The World’s Foremost Mobile Application Management Company

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A comprehensive Mobile Application Management solution needs to deliver, secure, and enable applications across any mobile device platform or form factor without modifying the original application.

This blog has an ambitious title, but I think it is accurate. Let me explain why. The recent definition of Mobile Application Management (MAM) focuses on delivering and securing native apps on mobile devices. These features typically include app wrapping and app distribution. While that’s as extensive as many smart device operation systems allow, Wavelink has a far more comprehensive and compelling feature set.

For more than 20 years, Wavelink has developed products and technologies that have enabled companies to deliver their operational applications to the ever-evolving set of mobile devices that are optimally designed for the task at hand. Let me give an example.

For high transaction processes like picking or sorting in a supply chain logistics operations, companies have host-based applications that need to be displayed on a variety of mobile devices. They do not want to have to add custom logic to the application to handle the different form factors or device drivers needed to access peripherals such as bar code scanners, radios, or printers. This is the market where Wavelink application management solutions exist. The solutions are built for telnet based applications, web applications, and native console applications executing on the server. They take these applications and expose them on any mobile device taking into account form factors, driver integration, security, session persistence, latency, unstable wireless networks, and a variety of others issues the application developer doesn’t want to know about and certainty doesn’t want to handle differently for each device. Wavelink solutions are designed to handle these problems without modifying the original application. This enabling of applications across the mobile devices is unique to the MAM solution Wavelink provides.

In summary, a comprehensive Mobile Application Management solution needs to deliver, secure, and enable applications across any mobile device platform or form factor without modifying the original application. This is why Wavelink is the world’s foremost Mobile Application Management Company.

BYOD and Consumerization: The Good News for Support

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A very interesting little article on ReadWriteWeb.com just caught my eye and got me thinking. You can read the article here. It talks about the poor state of support that people receive from the consumer, cloud and web services that we all increasingly rely upon. Examples of Facebook and Gmail are called out, and the author describes his struggles to get any reasonable response or support on a Gmail deactivated account issue. It’s a good point, well made, and worth some thought from those of us in the IT support / help desk / service desk / ITSM world. I think it calls out a very important point that many have missed in the recent excitement over all things BYOD.

Firstly, to be clear, I’m a big supporter of all things BYOD and Consumerization. I think that we are all increasingly bringing our own expectation of a consumer standard of IT experience into the workplace, both with the devices we buy and the applications we use. It’s not only the future, it’s also the present in many organisations already. And it soon will be the norm for almost all of us. I wrote some rather passionate words about this here. In summary, to me, consumerization is an “expectation” that the employee brings into work from their home life. We are increasingly seeing a shift not only to BYOD and the use of personal devices for work purposes, but also – lets call it - BYOS (Bring Your Own Services) where personal-use software and services come with the employee in preference to using the “corporate tools.” You know the one – “I’d rather use Gmail than my work mail.” “I’d rather use Prezi than Powerpoint.” “I’d rather use my iPad than this weird heavy black windows laptop from 5 years ago.” And the IT industry is wringing it’s hands and fretting over this sea change. Google “BYOD” and your screen is filled with Chicken Littles calling that the IT sky is falling in, and that the move to consumer devices and services is also a move away from getting value from corporate IT.

So far, so good. But here’s where I’m now starting to wonder if the future of corporate IT support might not be quite as shiny and “consumer” as we all think. As the article points out, the downside of the free/cloud/personal consumer apps and services is a very very low level of support service. It’s not surprising. Increasingly we are used to using “free” services to create, store and communicate, and as is occasionally pointed out, those service providers up there in the consumer cloud do make lots of money from their customers. But we – the happy freeloading consumer – are not “the customer.” The customer is the advertiser or marketer who is paying megabucks to those cloud services for your search history, your email keywords, your Facebook likes and interests. Remember: If it is FREE, then the business providing it is making money by selling you to their customer. You are not the customer, you are the product being “sold.”

Now, that’s kind of OK. I don’t mind. It’s a fair trade. I’m not trying to get all antsy about the selling of myself to the “the man,” and freedom and liberty. It’s a deal I enter into to get that great email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on.

And it’s not just the free ones either. Ever tried getting personal support for your Evernote subscription? Your Dropbox subscription? Heck, even on your broadband? I have a horror story that would turn your stomach about the disdain and insignificance that public consumers receive from some broadband suppliers. Life is tough as a consumer. We don’t want to pay much, and so, if things don’t work, we are stuck.

