Don’t gamble with your company’s future…Mobile Enterprise Application

Platforms turn the odds for mobile success directly in your favor.

Building a Major Mobile App?Without a MEAP the odds of success will spiral rapidly out of control.

•WhatExactlyisaMEaP?

•sOsintErnatiOnal- MObilitysavEslivEs

•EatOn-iPadsvs.30POundsOfcatalOgs

A S u p p l e m e n t t o m o b i l e e n t e r p r i S e m A g A z i n e

MobileEnterpriseMag.com january/fEbruary 2012 Mobile enterprise | MEAP3

There is no question that mobil-

ity has taken over the enter-

prise. Whether in the office,

out in the field or reaching out

to consumers, mobile devices - but

more importantly, the mobile apps

that make those devices useful - have

become central to all business opera-

tions. The device side of the equation

remains a Wild West affair, with BYOD

continuing without end. Enterprises

won’t have any luck trying to control

smartphones, though we can anticipate

much more control in the long run over

emerging tablet environments.

Mobile applications, however, are

another thing entirely. Any business

can exert complete control over mobile

apps, especially those large scale mobile

applications that will - or already do -

serve as strategic corporate initiatives.

We’ll see two very important examples

of mobile applications driving strategic

enterprise initiatives a bit further on in

this story when we turn our attention

to Eaton and SOS International, two

large scale organizations that required

two very different approaches to build-

ing their major mobile applications.

Despite their different needs and

business requirements, both companies

had one thing in common - they both

utilized a “mobile enterprise applica-

tion platform” - or MEAP - to build their

mobile apps. It is not possible to build

state of the art mobile enterprise ap-

plications without the use of one. Many

What Exactly is a MEaP?ThE MOBIlE EnTErPrISE APPlIcATIOn PlATfOrM - YOur kEY MEAnS

to a sure mobile bet. • By tony rizzo

INTRODUCTION

MeAp3 What exactly is a MeAp?

CASE STUDY

MeAp7 international sosHow to Deliver a Global, Cross-Platform Mobile application

CASE STUDY

MeAp12 powersource Eaton's Mobile app Takes iPads Deep into the field

Mobile Enterprise Application Platform

iOS

Android

Windows Phone 7

BlackBerry OS and PlayBook

Win CE Embedded

Feature Phones

Win 8 Tablets

Win 7 Laptops

Enterprise and Consumer Mobile Users

Native

Hybrid(Native + HTML5)

HTML5

Web Only(Browsers)

User Authentication

Back End Data Connectors

Session Management

Transaction Management

Transaction/App Analytics

Secure Communications Gateway

Data Encryption

Databases

App Servers

Web Services

Legacy Apps

Screen and HTML Scrapers

Integrated Design and User Interface Studio Standalone or Eclipse/Windows Plugins

MO

BIL

E A

PP

LIC

AT

ION

S

W

Cloud-based Services

Platform

have tried, and most have failed - at

significant development and developer

cost, and in lost time.

When an enterprise sets out to cre-

ate a strategic new mobile application,

it simply cannot afford to gamble with

the potential for failure. There are too

many stakeholders, many of them with

cxO titles, who have a great deal on the

line - failure is not an option, and speed

to market is essential. Without a MEAP

you would have better luck and better

odds of success at the roulette table than

succeeding with your mobile project.

Why? consider the MEAP diagram

shown on page 20.

It represents the core features of any

enterprise grade MEAP. On the outside

edges you have the end user commu-

nity for your mobile app, and you have

all of the back end data and application

sources those users need secure access

to. Security requires many things, but

the first line of defense is data encryp-

tion and a 100% secure communication

capability to your end users. Without

a MEAP these two issues alone would

present a significant challenge, but the

greatest challenge - at least in terms of

developer cost and time - is the back

end connectivity puzzle.

An enterprise grade MEAP will re-

duce both the time and complexity of

establishing back end connectivity. Typi-

cally the development resources needed

here if an IT team wanted to do a project

in-house would require significant ex-

table ofcontents

Building a Major MoBile app?

