challenges frequently seen by organizations tackling mobility: App development was taking too long, maintaining apps cost too much, and the cost for developing for multiple channels was too high.

The rise of the Internet of Things

Yesterday, June 2, 2014, Apple unveiled iOS8 at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, calling it the biggest release since the launch of the App Store. Early reports from the social media world claim the new iOS provides a better user experience and has taken a new path.

Public key, or asymmetric, cryptography is a common way to keep data secure (check out a great explanation of public-key cryptography for “non geeks” here.) It requires two separate keys, one of which is secret (or private) and one of which is public, and can be used for situations that warrant extra security for user data being transmitted to the server.

During the week of May 13 – 15, I was at the M6 Mobility xChange Summit in Carlsbad, CA. It’s by far the best mobility conference I have been to, and there were lots of interesting tidbits that I learned from the show. Here’s a rundown of my top 10 learnings and trends from M6 Mobility xChange conference 2014:

The pro football hall of famer head coach Bill Parcells once famously said upon leaving the New England Patriots, “They want you to cook the dinner; at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.” Not long ago, mobile application development wasn’t much different. Developers were the chefs of mobile app creation but hardly had a choice of the development tools they could use to build them. Developers have always wanted to be the Picassos of app creation, but have rarely been able to choose their own canvas and paints.

The second day of the Gartner 360 Summit was comparable to intellectual aerobics. Many of the speaker presentations were both absolutely captivating, and deeply thought provoking. It was very refreshing to hear about the eccentric conditions that innovation can stem from.

Day one of the Gartner Customer 360 Summit was jam packed. Speaker sessions ranged from highly technical to extremely motivational. The exhibit floor was crawling with likeminded individuals yearning to share their thoughts on what it means to have high quality CRM. Energy levels were through the roof, and opinions flowed generously.

The next report in our Kony Innovator series features the CIO for Channel Strategies at a non-US retail bank, and highlights the familiar path along a multi-channel journey. As part of its branding and corporate culture, the bank seeks to maintain its leadership as a technology trendsetter. To do this, it developed and launched its first mobile banking app for iPhones shortly after Apple began the countrywide iPhone roll out. Eighteen months later, with Android-powered devices rapidly gaining popularity, the bank launched a second development project, this time for a native Android app.