But back to consumerisation and BYOD and BYOS. We may expect a consumer standard working experience, but we demand a corporate standard of support experience when things dont work. People may mock their internal IT support team struggling to cope with an influx of products and services from “out there,”　but when they contact IT Support they always get: A reference number, probably an email, usually a human voice, sometimes a visit, sometimes remote control, often advice and guidance. And in the corporate space, if they don’t get that, they kick and scream because IT are not doing their job.

You see, the internal IT support may not know everything, they may struggle sometimes, they may drop the ball sometimes, but they remain very focused above all else on that one important point: Keeping the employee or enduser working and productive. And that is the trick of the tale in consumerisation. 　Although it brings great new technology and ability to the business, the business will absolutely refuse to accept a woeful “consumer standard” of support. They expect – need – a corporate/private/personal “traditional” level of care and support.

And that is why the heroes and heroines in the help desk and the service desk should all be able to sleep the good sleep at night. Their jobs and futures are very secure. Yes, BYOD and consumerization brings new challenges, but, hey, we love a challenge right? More importantly, it brings even clearer value and recognition to the IT support role. They need you, they need your help, and that is not going to change, no matter how shiny their next new toy is.

Note: This blog was originally posted at HDIConnect. Reprinted with permission.

User-Oriented IT Conversation In Red Rock Country

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The LANDesk Management Suite and Security Suite release coming this summer was code named Balanced Rock. Here is a picture of our Product Management team and a few others standing under Balanced Rock in Arches National Park.

Sometimes we like to mix a little fun with our work at LANDesk. A few weeks a ago, our Product Management Team took their motor homes and camping trailers and headed to the red rock country of Moab for a few days. The goal was to plan out a future product releases that fit into our Secure User Management Solution.

What Does User-Oriented IT Mean to You?

During the planning session, we talked a lot about User-Oriented IT and the requirements this vision will drive in the next level of features in LANDesk’s Total User Management and Secure User Management Solutions. One exercise we went through asked the question of the team, “What does User-Oriented IT mean to you?” We mapped out different phrases and themes from this exercise and we got a pretty good idea of what Product Management thinks. I’d like to ask the same question of our Blog readers, “What does User-Oriented IT mean to you?” We’d really like you to be a part of this ongoing User-Oriented IT discussion.

Are Users More Tech-Savvy or Is Technology More User-Oriented?

Part of the conversation around User-Oriented IT within the industry is that the new generation of workers is more tech-savvy than those of past generations. That notion perplexes me a bit. After we returned from a hike to Corona Arch (made famous with World’s Largest Rope Swing on YouTube), I put the question out to our Product Management team “Are users more tech savvy or has technology become more user-oriented?”

There were heavy arguments on both sides of this conversation. Someone pointed out that young people seem to know how to pick up anything and get how it works. Another countered that the technology is getting to the point where anyone can pick up a device and get how it works.  I think it was our User Experience guy that said it was a convergence of both. Think of the Smartphones and tablets today, a child or an older person who doesn’t use computers can pick them up and easily get how to interact with the technology. Another point made was to take a look at how teenagers are often the power users and utilize so many different social apps in order to communicate. In fact, there seems to be a constant shift and evolution in what apps are popular. So I again invite you to comment, “Do you think the next generation of workers is more tech-savvy or is the technology is getting more user-oriented?”

Does User-Oriented IT Mean a Shift in Power or Balance?

Finally, some within the Product Management group thought that User-Oriented IT is an example of the pendulum swinging a little too far over to the user and that there are plenty of things IT does that don’t really impact the user directly. I was quick to point out that within our User-Oriented IT story that isn’t the case. We realize there is a balance between user choice and freedom with IT control. There is a balance of what IT does for the infrastructure and delivery of business critical projects and giving users an experience where they can trouble-shoot, solve, and request services they need. So I offer you the following questions: Does User-Oriented IT give you the impression that the user gets more of the power or that there is a balance? How do you see User-Oriented IT playing out in your organization?

In the end, our Product Management team did a lot of planning, made important decisions about new features and defined much of what will be coming within the next couple Secure User Management releases. However, the conversation continues and we still want your input, so please comment on the following three questions we were debating in the Red Rock canyons of Moab:

  1. What does User-Oriented IT mean to you?
  2. Are users more tech-savvy or is technology becoming more user-oriented?
  3. Do you think User-Oriented IT takes power away from IT or strikes a balance between the user and IT?

