Unlock the secrets of seamlessly integrating cutting-edge technology into legacy systems with insights from Jeff Brown of Lowry Solutions. Learn the crucial distinctions between Greenfield initiatives and projects that must harmonize with existing infrastructure. Jeff shares his expertise on conducting meticulous surveys, navigating technical debt, and making informed decisions on upgrades, ensuring mission-critical applications remain robust and reliable. Discover practical strategies on balancing innovation while respecting the intricate web of enterprise systems that businesses rely on.
Ready to bring innovation to life through Proof of Concepts (POCs)? Listen to the best practices for running successful POCs and pilot projects. Understand the importance of a solid backhaul infrastructure, setting clear success criteria, and crafting a plan for discontinuing less-than-successful trials. We also dive into the current landscape of unified endpoint management solutions, comparing the enterprise viability of Android versus iOS. Finally, we explore the emerging impact of AI on mobile enterprise technology. Don’t miss this episode packed with expert advice and actionable insights for anyone looking to modernize their tech strategy. https://www.bluefletch.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the
Bluefletch Enterprise and BuildAround it podcast.
Today I'm joined by Jeff Brownfrom Lowry Solutions.
Jeff is a senior sales engineerat Lowry.
He's doing a lot of actuallymaking pieces work at their
clients and with their clients,and today we're going to be
talking about installingapplications on existing
infrastructure, installing newtechnology on existing
(00:21):
infrastructure.
Jeff has a lot of experiencedoing this.
I've worked with him for, Ithink, almost 15 years now and I
know we've worked on a lot ofdifferent things.
But before we hop intoquestions and talk about this
topic, jeff, do you want to giveme a quick overview, maybe
background, of yourself, whatyou've worked on and what you do
at Lowry?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Sure, my name is Jeff Brown.
I'm with the Senior SalesEngineer at Lowry Solutions.
I've had the great privilege tobe involved in the wireless and
mobility spaces for about 20years now, started out my career
as a network engineer andapplication developer and was
able to work implementing someof the first 802.11b wireless
infrastructures in retailenvironments.
(01:00):
I had the great opportunity tosegue from the wireless space
into the mobile device space.
Once all the infrastructure wasin place, everybody wanted to
put their clients on there, sothat allowed me to watch the
evolution of the industry as westarted off with all the pocket
PC and Windows CE, windowsmobile platforms, an opportunity
to see the emergence of Androidas a very viable
(01:21):
enterprise-based operatingsystem, and I've had the great
privilege to be able toimplement systems based on
mobile devices and Androidoperating systems for a variety
of different customers over mycareer Awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
And you know, I guess , just to reframe the topic a
little bit, I think one of thethrough the background on this I
know we had a couple ofprojects recently with the Lowry
team.
So Bluefudge does singlesign-on security for mobile
devices and does someapplication development on
Android, and one of the things Inoticed is how smoothly Jeff
and his team were able to helpget new technology onto a
(01:57):
customer that already had alarge set of existing devices in
their facility.
So I wanted to talk throughsome of those topics, but I
think the first piece of thattopic that comes to mind is
actually thinking through orjust framing the difference
between Greenfield and I call it, existing tech, and maybe you
(02:17):
could talk a bit about yourexperiences, like how do you
think about Greenfieldtechnology versus new technology
?
What are the keydifferentiators for you?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, you know, everybody dreams of having a
greenfield opportunity wherethere's absolutely no existing
infrastructure in place andwhere you have an opportunity to
go in as a solution provider,as an engineer, survey the
landscape, get an understandingof what the environment's like
and design at least what youbelieve is going to be an ideal
system from the ground up right.
It gives you an opportunity topick the best of breed, the
newest technologies that areavailable, and when you have
everything, new problems areexpected and there tend to be a
lot more tolerance for the typesof issues that tend to come
along with the greenfieldimplementation.
(03:03):
When you have existingtechnology, there's always the
challenge of all the variablesthat are going to be in the
environment right.
In a greenfield environment, atthe very least you can specify
a homogenous environment whereyou have all the same devices,
or at least all the samegeneration of devices.