MEAP4 | Mobile enterprise january/fEbruary 2012 MobileEnterpriseMag.com

user interface experience, and whether

the MEAP has the ability to support

hTMl5 and hybrid (native + hTMl5) ap-

plications. These, among others, are all

points of evaluation that will depend

on the requirements of the mobile ap-

plication being deployed.

Other components of a MEAP in-

clude the ability to provide analytics on

app usage, including very granular in-

formation; some mobile device manage-

Building a Major MoBile app?

perience (and great cost). A MEAP will

greatly reduce both back end complexity

and time to execution by approximately

75% compared to in-house efforts. Wire-

less data encryption is also fully handled

by the MEAP - connectivity to and from

your mobile end users when utilizing a

MEAP will be as “state of the art secure”

as is humanly possible to achieve.

The heart of the MEAP is its applica-

tion design and development capabili-

ties. All MEAPs differ in their technical

approaches - some allow extensive

visual drag and drop, some employ a

table-driven approach, and some re-

quire additional coding. The level of

customization that an app may require

(depending on how complex its overall

design is) and the ability of the MEAP

to handle that customization and com-

plexity will typically be a key criteria in

evaluating a MEAP.

The application design studio is

also the component that determines

a MEAP’s ability to deliver true “write

once, deploy to any” capabilities,

whether the MEAP can easily deliver

true native (yet highly customizable)

code, can deliver a true cross-device

What Exactly is a MEaP?

The heart of the MEAP is its application design and development capabilities. It is here that the end user experience is defined and executed.

Mobile Enterprise Application Platform

iOS

Android

Windows Phone 7

BlackBerry OS and PlayBook

Win CE Embedded

Feature Phones

Win 8 Tablets

Win 7 Laptops

Enterprise and Consumer Mobile Users

Native

Hybrid(Native + HTML5)

HTML5

Web Only(Browsers)

User Authentication

Back End Data Connectors

Session Management

Transaction Management

Transaction/App Analytics

Secure Communications Gateway

Data Encryption

Databases

App Servers

Web Services

Legacy Apps

Screen and HTML Scrapers

Integrated Design and User Interface Studio Standalone or Eclipse/Windows Plugins

MO

BIL

E A

PP

LIC

AT

ION

S

W

Cloud-based Services

Platform

Building a Major MoBile app?

consideration. Businesses looking to mo-

bilize internal processes and business

functions may choose to look at a MEAP

that provides pre-built application mod-

ules that can be both quickly assembled

as needed yet remain customizable.

Sybase’s unwired Platform, for ex-

ample, provides this exact capability.

“Mobilizing businesses' processes and

tasks has emerged as a top priority on

both business and IT agendas, and mo-

mentum will only accelerate in 2012,”

notes David Tong, VP of Engineering

for Sybase. “Enterprises are targeting

a broad set of mobile apps, including

feature-rich, full-functioning business

apps, and light-weight, task-based

apps. Independent of the scenario, it is

important that the in-house develop-

ment team is empowered by a robust

mobile application platform that com-

plements their skill set, be it in a hybrid

Web container or native application en-

vironment. It is also important that the

platform includes both development

tools and the run-time capability.”

The bottom line is this: When your

company - whether a fortune 500 play-

er or a small SMB - decides the time has

arrived to drive strategic mobile initia-

tives, the very first partner that must

be considered is the MEAP vendor that

will work with you to create, deliver

and deploy the mobile apps that are at

the center of your strategic game plans.

careful evaluation and consideration

of your MEAP partner will turn what

would otherwise be an unnecessary

risky gamble into a sure thing. //

Visit our Web site at www.mobileenter-

prisemag.com for additional resources,

including:

• the top ten Questions a meaP Ven-

dor Must Answer for You

finally, the MEAP's own server and

the connections it makes to back end

systems should be able to be based ei-

ther on-premise behind a corporate

firewall, or up in the cloud. The cloud

can be a network operations center

- or nOc - that is directly supported

by the MEAP vendor, or it can be one

contracted through a wireless services

provider, such as AT&T or Verizon.