Just In Time

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User productivity is paramount to all of our businesses. While the platforms change, the OS’s are upgraded, applications morph, the constant is that we need to provide the user with the tools they need to be productive and efficient.

A while back, I was invited to visit with an IT department.  During the conversations it came out that they were in a very reactive mode and they also had a large set of projects that were in progress.  All of the projects discussed were given a Priority 1 status.  On top of all that, the C-level attendees discussed how to innovate the IT department.  Sound familiar?  In today’s economic state, IT departments are having to find ways to do more with less while BYOD, consumerization, and other trends can increase some of the challenges for IT.

While having the discussion I kept thinking about some of the experiences I had while working in support.  Everyone’s issue was the highest priority (at least to them).  Time is a precious resource and always in limited supply.  At times support is in a very reactive mode and firefighting is the name of the game. But we all know that this is not a sustainable model and that it ultimately leads to customer dissatisfaction.

During this time I was introduced to a model that described how to transition from reactive to proactive, then from proactive to trusted advisor.  The model discusses Just in time (JIT).  JIT is a concept that means we need information or changes much quicker to be efficient.   JIT knowledge management would indicate that knowledge-based articles are created within a few hours of the issue not a month later or 6 weeks later.  The whole point of JIT is productivity and efficiency.

With all of the changes and challenges, what constants are there for the IT department?  The one constant is the user.  User productivity is paramount to all of our businesses.  While the platforms change, the OS’s are upgraded, applications morph, the constant is that we need to provide the user with the tools they need to be productive and efficient.  User Oriented IT helps us keep an eye on the ball.  User productivity is paramount if IT is to become a business enabler and innovator.

As we work on the new features in the next LDMS release, we’ve put even more these thoughts and principles into our product.

Stay tuned. You’re going to love the results.

The Parable of the Bricklayer

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What kind of bricklayer are you? Are bricklayer building an impenetrable wall or are you helping build the business through user oriented IT?

What kind of bricklayer are you? Are bricklayer building an impenetrable wall or are you helping build the business through user oriented IT?

The user oriented approach to IT can be a difficult one to consider when your current world is focused on firefighting call queues and dealing with irate employees who are experiencing technology failures while being asked to cut costs at every turn.

It sounds like your Incident management is broken and you need a new tool to fix it right? Well that’s possible, but have you considered taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture from a user’s point of view.

Consider the parable of the bricklayer:

A man was walking to work when he passed a building site where there were a number of construction site workers. He was curious about what was planned for the site as it was in his neighborhood.  He asked the first worker what he was doing.

The first worker said, “I’m a brick layer so I’m taking bricks piling one on top of another and putting cement between them to hold them together. “ The worker went back to his task grumbling that he must get this finished before lunch and move on to the next task on his list.

Meanwhile the curious man still wasn’t sure what was going on so he asked a second bricklayer the same question and he answered “I’m putting up a wall. We are on a huge construction project and my job today is to build the outside wall before I go home.”

The man walked on and asked a third worker what he was doing. The third worker responded with pride in his voice, “We are just beginning to build a brand new wing for this school which is nurturing and educating the next generation to be the greatest thinkers and leaders for our nation. So I am helping build a great environment that will benefit all our futures.”

From the three site workers the man got three different perspectives, each saw his task in a different scenario.  One was focused on the immediate task in hand, the second saw he was contributing to something bigger although still only concerned about the immediate job in hand while the third was doing exactly the same job but he saw the bigger picture vision and future benefit beyond the daily need.

Your call queues might be high because there is a reoccurring incident that is really annoying your users, which really just needs problem management to get to the root cause in order to reduce your calls. You may actually be constantly firefighting because the rest of the business thinks your only concern is fixing technical failures not providing IT solutions to generate new revenues. As a result, they impose their IT solutions upon you to execute rather than consulting you.

You might have irate employees who don’t see why they should be phoning to tell you that the email server is down because they think you should know this already. They think rather than incident management what you really need is integration with Event management to help you know about these kind of outages so that your users don’t feel they have to tell you about them. Your costs may be high because you have a great Incident management system but when it comes to request management you have no integration to automatically deploy software requests so your man hour labor costs are disproportionately high through incessant manual upgrades.

