Good, Bad or Ugly its been one heck of a year for myself and EnterpriseAdoption! Many of you might compare this to you mature blog or enterprise’s site but for one year, from scratch, in a very niche topic Im very proud and keeping this open will make sure I beat it in 2014. Please note. This is post is 10 days premature so things will change. 1/16 1/26/2013 Creation of my silly blog with zero content. Was it for traffic? ads? Nope. Just wanted to learn the absolutely latest about Enterprise Mobile Apps and post some silly mobility jokes. 9/12/2013 Named in Biz Tech’s Top 50 Must read IT Blogs 11/15/2013  Most Pageviews in 1 Day 258 12/12/2013 Record for Total BackLinks 1,472 3/25/2013  2 Months after site started, the first expert requests can in for me Some Top Keywords – How you found me: mobile app expert MEAP comparison whatsapp enterprise mobile enterprise expert enterprise mobility awards Traffic Sources – Where you found me: Organic Keywords followed by Twitter. Total Budget of Advertising and Adwords: $0.00! My Favorite IT Rockstar Interview: Irina Blok – Creator of Android Logo (Sorry, fellow rockstars, but Im a pretty big Google fan boy and have even talked about get Android robot tattooed on me) Your Favorite IT Rockstar Interview: CIO of Sun International (Please note, this was an early interview so had longer to collect hits – dont take this one too seriously) Most visits from: California (this blows my mind beating NJ, NY and FL) Device’s you visited from: Desktop, mobile then tablet.  (that’s awkward for an app blog) Top Browser: Explorer (even MORE awkward. This enterprise computer standard beat out: Chrome + Android + iOS combined ) I cant thank you readers enough! Please keep challenging me with hard-to-get IT Rockstar interviews and amazing enterprise app questions. Lets learn best enterprise app practices from each other and have some fun! -Daniel DiMassa [@TheDiMassa] [Google+] [Adoption Forumla] Mobile App Expert | Nicknamed: Enterprise Mobile App Bad...

I’ve have been getting asked more and more “What is a Mobile Center of Excellence? Do I need one?” and “What does COE stand for?“     So today is the crash course on everything COE aka mobile center of excellence or mobility center of excellence. Who better to ask then Jeff Wolfers an IT Executive who deals with mobile center of excellences world wide and is based across the pond in the UK. Thanks for taking some time out of your schedule Jeff, lets dive right in to learn about these mysterious internal mobile COEs. 1) What are the goals of a mobile center of excellence? The goal is simple…  to develop new and unique products and services within our marketplace.  Current focus is the mobile space, and cross platform as well, but Android is the leading platform in our market. 2) What skills sets make up the best mobile center of excellence? We’ve developed an interdisciplinary team of designers, technologists, marketing, operations and financial people. People come in and out depending on the project, and we bring fresh people in once in a while, but the methodology is unique so some experience with the group helps. Lateral thinking is the most important skill! 3) Optimal number of people in a mobile center of excellence? (I always say if 2 pizzas cant feed everyone your group is too big, ha) I think teams of 3-5 are best. I always say, “keep it as small as possible for as long as possible.” 4) What advice would you give to an enterprise starting their first mobile center of excellence? Start small. Achievability is key. No need to boil the ocean. Build in stages, build on success, and learn from the failings. Kaisen is critical as a process model. Keep track of lessons learned. 5) How do you prioritize request for mobile? Of all the different business units. (they must be like baby birds chirping for apps) Ideas tend to sort themselves out. Some are ready to move, some need more thought work, some evaporate when the tough questions start. We rarely have huge issues re prioritization, although when we do the size of the opportunity generally...

Starting 2014 off with a bang, one of our biggest IT Rockstar Interviews yet. Dealing with an ongoing joke that enterprises think UX (User Experience) is a dirty and expensive word. But in today’s movement of Consumerization of IT, there is no more option of bad design and cluttered apps as employees will drift out of the internal app markets looking for non-approved solutions. So we rounded up: Ultan O’Broin (@usableapps), Director, Oracle Applications User Experience, has worked in Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Cloud Applications development in the U.S. and EMEA since 1996. Before that he was a localization manager with Microsoft. A passionate evangelist for applications user experience, he communicates proven enterprise usability best practices to the Oracle applications development community, customers, and partners worldwide. Globally, if he could end the curse of crapplications in enterprises everywhere, he’d retire happy. Learn more at Oracle’s Usable Apps Blog and Usable Apps Website.   Cassie McDaniel (@cassiemc), Lead UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) designer at Mozilla’s Webmaker Cassie has a long track record of innovative designs, as you can see first hand on her blog. For her latest work and more info on Mozilla’s WebMaker check out their site here.     1) If a non-designer tech person sits down, clean slate, to make an enterprise app – what is the first piece of advice you would give them?  [Ultan] First, find a real end user. Not the IT Department if it’s a back office application you’re developing and not the Marketing Department if it’s a public-facing website. Those groups are valid stakeholders but probably not real end users. A real user doing real tasks in a real environment is the essence of what user experience is about. Find out users’ goals, tasks, expertise, their pain points, and their expertise. Watch them as they use tools and ask, “tell me more about that”. Understanding context of use is critical so understand users’ working environments, what tools they use and why, and who they interact with. Then, start coming up with solutions. Keep users at the center of the process and iterate designs, prototypes with them and testing with them on the final app too.   [Cassie] Ask...

Gabe Weiss, Interactive Marketing Technologies, Mitsubishi Electric Heating & Cooling InnoviMobile’s Dan DiMassa interviews Gabe Weiss from Mitsubishi Heating & Cooling about enterprise mobile strategy and emerging technology. Dan: I consider you a mobility influencer. Can you talk about your favorite tech innovation/mobile enterprise strategy you implemented? Gabe: Thank you, I appreciate that. The creation of the meSync Program with the approach to infuse it with the contractors is working well but if I chose a favorite innovation, it would be augmented reality (AR). Using AR tech to answer customer concerns, educating them, and providing a means for our contractors to stand apart from the competition is very rewarding. Then, taking feedback from the field personnel, I have worked with the AR development team at metaio (follow on twitter: @metaioUS) to continuously push the capabilities of how I can use AR while developing new systems to utilize their advancements for the benefit of the company. These are very exciting times as we are moving into yet another phase of the tech deployment. Dan: Bringing your organization mobile, what was hardest part? Gabe: The hardest part of going mobile has been continued evolution. By that I mean getting interest for the program by management was easy. Testing, modifications and rollout went smoothly enough (a few changes and redevelopments along the way). But keeping interest in the program and having the users continue to push themselves on refining the way they work to be more productive within the mobile space is a challenge. The use of new technologies, new apps to keep the sales process refinements happening are key elements to the meSync Program’s continued success. Dan: What is your best hint when it comes to mobile enterprise strategy? Gabe: As with any strategy development mobile considerations need to include the end user. Use cases can vary from the overall program needs to the individual apps and their requirements. But one thing to keep in mind is that the program lead is the expert at how the program needs to be developed (how to create an app, distribution platforms, device types, etc.) but the end-users are typically the experts in the business needs for the apps. Talk to them and make them a part of...