When you've got an existingenvironment, there's usually
some number of devices that havebeen deployed.
(03:25):
As the organization grew and asthe organization expanded their
use of mobile devices, andbecause those mobile devices
were probably started out asjust something along the lines
of an add-on, they weren'tnecessarily treated with the
seriousness that an enterpriseplatform ordinarily would be
treated with.
So with the pre-existingenvironment, it's really
important to do a very detailedand thorough survey of the
(03:49):
current landscape so that youcan understand which of the
platforms and environmentsyou're going to be able to pull
forward into your new world andwhich ones are unfortunately
going to have to be left behindbecause they just lack the
technical capabilities toimplement the solution that
you're looking for lack oftechnical capabilities to
implement the solution thatyou're looking for.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It's a good segue into my next topic, next
question, which is I call it thetechnical debt and experiences
around technical debt and theway I describe technical debt
and from the software side, it'syou know, you develop something
.
There's a bunch of code thatdoes things a certain way.
It may not be the ideal.
There was a guy who decided todo it a certain way and even on
the hardware side I've seenthings like where people will
you know a CIO will come in andbe like we're going to roll out
(04:30):
iOS devices and doesn't knowanything about actually managing
devices and as a engineer, youend up having to come in after
the person and clean up thatmess or deal with that technical
data, which most people referto as cleaning up technical debt
, whether it's infrastructure oron the software side.
For you, when you think aboutthe pragmatic approaches to
(04:51):
cleaning up technical debt, likewhat to actually touch versus
not touch are there any guidanceor guiding principles you use
with your team?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, I mean you have to understand where that
particular product or solutionis in its organizational
lifecycle.
You have to understand wherethat particular product or
solution is in itsorganizational lifecycle.
In some cases you may have alegacy application that no one
intends to replace because it'sbeen performing its function for
a long time, but it's missioncritical.
In instances like that, theremay be a case for leaving some
(05:21):
of that legacy technology inplace, with the understanding
that it necessarily has to beleft behind at some point so
that you can move forward intothe new generations.
I mean, that's one of the thingsa lot of people really don't
consider is what do I do withall this hardware?
You got to understand thatthese are expensive devices for
the most part, right?
The cost of a mobile device ismuch more expensive than a
(05:42):
typical desktop solution at thispoint, not to mention it's
something that would be lost alot more readily.
So you'd want to make sure thatit's definitely a worthwhile
investment in your environment.
So, yeah, there's always goingto be a demand to maintain that
legacy equipment the best thatyou can, but it cannot be a
limitation.
It has to be identified thatthese platforms cannot come
forward.
These are the platforms thatare viable to move into our new
(06:04):
infrastructure.
And then the last part of thatis what is the forward strategy,
so that we can continue tomaintain this environment as we
grow and change over time.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Do you mainly see technical debts?
I know Windows CE was a bigtechnical debt for a long time
for a lot of companies.
On the mobile side, I feel likethere's a lot of green screen
or legacy, like AS400.
Are there certain areas whereyou see more technical debt that
falls into that category?
You described where you need tobuild that plan and roadmap.
Sure.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The thing that I've noticed is it depends upon the
value of the business operationwhere the devices are.
So when you're dealing withvery cost-centric parts of the
business, especially in thesupply chain, there's always a
lot more reluctance to investheavily there because it's all
just cost of doing businessright.
Most of those kinds ofinnovations are driven by some
(06:57):
sort of efficiency options asopposed to driving new business.
So dealing with technical debtin a warehouse-y kind of
environment where you've alwayshad basically basic, simple
applications, perhaps just agreen screen with some sort of
ADC, either RFID reading orbarcode reading, those processes
don't change very much overtime.
(07:18):
But as you look at otherindustries retail in particular
where the mobile device is muchmore of a key component of their
strategy to drive sales anddrive revenue into the business,
there are a lot moreopportunities to justify
replacing those sorts ofinfrastructures because there is
a potential additional revenuestream that goes along with it.
(07:41):
So that's the main differencein environments as far as I can
see stream that goes along withit.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So that's the main difference in environments, as
far as I can see.