Thinking beyond simple incident management or even service management to how your users see things will take you on your first steps to User Oriented IT as well as a way of inspiring your team to greater things. So the question is this: What kind of bricklayer are you? Are bricklayer building an impenetrable wall or are you helping build the business through user oriented IT?

Patch Tuesday

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Join us on Wednesday, May 15 as we discuss the patches that Microsoft will release tomorrow as part of the May Patch Tuesday.

Last week Microsoft announced 10 bulletins for May Patch Tuesday.  Among these should be a fix for Security Advisory 2847140 which is a major cyber security threat targeting IE 8.   Microsoft released a Fix IT for this vulnerability last week in an effort to help reduce risk of exposure to this threat.  The vulnerability could be used in what is referred to as a watering hole attack, in which an attacker would exploit a third-party site that a particular group would tend to frequent.  The hope being that any one of the intended group would visit the exploited site and if using IE 8 could be exploited in turn.   There is probably evidence that this vulnerability could already have been exploited in the wild as far back as March of this year.

Join us on Wednesday, May 15 as we discuss the patches that Microsoft will release tomorrow as part of the May Patch Tuesday.  We will also discuss third-party releases for Patch Tuesday as well as recap all bulletins released for the Shavlik Protect products since the April Patch Tuesday.  Sign up for this and other Shavlik product webinars here.

Please, Help Yourself?

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Service desks are on a mission to encourage their end users to help themselves. Instead of contacting the service desk, they are driving the usage of self-service with a view to freeing up some much needed resources and relieving the burden of every service desk’s bugbear—the dreaded password reset and account unlock. There have been many successful (and less successful) adoptions of self-service, with some service desks realizing benefits, whereas others have actually found that their call volumes have increased as end-users take to the telephones to vent their frustration at not being able to find the answer they were looking for.

The benefits and pitfalls of self-service are far too numerous to squeeze into this bite-sized blog, but luckily the Service Desk Institute (SDI) and LANDesk recently embarked on a research project to discover if end users were actually happy to help themselves. Do they feel empowered by solving their own IT issues? Are they rejoicing in the time savings that self-service technology can offer? Or are they reluctant or antagonistic, believing that the service desk is paid to do a job, and that job is to fix IT when it breaks? For the first time end users were asked their opinions, and the results were very revealing.

Without wanting to give too much away, the report found that 43 percent of end users prefer to use self-service in preference to contacting the service desk. This is an important result, and bodes well for service desks exploring the self-service route. Additionally, we found that for those who do not currently have access to self-service, 71 percent would be interested in using this facility in the future. It is clear then that the appetite from end users is there.

So, can we expect self-service to really take-off in the future? Very much so, but with one important caveat – self-service is not for everyone. There will be some sectors or organizations where self-service will never be a viable option (investment banks immediately spring to mind – when IT failures can cost millions in lost revenue, it would be foolish to expect end users to seek out a solution by themselves or log a call). The trick is to understand your user population , what they would like to see in a self-service tool, and what would make them use it. Our self-service report has shed some light on to the thoughts and feelings of the end-user population, and has hopefully prompted readers to think about the type of questions they might ask. It’s important to get this consultative process right – the future of your self-service adventure depends on it.

A full copy of Self Service – Is it serving its purpose? Can be found here: http://info.landesk.com/Q2EMEANorthLANDeskSDISelfServiceReportApril13_LP.html

Daniel Wood is the Head of Research & Publications, Service Desk Institute

Big Shifts in ITSM Land

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Last week, the UK Government sold its controlling stake in ITIL to Capita.

Why is that significant?

ITIL is the library of documents that IT organizations around the world refer to for the framework of recommended processes and activities to help an IT department operate in a “customer” and “service” centric fashion. It’s the set of books that you refer to in order to do IT Service Management. It is not definitive, it is not perfect, and no organization ever implements everything that is described. But we take what we need from it to make IT better.

It’s a big body of work, and it supports a massive global community of consultants, analysts, trainers, documenters, auditors, and vendors. Everyone likes to criticize it, but it’s the only good established and proven set of guidelines that we’ve got.

Strangely—and I’m speaking as a Brit—ITIL was authored originally from UK Government initiatives, and has to this point been perceived as ‘owned’ by the UK Government. It started in Public Sector and is bourne from process, procedure, and methodical working.  It’s a big slow dog with a whole ecosystem on its back. But it is referenced and followed worldwide. In Feburary 2013 alone, over 20,000 individuals set ITIL foundation exams worldwide.