Evaluation CritEriaA key evaluation point depends on

the type of mobile application being

developed. A consumer-facing mobile

app will have different requirements

than an app needed out in the field.

As Johann Poppenbeck, VP, Product

Management for DSI, a veteran MEAP

vendor, says, “When your mobile app is

used out in the field, rather than in an

office environment, it is critical to en-

sure that your development platform

delivers apps that function regardless

of device, location or network connec-

tivity. It is also important that your plat-

form accommodates situations where

a device is used by multiple users who

serve different roles and potentially

speak different languages. finally, the

platform will ideally provide an inter-

face that is optimized for the mobile

device and specific end user workflows,

rather than a browser version of the

interface seen at the desk.”

A MEAP’s “ecosystem” of applica-

tion support may also prove to be a key

ment services; and the ability to push out

updates and upgrades over the air to

provision or re-provision mobile devices.

There are two additional major ca-

pabilities a MEAP must provide. The

first is a strong session management

capability. Mobile users will not al-

ways find themselves in locations that

provide connectivity to their mobile

devices. In many cases a user must be

able to continue to work offline when

a connection is lost or dropped. And

users should never explicitly know or

be aware that they are, in fact, work-

ing offline.

As soon as a connection reappears

the application must log itself back on

to the back ends it was using prior to a

disconnect, and elegantly re-connect, re-

establish communications and immedi-

ately update all services and data on both

the back end and on the mobile user's

device. Other data that may be available,

such as GPS-driven location information,

also needs to be preserved and re-utilized

once a connection is re-established.

An enterprise grade MEAP must also

deliver a strong transaction manage-

ment capability. A transaction manager

must effectively maintain the integrity of

all data that is being consumed and used

by the mobile app and the mobile user.

The transaction manager works hand in

hand with the session manager to ensure

that a user's work maintains data integ-

rity across the board - before, during,

and after a disconnect-reconnect occurs.

MEAP6 | Mobile enterprise january/fEbruary 2012 MobileEnterpriseMag.com

The first partner that must be considered is the MEAP vendor that will work closely with you to deliver your strategic mobile game plans.

What Exactly is a MEaP?

services - that means, specifically, that

they feel safe and secure.”

For many years the “user interface”

that SOS provided its users was a wal-

let-size card with a collection of phone

numbers a customer would be able to

reliably depend on to call in any emer-

gency and wherever they might be. Ten

years ago the plastic card gave way to an

electronic card, which has been the norm

up until 2011. Daniel points out that “our

user statistics from 2010 showed that 80

percent of our end user customers have

smartphones. Given that, we began to

consider the range of service possibilities

that putting an SOS mobile application

on those phones would bring to our cus-

tomers and users. Not to mention the

benefits to SOS in terms of delivering

new service capabilities.”

SOS had “a smart developer in

house who pulled together a team

of three and built a BlackBerry-based

prototype of the mobile app we spec’d

out during our mobile brainstorming

sessions,” Daniel says. As is usually the

case when mobile technology is used

to deliver a strategic new enterprise

capability, SOS’s CEO, Arnaud Vaissié,

immediately became involved with the

project and as soon as the app was on

his BlackBerry he demanded that SOS

immediately get it out to the field.

illness, accident, or civil unrest. To deliv-

er these capabilities International SOS

works in partnership with businesses,

governments and non-governmental

organizations, and offers international

standards of medical care.