Yes, it's the employees thatare actually dealing with the
customers, make them asefficient as possible, which is
why retail has typically been aleader in that space, exactly On
the warehouse side.
Do you see that retail modelslowly, I guess, coming into the
warehouses where it's not justa green screen device, it's also
a green screen, it's training,it's communication, it's
(08:07):
multi-apps?
Do you see more and more ofthat with some of the clients
you work with?
Speaker 2 (08:12):
You know, it depends upon the size of the
organization themselves and whattheir ability is to do
innovation right.
If you're talking about a largeenterprise customer that has
their own internal IT shops,you're always going to see a lot
more innovation there becausethey have internal resources or
they can acquire the resourcesthat are needed to be able to
innovate along those lines right.
When you get down to the smallto mid-sized businesses that
(08:35):
don't have the resources eithercapital or internal technical
resources they're the ones thatare a lot more challenging just
because they literally don'thave the resources to innovate
and change.
Nor is there really a strongdriver because the business
hasn't changed a whole lot.
That being said, right,everyone's looking for ways to
make those green screen pickingopportunities more effective as
(09:03):
applications that do more of aproduct identification, where
not only are you getting adescription of the thing that
you're looking for but you alsosee a picture of the actual item
that you're looking for.
That can help a lot infacilitating complex pick
operations that you might havein some sort of a retail
distribution warehouse.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I think.
The other thing that made methink of when you were saying
that is, the actual types of endusers in those facilities are
probably different than retail.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Retail typically has a little bit longer employment
term than a lot of thewarehouses I've worked with and
their end users Absolutely Mostof the associates in my
experience in a warehouse orlogistics operation, they're
very much task oriented, wherethey're going to perform a
specific task for their entireshift.
(09:48):
In a retail environment, ifyou're not a cashier, if you're
a reseller, there's a lot morevariability in the roles that
they perform during the day,which is why it's a lot more
important for them to have adevice that can allow them to
accomplish those different roleswithout having to switch
devices right.
In a warehouse, you scanbarcodes all day long and you
have a barcode scanner that isdesigned to scan barcodes all
(10:09):
day long.
But in a retail environment,you're interacting with
customers, you're scanningproduct, you're looking up
information, you're using it asa voice communication device,
you're sending text messagesback and forth to other
associates in stores.
So the retail environment isdefinitely a lot more
complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So you touched on mobile devices, you touched on
software and some of the backendpieces.
What's your read on the stateof I'm going to call it
networking and Wi-Fiinfrastructure in facilities?
Do you feel like it has gotteninto the 21st century yet A lot
of the customers you work with,or is there still a mixed bag on
the infrastructure side fornetworking.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, it's kind of like it depends on when your
house was built, what kind ofwindows are put in it right.
There's a lot of costs that goesalong with wireless
infrastructure and when you lookat deploying wireless
infrastructure in largefacilities that there are a lot
of, that's a tremendous capitalcost and the cost of ripping it
out and replacing it is alsoextremely high.
(11:06):
So there's an incredibly mixedenvironment of infrastructures
that are capable of supportingthe new Wi-Fi 6 and all of the
newer wireless LAN technologythat has been built for high
density client environments.
There's still a lot ofinfrastructure out there that
was built for low density clientenvironments.
There's still a lot ofinfrastructure out there that
was built for low density clientenvironments and then we've had
(11:27):
to adapt them into higherdensity right and those are
always going to be challenges,especially when you're talking
about a noisy environment like awarehouse or a retail
environment where Wi-Fi isproblematic.
That's the great benefit ofgoing with a greenfield solution
, especially if you're goinginto an environment where you're
wanting to do telephony andvoice kinds of applications that
(11:48):
are really really sensitive tolatency and the customer
experience and the end userexperience in assuring that when
you do go into productionyou're going to have the kind of
success that you're looking forright.
The older the infrastructure is, just the more challenging it
is likely to be to get theperformance that you're looking
(12:09):
for.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
There's also the one thing I'm not sure you mentioned
it the backhaul pipe.
I've seen people that rolledout Wi-Fi 6 and still have like
a crappy 1.5 T1 on the back end.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Oh, I'm sure it's still slow.
I didn't even consider that.