Now Capita is a private company. They provide BPM and Support Service solutions to large corporations. They employ 52,000 people in the UK, Europe, South Africa and India. They are the type of organization that helps combine multiple local government operations into one, offer managed service solutions including outsourcing, and build big-scale integrated professional services solutions for massive business. They bid for government tenders to make big changes. At times I’m sure their name has been connected one with embarrassing IT/government project failure or another. I’m not certain, I’ve not checked but they are the type of business you’d hear mentioned in the computer press on that sort of story.

So why was it sold? To save government money and allow them to focus some resources elsewhere. Times are tough. It is undoubtedly a viable earner, and cost Capita £10M upfront with a further £9.4M for each of the next three years.

Does this matter. Will the sale affect you? Should you care?

Yes, you should.

ITIL processes to a small or large extent are increasingly online. Datacenters, cloud services, smartphone app, utilities billing system, broadband, media, and manufacturing enterprise and countless government services are online. They affect our lives all day every day. The organizations that provide your IT life increasingly use ITIL concepts. ITIL helps them improve their business and their products and services. Take ITIL away and of course the world keeps turning, but invest and enhance ITIL and everything benefits.

Who wins? I can’t be sure, but this is how I hope it pans out:

  • Capita. It’s their game to win now. If they execute with direction and focus like a private enterprise business should, they have the potential to push and grow the uptake of ITIL significantly. Success is greater growth, improvement, uptake. Like anything that comes out of public sector into the private one, there is often money to be made.
  • The ecosystem. Again, as long as Capita invest and promote ITIL more than has been done previously, it’s all good for those that do business based on the ongoing interest and uptake of ITIL.
  • The IT department and the ITIL practitioner. Suddenly ITIL becomes a more efficiently promoted and enhanced money-making engine, and all the money ultimately comes from their individual IT budgets.
  • The End User. They should benefit because hopefully more organizations will improve their IT service delivery so ultimately they become more productive.
  • The consumer and Joe Public. Let ITIL wither away and yes of course the world keeps turning, but invest and enhance ITIL and everything and everyone benefits.

Wow. That sounds really that good. But let’s take another more pessimistic look.

  • Capita get sit wrong. They turn an almost-open set of standards into locked down, expensive and hard to access. The UK government didn’t really do much, it relied on other bodies—and many of the businesses in the ecosystem—to push the success of ITIL. Capita see reduced incomes and end of life the whole project.
  • The ecosystem has enough. It gets hard to make profit and they look for new dogs. New frameworks and best practices arise all the time. A big shift could turn the whole ITSM industry into turmoil.
  • The IT Department. They just spent the last three years implementing ITIL Incident and Problem and Change Management processes. Now ITIL does ‘dark’ and everyone is talking about the next big thing. Clearly that silver bullet didn’t work.
  • The EndUser. “Huh? IT? you mean those guys on ‘the help desk’ and the ‘geeks’? We don’t use them anymore”.
  • At home. The world keeps turning. But just maybe it’s not quite as reliable and efficient and well managed and ultimately innovative as it could have been in the example above.

There are some reassuring signs, however that things are going in a positive direction. Capita has also purchased PRINCE2 from the UK Government. That’s another set of widely used guidelines and principles around Project Management. And they acquired the rather cool, innovative boutique ITIL simulation training specialists at G2G3. These guys know their stuff and think commercial, but for ITIL success.

The sale of ITIL may seem unimportant and very far away. I’m sure it’s not made the news in Dallas or Singapore. It’s not made much news in the UK. But just maybe we should keep our eyes on this story. It could affect everyone’s future.

Capita. The eyes of the ITSM world are on you. What are you going to do now?

Download the 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Client Management Tools

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The 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Client Management Tools is now available. Once again LANDesk finds itself as a leader among endpoint protection vendors. If you’d like to read the report, click here and learn why LANDesk was named as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Client Management Tools.

Read the report.

A Real Mobile Service Story

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Load Tray message on a copier

Five years ago I would have had to walked back to my desk, picked up my phone, dialed the number for the IT help desk. Then I’d have had to describe the issue, and hopefully the support guy on the end of the phone would have known exactly which printer I was talking about. Time to complete this task? About 5 minutes.

I had one of those clarity moments the other day. It’s a familiar story to anyone who works in and office environment with computers and printers. I was sitting at my desk looking at a big document that I’d been sent to review. I decided to review the document on a flight I was taking later in the day. (I like to review big documents on paper while I’m travelling), so I clicked Print and my computer told me the document was on the way to the printer.