Although its customers are Fortune

500 businesses, its “clients” are the mil-

lions of employees those companies con-

tract with International SOS to protect

during their travels. Notes Tim Daniel,

Group Executive Vice President for SOS,

“We refer to SOS as a ‘business to busi-

ness to consumer’ organization. Our cus-

tomers are large global entities, includ-

ing 80 of the Fortune 100, but the actual

users of our services are the employees

of our customers, and we treat them as

consumers. We need to meet their needs

and ensure they are satisfied with our

International SOS is a global

company with 10,000 employ-

ees that include 970 full-time

physicians and 200 security spe-

cialists. It offers integrated medical,

clinical, security, and customer care so-

lutions to primarily large organizations

with international operations. It pro-

vides planning, preventative programs,

in-country expertise, and emergency

response services to 66 percent of For-

tune Global 500 companies.

The company runs an international

operation spanning 70 countries, and

a worldwide network of alarm centers,

clinics, and health and logistics pro-

viders. A key aspect of the company’s

overall services is that it offers local-

ized expertise, preventative advice, and

emergency assistance during critical

International SOS — Mobility Saves Lives!INTErNATIONAl SOS AND ITS MEAP PArTNEr VErIVO SOFTWArE SErVE

up a global app • By tony rizzo

80% of Inter-national SOS's many users own smartphones

<< International SOS's Mobile Membership App - one code base, three major mobile platforms

MobileEnterpriseMag.com jAnuAry/fEbruAry 2012 Mobile enterprise | MEAP7

Building a Major MoBile app?

effective agile development and de-

ployment capabilities, allowing mobile

developers to easily build cross-plat-

form apps quickly and push changes to

native applications in real-time. Inter-

national SOS needs to be able to add

significant new functionality to new

releases of the app quickly - and that is

a direct match for our platform.”

Great experiences, no GamblesSOS had an advantage in building the

mobile applica-

tion in that it had the BlackBerry pro-

totype and user feedback in hand to

guide the application design process.

Back end connectivity was easily estab-

lished, freeing the development team

to focus on the end user experience and

to ultimately design an application that

works extremely well across all three

platforms. The original internal Black-

Berry team had already created a set of

Web services to use with their original

BlackBerry application. Once Verivo

came on board it was a simple process

to upgrade the Web services to deliver

the performance required by the app to

ensure a crisp user experience.

had to use a MEAP for development in

order to be able to easily create, deploy,

maintain and deliver across a broad

range of devices (keeping in mind that

BlackBerry, Apple and Android all come

in numerous OS flavors). The company

also initially wanted native device appli-

cation support (for example, extensive lo-

calized services required a tight coupling

to a device’s GPS capabilities. HTMl5 is in

the roadmap for future releases.

After an initial review of available

platforms that met their criteria the

team narrowed its choices down to

three finalists and then proceeded to

put each through a rigorous evaluation

process. After a three month evalua-

tion process the team ended up select-

ing Verivo Software, formerly known

as Pyxis Mobile, for a combination of

reasons, key among them: full cross-

platform capability, full native device

capability, the cost model and structure

involved, and the ability to bring the

platform in-house and wean SOS fully

off of any professional services devel-

opment assistance in the long term.

Daniel adds, “The overall philosophy

of Verivo was also a critical intangible

for us - when we met with their man-

agement team it was clear we had a

philosophical meeting of the minds.”

Todd Christy, a Verivo founder and

its CTO adds, “Our philosophy has

always been to deliver a highly cost-

As soon as both our customers and

our users got a look at the new mobile

application they immediately began

to ask where the iPhone and Android

versions were. “The handwriting was

on the wall as soon as we put the appli-

cation into the field,” says Daniel. “Al-

though the larger population of users

were on BlackBerry devices, essentially

all of our customers knew that iPhone

and Android demand would grow at

an exponential rate as soon as the app

was discovered. BYOD has everything

to do with this.”

“Yes,” Daniel says, “we did initially

attempt to port the BlackBerry app over

to the iPhone with our team. It became

immediately clear - crystal clear in fact

- that this would be a very painful pro-

cess and was not going to work. We

needed to move the app from essential-

ly a prototype to what we knew would

become a sophisticated and complex

mobile application. We brought in an

experienced mobile development man-

ager and set him the task of solving our

need for a write once and easily deploy

to many solution.” Arnaud Vaissié, the

CEO, made moving ahead quickly easy

by being highly supportive but also

through approving significant funding

for the project, which Vaissié sees as a

vital investment for SOS’s future.