You know, once upon a time allof our infrastructures were
local, and so if you did havesome sort of mobile device, most
likely it was doing a lot ofits communication applications
that were on servers that werehosted on the same local network
or most often even co-locatedin the same physical environment
(12:42):
.
But that's not the case anymore.
Everything is hosted somewhereelse, and the chain of
communication is so much morecomplex that not being able to
understand where things arebreaking when it does break
makes troubleshooting much, muchmore challenging.
So, yes, that's a big component.
You've got to consider yourbackhaul.
(13:02):
It's not just your local LANenvironment any longer, it's the
carrier, it's all the points inbetween, it's the kind of
infrastructure that, it's thehosting environment.
Yeah, those are all keyconsiderations.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
On that note of like thinking of putting new software
and I know one of the thingsyou and I have worked on a
couple of differentorganizations around pilots and
POCs Do you have any like hardand fast rules for here's like
the three things that Jeffrecommends If you're going to
POC you know a new piece ofhardware or software, make sure
you do it this way, like what'syour, what's your playbook or
(13:36):
runbook for that.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
You know, a lot of it involves semantics.
Right, In my world, a proof ofconcept and a pilot are two very
different things, but peopleuse those terms interchangeably
and I think that's a big mistakeand the way I differentiate the
two is.
A proof of concept is you havean idea for some technology
solution you think is going tohelp your business operation,
(13:57):
but you're not sure you know howto build it.
You know what it looks like andyou're going to go ahead and
build it and put it out therewith measured goals.
Right, I'm going to prove this.
Concept either works or it doesnot.
If the concept works, it may goto pilot.
A pilot is something that youhave decided is going to go into
(14:18):
production.
It is going to go intodeployment and this is the first
one of them.
That's what a pilotinstallation is.
So if your organization islooking to validate some new
technology or some new businessprocess, that should always be
handled with the proof ofconcept.
It should have very clearlydefined success criteria so that
(14:40):
you know if it's achieved thegoal that you set out to achieve
with, and it absolutely musthave a defined duration.
One of the biggest challengesfor organization are proof of
concepts that never go furtherthan a proof of concept.
And the next thing you know,you have seven or eight
different specialty solutionsthat are out there and the
organizations that spun them upare no longer around to support
(15:02):
them and they become zombies ofa sort.
They provide some function butthey're not going anywhere.
And proof of concepts ifthey're unsuccessful, they must
be ripped out, and that wayyou're prepared to go for the
next one.
Maybe there's going to beanother iteration, but that's a
separate proof of concept withdifferent measures of success
and a different timeline toachieve.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I love that articulation the zombie projects
, and I think it's it's.
It's so important to thinkthrough that difference between
a POC, a pilot.
A POC and I talk to people allthe time it has to have an end
date and you have to commit toturn it off.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
If it's a pilot, there has to be a day two plan.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Right, there has to be a day two plan before you go
to pilot, and proof of conceptnever has a day two plan.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Day two in your book.
I call it run, but can youarticulate how you think about
day two and what that looks like?
And you're thinkingoperationalization of a product
or technology.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, it's the ongoing care and feeding right.
Day one everyone is focused ongetting that feature
functionality out the door, upand running, and everybody knows
it's not going to be right thevery first time, right, and so,
before you go to day one, therehas to be a plan for day two in
place.
And the day two things are okay.
When it doesn't work asexpected, what are we going to
do tactically to address theissues that are affecting our
(16:22):
user right now?
And then, what are we going todo strategically to remove this
particular problem from ourapplication and make sure that
it doesn't recur anymore?
Right and so, yes, that is allyour operational concerns, but a
lot of people, I thinkoperational is commonly it's
built, we're going to run it asbuilt, but systems aren't like
(16:43):
that anymore.
There's not only the how are wegoing to run it, but how are we
going to enhance it and keep itgoing and what is the planned
lifecycle for this system?
On day two, I know that Iexpect this program to live for
two or three years.
I believe it may live five, andif those are the things that
are going to happen, how am Igoing to plan accordingly, right
?
Yeah, over the that are goingto happen.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
How am I going to plan accordingly Over the next
five years from your standpoint?