I was then straight on my way to a meeting and I wanted to grab that printout as I went, so up I jumped and I walked the 50 feet to the shared printer that is used by those in the Product Management section of the LANDesk offices. I got there and discovered there was no printout waiting for me.

Being mildly IT literate, I didn’t panic, I looked at the printer and saw–not the dreaded ‘paper jam’ which always strikes terror (and a surreal mental picture) to anyone looking at a printer–but the east-to-fix “Out of Paper” message. Yes, even I can fix that.

The usual cupboard full of spare paper ready to be loaded was empty. No spare paper. I checked the floor, the shelves, and nearby desks. There was no paper to be found. My little print job was politely queued up waiting to be printed, at the front of the line, but the printer was standing there with arms folded, frowning and refusing to do anything until it got some paper.

Five years ago I would have had to walked back to my desk, picked up my phone, dialed the number for the IT help desk, then waited and waited, until someone answered. Then I’d have had to describe the issue, and hopefully the support guy on the end of the phone would have known exactly which printer I meant. Time to complete this task? About 5 minutes.

These days we live in a self-service world. We live in a consumerization, BYOD, social world where we expect to be productive all the time. If we can’t we expect to make ourselves productive first and call for help second. So that’s never going to happen any more because it doesn’t fit against my world.

Mind you, two weeks ago I would have walked back to my desk, opened my browser, clicked on the shortcut to take me to the Service Desk self service page, clicked on a shortcut to report a printer fault and filled in the details and clicked ok. That would take me about two minutes to complete that task.

But you know what would really actually have happened in both cases? In the real, selfish, busy, messy, human land? I’d have seen that the printer wasn’t printing, that it was out of paper, and I’d have just gone straight on to my next meeting. Isn’t that mean? It wasn’t urgent, I was in a rush for something else and I knew that eventually when the paper was put in, my printout would come out and wait for me.

So the people suffering are not me. It’s the other people needing to print more urgently, and the IT department that doesn’t know about the fault stopping people being productive. Think about how many other people with urgent print needs would have been impacted and made less productive because of my natural human behavior. I feel bad about that.

Anyway, I noticed a poster from our IT department stuck up on the wall next to the printer. Options on the poster included “Let us know that the printer needs more paper”, “Report a paper jam that you can’t fix”, “Report another printer error that you can’t fix”, and Show alternative printers near me.” Next to each option was a QR code. So I took out my phone, scanned the need more paper code, instantly got an OK message on my phone, and headed off to my meeting. Total time? Thirty seconds if you include reading and taking phone out of pocket. And I did that because it was easy and it didn’t need me to go back to my desk or to talk to anyone, or even to type anything. I pressed a virtual button.

And you know of course that an incident process was automatically created in our Service Desk went straight to the mobile device of the local IT/facilities guy who read the detail of the incident (location, printer, description of the incident – all stuff I didn’t have to type in). And by the time I came back round past the printer, there was a stack of new paper, the printer was fully loaded and my printout was waiting for me.

Now, I could talk about how LANDesk technology can automatically detect statuses and alerts from devices like printers and bring them into your Service Desk as event processes, which is all good IT service focused stuff and obviously is an important part of mature IT service management. But if you operate an IT model where you encourage self-sufficiency, then you would be encouraging employees to just insert more paper in when the printer runs out. That’s empowering and simple and reduces IT workload. Unless you run out of spare paper. But as the story shows, a physical real-world issue (lack of spare paper) caused an IT Incident (I Can’t Print), And I’m a customer of IT, an End-User, and that printer is an IT thing. And, actually, I don’t care whose ‘thing’ it is. I pressed print and expect printout.

The story I’m telling is the one about how we can now make it super super easy for an employee or any other person to interact with physical objects to communicate about those physical objects, mobile from anywhere. And not only mobile, but in the context of a physical device. People interact with Things the outcome is Process, and the outcome of Process is that other people interact with those Things, and People become Productive.

It’s very exciting. and you know the best bit? When that IT (or facilities) guy scooted past with a stack of spare paper, and loaded the printer, he took out his phone and scanned another code on the printer, and walked off. That was it. He’d scanned and it resolved the Incident. SLA was achieved, and business continued to be productive. All mobile, all process, all real. And I got my printed document which I ended up not reading on my flight because I wrote this blog article instead. :-)