The mobile team quickly narrowed

the solution set down - it was clear they

MEAP8 | Mobile enterprise jAnuAry/fEbruAry 2012 MobileEnterpriseMag.com

The overall philosophy of Verivo Software was a critical intangible for us — when we met with their management team it quickly became clear that we had a philosophical meeting of the minds.

International SOS — Mobility Saves Lives!

>> Tim Daniel, Group Executive Vice President, International SOS - "Our mobile app has had a major impact on our business."

Building a Major MoBile app?

application has been enormously well-

received, and I can say with a great

deal of confidence that mobility really

does save lives!”

Discovery by the largest number of

users possible is important because the

International SOS mobile application

will be sending back critical applica-

tion information behind the scenes

from users out in the field - commu-

nication is bi-directional, and being

able to easily set this up is a primary

MEAP requirement (and a key evalu-

ation criteria). SOS will be investing

more heavily in back end Web services

design as the app evolves and sends

more data back and forth. The Verivo

platform makes this process relatively

easy, though there is no way to com-

pletely avoid a fair amount of complex

design effort. The key is to be able to

eliminate 80% of the effort so that

the remaining 20% gets the necessary

quality attention from the develop-

ment teams - which SOS will draw from

its in-house resources.

Finally, as the app is discovered

not only by end users, but as well by

SOS’s business customers, partners,

and its own internal workforce, there

is already a “significant rising demand

for more mobile apps of every sort,

including mobile apps on tablets,”

says Daniel. “With our Verivo rela-

tionship firmly cemented, and with

our own in-house expertise quickly

growing in maturity, I believe we are

in a great place - we’re ready to ex-

ecute on our mobile road map, and

we’re confident we’ll continue to get

our mobile apps done on time, on

budget and with great user interface

experiences. But there is no doubt

that it is the MEAP that is, ultimately,

the great enabler here.” //

wherever our users happen to be and

who are extraordinarily knowledge-

able of that local landscape.” That

said, it is already becoming quite clear

to Daniel and his business and technol-

ogy teams that they will need to make

the move to developing tablet-based

mobile applications.

Tablets open up more opportunities.

Daniel's teams made the decision to fo-

cus specifically on native mobile phone

applications in order to take advantage

of all available features at the deepest

possible level. With tablets however,

the dynamics change. First, the need for

native apps is far less important, and it

opens the door to using HTMl5. Tablet

applications will likely be used by SOS's

workforce, and their needs are likely

going to be centered more directly on

Web-based applications. Says Daniels,

“When we are ready to take the next

step and begin adding HTMl5-based

tablet apps, we already know that Ve-

rivo will be there to provide the MEAP

support we'll need. Eventually we'll

also look at building additional smart-

phone applications that will probably

end up as hybrid HTMl5 plus native

mobile apps. Verivo will be there for

that as well.”

As the application is discovered SOS

has seen its use grow exponentially. So

far the ability of the app to scale on

the back end to support those users

has been a non-issue. Daniel does say

that even with hundreds of thousands

of downloads there is much deploy-

ment left to deliver on - when mem-

berships and total users push into the

seven figure range as they do with

International SOS, making sure that all

users find the application sooner than

later is an exercise SOS is now pushing.

Nevertheless, Daniel says that, “the

The new application, simply called

Membership App, is shown running

on each platform on page 23. Aside

from a few minor mobile operating

system-specific issues, it is clearly the

same application - and the same look,

feel and functionality - running on all

three mobile devices.