Just to go back to the POCpieces, how do you think about
cost justification?
I know one of the things a lotof clients we work with have a
heartburn around is I don't wantto POC something, spend a bunch
of money on it and then nothave it go to production, which
I think is a completely wrongattitude to have.
(17:22):
But how do you frame that forpeople?
How do you think about the costjustification of a POC that may
or may not actually?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
go to production.
All businesses have to continueinnovating and because the
mobile space is such aninnovative space, there are a
lot of opportunities for you tofind help in developing a proof
of concept, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Maybe another way to frame this is like how do you
convince the guide to say we'regoing to put money into this
even though we may turn it off?
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Fundamentally, I don't believe you can.
That's why I'm having a hardtime answering this question.
Fundamentally, I don't believeyou can.
Either they are willing toinvest what's required to do a
proof of concept successfullybecause they think it has value
as a business process right, weneed to try new things and see
if they work or not.
If that company isn't willingto innovate, I would say that
(18:22):
they're probably going to havesome struggles.
Otherwise, right, I mean, adesire to innovate in your
business has to be part of theDNA of that business.
So you have to be willing totake some sorts of risks, and
that's why it's important tohave a champion internally and
have those internal stakeholdersand make sure that your
business is aligned.
If the business is alignedbehind the concept of the proof
(18:44):
of concept, it's not a difficultthing to achieve.
But that's where it becomes.
It's an internal thing for thesponsor of the initiative.
Nobody's ever, no one was everable to sell me a project when I
was in a position to do thosethings.
It had to be something that weneeded to do or wanted to do, or
it wasn't going to happen atall.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, like that's a good point.
It makes me think of the.
When you're going and askingsomebody for something, the best
answer is yes, the second bestanswer is no, the worst answer
is maybe, maybe, yeah, for sure.
I feel like something that getsstuck where it's like we want
to innovate but we don't want tospend the money and have stuff
fail.
I think that's not going tohappen.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
It's spot on and a lot of those things.
I mean, they're reallyorganizationally dependent,
right no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Lowry has been leveraging Bluefletch for single
sign-on and some of the tools.
We have Android devices for acouple of different clients, but
are there certain areas whereyou're seeing clients outside of
what we do?
Are there certain other areasyou're seeing clients outside of
what we do?
Are there certain other areasyou're seeing clients go run
POCs and go test and try newthings out that you think
everybody should be puttingtheir hat in the ring and trying
(20:22):
different things out, whetherit's mobile devices or certain
areas of software communicationtools?
Is there anything that standsout to you as people should be
doing more innovation and POCing?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
people should be doing more innovation and POCing
.
I had the great opportunity towork with some customers many
years ago that were the firstones to sort of embrace the
enabling communications amongstyour associates inside of your
own building and using themobile devices to do that.
It's taking a while, but I haveseen more of the large
customers starting to embrace.
(20:54):
The best way I can describe itis the mobile device is no
longer a point solution but it'sbecome a general purpose tool,
kind of like a PC was.
And so, as they're realizing,hey, I can do more with this
mobile device.
I can enable them tocommunicate with customers, they
can communicate with oneanother, I can use them for task
allocations.
There's so many differentthings that can be done with a
(21:15):
mobile device.
As the infrastructures havematured and as the organizations
have matured, you're startingto see a lot more uptake of
those things, right?
You know, the whole idea ofcarrying around a mobile device
in a retail environment andtalking to customers and talking
to other associates was areally new idea, like 10 years
ago, I mean, no one was doingthat yet.
(21:37):
And all of the other componentsfrom the mobile device
platforms have become morecapable.
We've had major advances inwireless technologies that have
allowed us to put more clientsin the same space with higher
bandwidth requirements.
It's taken a while for all ofthese different technology
pieces to mature enough to bestable to see the organizations
(21:59):
willing to take a risk on theirbusiness, on them.
So I think we're definitelygoing to see a lot more of those
.
We've seen some of them in thegrocery environment.
We see a lot of it in softgoods as well.
So it's an evolutionary process, right, the early adopters got
out there a long time ago, andnow mobility and wireless is
(22:20):
mature enough that everyonerealizes it's an essential
business component.
