Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Gartner on Appforge

This blog article is from Nick Jones and Michael King at Gartner:

http://blog.gartner.com/blog/comminn.php?itemid=2147

Gartner's advice - "...develop a contingency plan for what you'll do if AppForge ceases to be viable, and be prepared to activate that plan some time in the next three months."

MobileDataforce is here to help with contingency plans.

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Monday, April 16, 2007

Ruggedized Digital Cameras With Integrated Windows CE



Two Technologies has an interesting product strategy with their Jett-Eye handheld computer. They have in effect created a ruggedized digital camera in the form of a handheld computer. Their product marketing emphasizes the camera features as its most distinctive component.

Take digital color pictures in the field. Capture data on the go. Seamlessly connect with the office. Simultaneously increase field service productivity, improve customer service, and turbo charge your profits—all while improving your customer relationships. This complex scenario is now made simple with the JETT•eye. It was designed to make all of this possible at an affordable price point.

Rugged True-Camera-System- 5.17 MP color CMOS Sensor (4MP processed)
• Camera System scans bar codes and processes digital images with autofocus and illumination

One no longer must settle for a 1.3 megapixel camera in a handheld PDA.

We at MobileDataforce get requirements weekly from companies asking for digital image integration within their mobile data collection applications. Projects involving asset management, conditional assessments, inspections, work orders, quality assurance and law enforcement and compliance often require as must data collection as possible. High resolution cameras just enhance this capability.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Appforge Strategy vs Mobile Software Platform

Appforge provided software developers with pre-built code scripts, code libraries, and developer tools as opposed to MobileDataforce's PointSync Mobility Platform which is a "mobile software platform" for designing, developing and deploying data-centric mobile applications. What is the difference? The PointSync Mobility Platform comes with the following:

  • Graphical development environment for designing and configuring mobile applications
  • Embedded mobile databases
  • Embedded synchronization database server
  • Embedded synchronization technology
  • Database integration manager
  • Deployment manager
  • User manager
  • Application manager
With the PointSync Mobility Platform, you do not need additional third-party mobile databases, third-party development environments, third-party integration tools, third-party synchronization tools. All of these are included in the software platform.

I recognize that some Appforge developers prefer programming mobile solutions from scratch, but many companies simply want to get a powerful, proven mobile solution running in the field as fast as they can. So if getting a powerful, proven mobile application deployed in the field is your priority, I would encourage you to consider using an existing mobile software platform.

Here are a few additional articles that further discuss mobile software platforms:

http://www.mobiledataforce.com/ceoblog/2007/01/mobile-platforms-for-enterprise.html

http://www.mobiledataforce.com/ceoblog/2006/11/mobile-software-platform-thoughts.html

http://www.mobiledataforce.com/ceoblog/2006/11/managing-mobile-software-deployments.html

http://www.mobiledataforce.com/ceoblog/2006/10/mobile-software-platforms-and.html

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