Daniel points out that through the

use of Verivo’s platform, “develop-

ment proved quick and efficient. We

did make use of Verivo’s professional

services team - but that was our choice

as we needed to have the application

out the door in November. From start

to finish, from our initial search for the

right mobile development platform, to

our formal engagement with Verivo, to

a finished mobile app whose simplicity

of operation masks a complex piece

of software, that was deployed across

three distinct mobile platforms was ap-

proximately a seven month project.”

Daniel adds, “We made our CEO

happy and met our deadlines, but most

significantly we met them without hav-

ing to cut a single corner - Verivo’s MEAP

took all the risks out of a development

process that would otherwise have prov-

en a significant gamble for us.”

next steps“International SOS developed the

Membership App specifically for the

smartphone environment. The reason

we focused religiously on the smart-

phone is something that is often for-

gotten in the great rush to build mo-

bile applications - the second word in

smartphone is…phone!” says Daniel.

“The ability to make a call still remains

the number one most effective means

for any of our end users, no matter

where they are, to reach a safety net

- our operators, who are both local to

MEAP10 | Mobile enterprise jAnuAry/fEbruAry 2012 MobileEnterpriseMag.com

International SOS — Mobility Saves Lives!

MEAP12 | Mobile enterprise january/february 2012 MobileenterpriseMag.com

Says Stager, “We knew we needed

to significantly reduce the entire sales

cycle. The only way to do so was to

put all the information the Eaton field

teams require at their fingertips at the

immediate point of contact for any sales

opportunity - no matter how complex or

involved that information might be. The

goal was to reduce the sales cycle from

what had been ‘days and sometimes

weeks’ to, ideally, the day of initial en-

gagement with a customer or prospect.”

It was clear to Stager that the com-

pany had to take a major mobile leap

and needed to completely automate its

entire field sales process for its more than

400 sales representatives and network of

distributors and channel partners. From

his position - which bridges between and

encompasses the viewpoints of both the

business and technology sides of Eaton’s

industrial sector teams - Stager put to-

gether an initial early game plan in mid-

2010 to tackle the problem.

The basic parameters that needed

to be met are as follows: the mobile

application had to be able to deliver the

entire Eaton collection of catalogs and

manuals; it had to allow easy access to

Industrial manufacturer Eaton

Corporation had an interest-

ing problem. The company

produces state of the art indus-

trial equipment, but also has an exten-

sive overall product line that includes

countless products that have been

around for many years.

For as long as anyone can remem-

ber Eaton’s distributors and field sales

representatives have been using exten-

sive collections of printed manuals that

they’ve lugged around in the trunks of

their cars forever. In addition to carry-

ing around printed manuals, the typical

sales process included taking extensive

notes, then heading back to the office

to carry out typically extensive data en-

try into Eaton’s back end systems. From

the time an Eaton field representative

made initial contact with either an exist-

ing customer or a prospect, many days

would then elapse before the rep would

be ready to reconnect with a proposal

for a deal or to actually close a sale.

Eaton’s competitors are in the same

boat, and in 2010 Eaton realized that

there were two possible roads to its

field sales future: either Eaton could

take a strategic leap to gain a strong

competitive advantage, or it could let

a competitor do so instead. Eric Stager,

Program Manager, Web and Mobile,

Industrial Sector for Eaton, knew the

answer to which road Eaton needed to

take - it was, in fact, a no-brainer.

all of those materials in a clean and visu-

ally strong manner; it needed to ensure

that all information on over 200,000

hydraulic products - especially pricing

information - was entirely up to date;

it needed to allow sales reps to craft

proposals and notes and to capture

all required data for simple back end

download at the point of sales contact;

it needed to allow easy order entry;

and the app had to work under a true

anytime, anywhere set of conditions.

Uninterrupted anywhere, anytime

access is critical. The field reps typically

operate in environments with unstable

and unreliable 3G services and little

or no WIFi access, meaning that the

ability to transparently work offline

would be essential to the design of

the mobile app. A field rep needed to

have access to the entire working app

at every point in the sales process, from

initial contact, through all discussions,

to the end of a meeting, and needed

to be able to capture all data whether

wirelessly connected or not.