And so everyone's coming to thetable, not just the rich
companies with lots of resourcesright, with lots of resources.
Right, yeah, and theecosystem's fleshed out a lot
better tool.
There's a lot better tools thatare suitable for different size
businesses.
Right, you don't have to runSAP to do your business.
(22:42):
There might be a smallerapplication that can help you
achieve those goals, right?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Without having to build your own right.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Exactly.
I mean, there's a vastecosystem in the mobile space of
software integrators andcompanies like yourself who can
do custom development ofapplications, who can provide
mobile device managementservices, can provide launcher
features, things that a customermight have had to go to a big
MDM solution before.
(23:08):
Well, now there's a muchsmaller, medium-sized solution
that doesn't require as muchoverhead.
There's a much smaller, mediumsize solution that doesn't
doesn't require as much over.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah, I think what you talked about earlier with
thing everything's moving to thecloud definitely makes it
easier to try out thosesolutions, test it out and get
it and the single sign on piecethe single sign on piece that
you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
You know the mobile device was a point solution.
You came in at the beginning ofyour shift, you badged into it,
you signed on, you ran it forthe whole shift and then you put
it away at the end of yourshift.
But now you know you may handthat device off to someone else.
They may need to log in it.
Now.
It's just not a singleapplication.
You may have five, six, seven,eight, ten different
applications.
Well, you can't be signing intoeight or ten different
(23:54):
applications every time you wantto switch back and forth.
That's why it's so essentialfor the single sign-on piece to
be there.
It took time for theapplications to become rich and
complex enough on the mobiledevices to demand that solution,
just in time for BlueFlesh tocome along with the solution.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, you mentioned the MDM side.
I know you've seen a lot ofevolutions in MDM over the last
15, 20 years.
What's your readout on thecurrent state of the MDM
marketplace?
Is it Intune's eating sodiumAirWatch?
How do you feel about that whenyou look at clients and the
folks you work with?
Speaker 2 (24:20):
It's very much size of the organization and culture
of the organization.
Microsoft is so dominant at thedesktop and server world that a
lot of businesses that arealready doing Microsoft tools
will prefer to stay withsomething like an Intune,
because they already haveresources available that know
how to operate it.
That being said, you knowthere's a few major players in
(24:44):
the industry.
They all operate in similarfunctions.
Some of them have betterexposure of APIs so that you can
automate some of its functions.
Sodi and Workspace ONE inparticular, allow for external
tooling to manage the clientsthat are inside their unified
(25:07):
endpoint management solution,but not everyone requires
something like that.
But not everyone requiressomething like that.
You know what you need tomanage a fleet of 10 or even 500
devices is very different fromwhat you need to manage a fleet
of 100 or 200,000 devices.
So there are tools once againthat are available for every
layer of that stack.
It just depends on which isgoing to be a best suit for your
(25:28):
organization.
So true, so true they're allvery capable at this point.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, another just question on that.
Like the devices themselves, Iknow Android has supplanted
Windows CE.
What's your thoughts on Androidversus iOS in the enterprise?
Do you have any beliefs, oneway or the other, as to which
works better in differentscenarios?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Once again, it depends on your clientele.
What your end user wants isreally important.
I have worked with clients whoused exclusively iOS devices
because that's what their endusers demanded and it fit into
the business that they weredoing right.
There's a tool set that'savailable for iOS devices for
(26:13):
you to deploy configurations.
They have Jamf, I mean.
There's a whole suite of toolsavailable.
That being said, apple iOS hasand always will be designed for
a single end user type of usecase.
That device is designed to betied to a person, a single
(26:33):
individual.
Android, at least, still hasthe concept of a shared device
and has that functionality whereI can enable all the
functionality of this devicewithout having to tie it to
Brett Cooper at bluefletchcom,which is something that's still
really challenging in the iOSworld.
Not to mention, ios is iOS.
(26:54):
You get what you take.
They release a new versionevery month.
There's an extraordinary amountof churn that goes along with
those new iOS releases if you'rerunning at an enterprise level
and having to go back throughand validate all of your
applications and revisedconfigurations that have changed
with new features.
