By Peter Price

The mobile enterprise is here, but the tools to implement it are virtually useless. Despite claims to the contrary, the path between enterprise data and the handheld is littered with complexity, programmers, time, expense and frustration. The industry is desperate for a simple solution.

Analysts are proclaiming that the mobile enterprise is finally taking off, but getting my data in my way on my handheld in my lifetime is a process that still makes IT and business unit managers shudder -- this despite current claims by middleware vendors to the contrary.

What in fact is still lacking, is a simple, nearly point-and-click method to provide mobile workers and executives immediate access to just the data they need -- from wherever it resides, on whatever mobile handheld device they happen to carry -- without mounting an enterprise software development project of classical proportions.

The problem
The truth is that any company that wishes to "mobilize the workplace" first has to mobilize squads of programmers from its internal IT department or favorite service bureau, and then be prepared for a protracted, costly and, in the end, unsatisfying implementation that is obsolete before it is deployed. Until this problem is solved, the mobilized workforce is a myth.

The problem results from the profound mismatch between the conception of enterprise software systems, and the specific, in-the-moment needs of a mobile worker armed only with a BlackBerry or other handheld device.

Mobile workers don't need a sales force automation system or an ERP system shoehorned into the palm of their hand. What they really need is just the data to do the next task or make the next decision they are faced with.

It's all about the user, and the task at hand. It's about having it "my" way.

The difficulty is making this happen.

If your goal or requirement is the absolute minimum in marginal software cost to mobilize a worker, currently your only solution is to attempt to customize a mobile add-on from the original software vendor, and force fit it to your needs. This is what we'd call "Having it their way."

By contrast, if you desire to have pixel-level control of the worker's handheld, and an application custom-tailored to his or her workflow and data needs, you today face a development effort of major proportions. You are essentially re-conceptualizing and re-implementing an enterprise-class application for a different display device.

The folly, notwithstanding, of doing this in an era when specific handheld devices -- each of which takes custom code -- have a half-life of about six months, and Internet-time business processes become obsolete before such software is even beta-tested, is that only a comparatively few corporations can justify the substantial time and expense.

One approach which works far better in theory than in practice is to attempt to use one of several middleware toolkits that purport to map enterprise data to generic handheld devices.

These invariably turn out to require a custom software development effort anyway, in spite of the fact that the vendors offer ready-made templates, because your application is widely different from the vendor's demos.

The templates are almost never useful, so you have to pay the vendor to hack them. And when you are done, you have invested dearly in a custom application, and you are still faced with the moving target problem.

A new approach
Today's world is all about delivering solutions tailored or personalized to the user. You've already got applications and data within your organization. Let's just personalize them not only to the device, but to the user, and to the user's immediate needs from moment to moment.

The needs of a stocking clerk on the floor at a supermarket carrying a Windows Mobile device are different than those of his boss visiting the regional office carrying a BlackBerry, even though the back-end data and systems are the same.

And let's do all of this without programming, without calling in the service bureau, without hacking applications for months on end.

The right approach is to take advantage of the new software-as-a-service paradigm and create a lightweight yet powerful service to dynamically manage interactions with devices, with users and with business applications.

A Web-accessible service would take responsibility for optimizing the presentation of information via a thin client on a mobile device, depending upon the parameters of that specific device. It would also act as a proxy for the user to enable transactions to occur asynchronously and would forge an end-to-end interface between existing enterprise applications and the user's device.

The service could then provide a browser-based environment for non-programmers to set up the linkages between a user and enterprise data through a simple, wizard-type Web interface.

This is the right model to mobilize the workforce, a modern Web service that provides speed and utter simplicity in setup, speed in execution, de minimis marginal costs, total device independence, dynamic device adaptation, personalized delivery of data, task-oriented interfaces, optimization of screen real-estate, immediacy and relevance.

All of this could be delivered as a platform that makes it possible for the users of the data -- as opposed to the IT departments and service bureaus -- to set up the connection to their data, their way, on their device and within hours -- not months or years. This is the paradigm for the mobile era, and takes us from myth to reality.

Peter Price is president/CEO of Webalo Inc., a Los Angeles-based mobile enterprise technology firm. Reach him at