With these initial parameters in mind,

Stager and his team pulled together an

initial prototype for a mobile app, run-

ning on an iPad, and targeted showing

this prototype at the company’s Fall 2010

Eaton Distributor Meeting (EDM) event

in September 2010 - a large scale affair

with large numbers of participants. Stag-

er recalls, “There were over a thousand

global Eaton channel partners and repre-

sentatives and our simple and relatively

crude mobile prototype captured their

If you don’t know it’s an iPad you are looking at you would easily be fooled into thinking that PowerSource is a substantial laptop application.

eaton's PowerSource — Taking iPads into the fieldEATon FIGUrED ITS FIElD SAlES TEAMS WoUlD PrEFEr IPADS To lUGGInG

30 pounds of manuals around. It was rIght. • By tony rizzo

Building a Major MoBile app?

MobileenterpriseMag.com january/february 2012 Mobile enterprise | MEAP13

imaginations entirely. We received over-

whelming ‘Voice of Customer’ feedback

at the event from a variety of channels -

one-on-one discussions, surveys, and col-

laborative workshops - demanding that

Eaton make the app an urgent priority.”

Stager continues, “The Eaton

leadership team saw this feedback in

person, and the idea sold itself - with

overwhelming user demand, and our

management team instantly coming on

board and adding their own demands

for delivery as well as the necessary fi-

nancial resources, we suddenly found

ourselves in full production mode - with

the only question remaining to be an-

swered being: how the heck were we

actually going to do this?”

A SubStAntiAl Mobile AppThe project quickly grew into a signifi-

cant effort. Stager counts 10 external

partners - including user design teams,

an external testing team, a validation

and QoS team, a team to digitize its en-

tire catalog base and other print-based

collateral, a database team, and an inter-

nal Eaton team of 40 coming together to

deliver the mobile app, which eventually

became known as PowerSource. At this

point in time Stager’s rapidly growing

team knew it also needed to bring in a

major MEAP vendor.

The mobile app, in Eaton’s case, was

defined not by an immediate need for

cross mobile platform development or

the need to write once and deploy to

many - a typical MEAP requirement (al-

though this is a key requirement for next

versions of PowerSource), but was rather

defined by a great deal of both back end

and user interface complexity. The ver-

sion of PowerSource that would repre-

sent its initial deployment was massive

in scope in terms of its mobile ambitions,

and the Eaton team knew it was going

to initially be an iPad app that needed to

take full advantage of iPad’s capabilities.

Stager says that Eaton did a deep

dive with four MEAP vendors and ulti-

mately chose Antenna Software and its

platform due to its level of maturity in

the space, its ability to initially deliver

on iPad and be able to deploy easily to

other versions when user demand dic-

tates that need in the future, the ability

to effectively translate the defined user

interface (a key component of the app

for Eaton), the ability to help Eaton de-

ploy the app’s enormous store of data

in the cloud, and for its professional

services team, which demonstrated it

could deliver a complex mobile app

within an aggressive timeline.

Jim Somers, CMo at Antenna, notes,

"When Eaton first asked us to look at

their mobile app idea it was instantly

clear to us that professional services

would play a significant role because

what they were attempting to do with

PowerSource is ground-breaking - and

candidly pushed the envelope of what

is truly possible with the technology.

The amount of product data and up-

dates - including interactive 3-D prod-

uct demos - being pushed from the

cloud to the device was unprecedented.

> PowerSource puts a great deal of application power in the hands of eaton’s field sales teams and distributors.

< Sophisticated video capabilities, among many other features, deliver a powerful competitive edge directly at the point of customer contact.

The app takes advantage of the

iPad’s mobile strengths - easy portability,

portrait and landscape viewing modes,

and multi-pane touch navigation. In par-

ticular, user adoption - a specific goal

for Stager and his team, is not an issue.