Android, to my notion, isdesigned for the enterprise user
.
It was designed for amulti-user environment
(27:18):
Originally, a lot of the devicemanagement kinds of features
weren't necessarily built intothe operating system itself, but
that created a vibrantecosystem of third-party vendors
who were building tools thatallowed you to manage an Android
platform the way it needed tobe managed in enterprise
controlling the user interface,controlling the configuration of
(27:38):
the wireless LAN, making surethat certificates were deployed
and all those things.
So I that's probably thebiggest difference there.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, definitely be interesting to see how it plays
out.
I feel like Google is startingto get a little bit too much
like iOS, with some of theirreally focusing on the consumer
and not thinking as much aboutthe enterprise as they have in
the past.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, in a previous life I did have an opportunity
to meet with some of the Googleengineering team where we had an
opportunity to express thedirection that everything seemed
to be headed was more of anApple IOS-y kind of environment
where the Google Play Storewould be the end-all, be-all for
distributing applications, bethey internally developed
applications or third-partyapplications.
(28:24):
And while that kind of a modelworks really well for smaller
medium businesses, there was aconcern that they were going to
engineer out all of the thirdparty unified endpoint
management, mdm kind offunctionality, and so I think I
would like to think that maybewe were influential in helping
them understand that while, yes,android is largely a consumer
(28:47):
operating system that's most ofyou know the vast majority of
the installed base is consumerphones there is a massive
installed base of enterpriseusers who have a slightly
different usage model than atypical end user would, and so
I'm optimistic that the factthat we do still have this
feature functionality, that thedevice owner versus device admin
(29:09):
, that they've been continuingto build bridge solutions right,
are going to keep us from beingall forced into an Apple Play
Store in the Android world inthe future, and that's one of
the reasons why I prefer Androidtoday is because it is open
that way.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, same here, and I don't know the idea of a
vendor automatically pushingsomething to me without me being
able to control.
It is terrifying.
And it's even more terrifyingafter the Microsoft CrowdStrike
issues in the last couple ofweeks.
So it's yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
And you have some customers who want.
I mean, once I have anoperating system particular
version, I am locking it on this.
I do not want it to change toavoid all of those kinds of
things, and that's a lot moredifficult to do.
You can put off iOS updates fora short time in the Apple world
, but eventually it's going tocreate challenges for you.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, you got to take those, got to make them happen.
And then just a bit further outor further afield, do you have
any thoughts around some of thenewer technologies, like some of
the AI pieces?
I feel like it's pretty nascenton the mobile enterprise device
side, but are you seeinganything with AI at all in the
next six to 12 months thatyou're looking at or you're
(30:17):
playing with?
Speaker 2 (30:20):
I know a lot of people that use it to write
marketing literature and dothings along those lines my kids
writing their homework with it.
Yeah, I mean, I remember whennanotech was the big thing.
I remember when blockchain wasthe new thing.
I remember when RFID was thenew thing, right and so a new
(30:45):
thing being a new thing, and theperiod in time when it becomes
viable as a technology and theindustry and everything else.
Sometimes there's a really longperiod of time there.
So I think a lot of the AI isgoing to be much more on the
data analysis on the back endside, at least early on that,
and creative spaces, because Ithink it's going to allow people
(31:05):
to take shortcuts at doingthings like writing papers and
doing copy and even writingcodes.
That's doing things likewriting papers and doing copy
and even writing codes, but,specific to the mobile space, I
think the compute limitationsare going to keep all that stuff
in the cloud and that'sprobably going to keep it at
least somewhat out of thebusiness space for a while.
I don't know.
It's going to be kind ofinteresting to watch.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, we'll see where it goes.
See where it goes, awesome.
So, just in summary, a coupleof key points.
I had goes, see where it goes,awesome.
So, um, just in summary, acouple of key points.
I I had a number one um, youthink about innovation and poc
is definitely something thatthat if you want to be an
innovative company, you have tohave the pocs.
If you'll write those off, um,I think, on the technology side,
understanding that changes ininfrastructure, as uh seems
(31:47):
important.