Both Apple’s and the iPad’s popularity

and cachet ensure user adoption. “What

would you rather have,” asks Stager,

“thirty pounds of catalogs in your trunk

or a cool iPad 2 running PowerSource?”

next StepSFrom concept to completed mobile proj-

ect, PowerSource required just a little

over a year to spec out, design, build,

test and deploy. Antenna’s development

resources were critical to PowerSource

launching under such a timeframe. A

next step for Eaton - which has a sub-

stantial IT team in-house - is to start

learning the ropes of mobile applica-

tion development. Stager believes that

“this goal is clearly a long term project.

It won’t happen overnight by any stretch

of the imagination. But it will happen

over the course of the next 24 months.”

As with any project that meets its

goals and demonstrates a clear strate-

gic advantage, not only is the hydrau-

lics division of Eaton already looking

ahead to its next mobile applications,

but other major divisions of Eaton have

also taken notice of PowerSource’s suc-

cess and are lining up their own mo-

bile strategies. Mobile development

will eventually become a core Eaton IT

competency. But as Stager also points

out, “whether it is Antenna or anoth-

er MEAP partner down the road, the

MEAP will continue to play a key and

central role in all of our mobile devel-

opment efforts. It is the key mobile tool

for keeping the odds of mobile app

success squarely in our favor.” //

and that team’s ability to effectively de-

liver the app as specified by both back

end and user interface requirements

defined outside of Antenna itself, were

critical to Eaton’s ability to deliver the

app on a timely basis.”

Says Stager, “If you didn’t know

you were looking at an iPad screen you

would easily be fooled into thinking this

was a substantial desktop application

- and that, in a nutshell, was the real

challenge for us - because ultimately we

and our partners have in fact developed

a substantial and strategic application

that is inherently mobile. Its mobility is

what provides the strategic and com-

petitive advantage.” That the app was

completed in a year is remarkable.

PowerSource was formally launched

in november 2011. Incidental to Pow-

erSource’s creation, it also turns out

that PowerSource is also one of the

first to be included in Apple’s new Vol-

ume Purchasing Program (VPP) for B2B

apps. PowerSource delivers 3-D parts

modeling, promotional and training

videos, pricing configurations, tech-

nical specifications, competitor cross

references, and much more. All of this is

handled through a set of sophisticated

user interfaces, each designed to serve

a particular type of data requirement.

They had an aggressive vision and very

aggressive timeline for completion, and

mobile experts were required to make

that vision a reality.”

When PowerSource is deployed to a

user, there is a data store of over 6 GB

of data that is also downloaded with

the application. Every week Antenna’s

server pushes gigabytes of updates to

every user of PowerSource over the air

- a critical piece of the app. As Stager

puts it, “Antenna demonstrated to us a

maturity that other MEAP vendors lack

relative to our ability to deliver both

a complex mobile app and the huge

amount of data that is part and parcel

of the mobile app.”

Somers adds, “Antenna’s ability to

run Eaton’s app in our cloud is vital to

the success of the Eaton deployment

because Eaton doesn’t have to worry

about standing up and maintaining the

mobile operating environment. rather

than worrying about these infrastruc-

ture issues Eaton can focus instead on

what is strategic to their business.”

With user interface specifications

and database and back end connectiv-

ity requirements in hand as developed

through Eaton’s other vendor partner-

ships for the project, Antenna then pro-

ceeded to write the entire application

for Eaton. Says Stager, “Antenna’s ability

to make the necessary mobile app de-

velopment resources available to Eaton,

MEAP14 | Mobile enterprise january/february 2012 MobileenterpriseMag.com

eaton's PowerSource — Taking iPads into the field

The MEAP is the key mobile tool for keeping the odds of mobile app success at Eaton squarely in our favor.

>> eric Stager, Program Manager, Web and Mobile, Industrial Sector for eaton

Building a Major MoBile app?

MEAP16 | Mobile enterprise january/february 2012 MobileenterpriseMag.com

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Building a Major MoBile app?