I think some areas talk aboutthe wi-fi, the backhaulhaul,
those pieces, and then, from astandpoint of technical debt,
understanding when to clean itup, when to leave it, how to
build roadmaps around itdefinitely key and very, very
important.
So, jeff, thanks for coveringthose with us today.
If people want to find out moreabout Lowry, where would they go
(32:07):
?
What's your website?
Or where are you guys onLinkedIn?
Sure, we're onlowrysolutionscom.
Um, that's where you can findeverything about w lo w r y, no
e, no e, okay, correct, yeah,lowry solutionscom.
And then, uh, you guys are onlinkedin or any, any other good,
(32:28):
good spot to see you.
We're in all those places, allthose social media places.
Well, jeff, thank you forjoining us today.
We'll include a link to Lowrywith the correct spelling,
because I'm bad at spelling.
We'll include that in shownotes and, as always, if you
have any questions, feel free toreach out to myself or Jeff
Brown.
Appreciate it and have a goodone.
Thank you, brett.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the
Bluefletch Enterprise and BuildAround it podcast.
Today I'm joined by Jeff Brownfrom Lowry Solutions.
Jeff is a senior sales engineerat Lowry.
He's doing a lot of actuallymaking pieces work at their
clients and with their clients,and today we're going to be
talking about installingapplications on existing
infrastructure, installing newtechnology on existing
(00:21):
infrastructure.
Jeff has a lot of experiencedoing this.
I've worked with him for, Ithink, almost 15 years now and I
know we've worked on a lot ofdifferent things.
But before we hop intoquestions and talk about this
topic, jeff, do you want to giveme a quick overview, maybe
background, of yourself, whatyou've worked on and what you do
at Lowry?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Sure, my name is Jeff Brown.
I'm with the Senior SalesEngineer at Lowry Solutions.
I've had the great privilege tobe involved in the wireless and
mobility spaces for about 20years now, started out my career
as a network engineer andapplication developer and was
able to work implementing someof the first 802.11b wireless
infrastructures in retailenvironments.
(01:00):
I had the great opportunity tosegue from the wireless space
into the mobile device space.
Once all the infrastructure wasin place, everybody wanted to
put their clients on there, sothat allowed me to watch the
evolution of the industry as westarted off with all the pocket
PC and Windows CE, windowsmobile platforms, an opportunity
to see the emergence of Androidas a very viable
(01:21):
enterprise-based operatingsystem, and I've had the great
privilege to be able toimplement systems based on
mobile devices and Androidoperating systems for a variety
of different customers over mycareer Awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
And you know, I guess , just to reframe the topic a
little bit, I think one of thethrough the background on this I
know we had a couple ofprojects recently with the Lowry
team.
So Bluefudge does singlesign-on security for mobile
devices and does someapplication development on
Android, and one of the things Inoticed is how smoothly Jeff
and his team were able to helpget new technology onto a
(01:57):
customer that already had alarge set of existing devices in
their facility.
So I wanted to talk throughsome of those topics, but I
think the first piece of thattopic that comes to mind is
actually thinking through orjust framing the difference
between Greenfield and I call it, existing tech, and maybe you
(02:17):
could talk a bit about yourexperiences, like how do you
think about Greenfieldtechnology versus new technology
?
What are the keydifferentiators for you?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, you know, everybody dreams of having a
greenfield opportunity wherethere's absolutely no existing
infrastructure in place andwhere you have an opportunity to
go in as a solution provider,as an engineer, survey the
landscape, get an understandingof what the environment's like
and design at least what youbelieve is going to be an ideal
system from the ground up right.
It gives you an opportunity topick the best of breed, the
newest technologies that areavailable, and when you have
everything, new problems areexpected and there tend to be a
lot more tolerance for the typesof issues that tend to come
along with the greenfieldimplementation.
(03:03):
When you have existingtechnology, there's always the
challenge of all the variablesthat are going to be in the
environment right.
In a greenfield environment, atthe very least you can specify
a homogenous environment whereyou have all the same devices,
or at least all the samegeneration of devices.
When you've got an existingenvironment, there's usually
some number of devices that havebeen deployed.
(03:25):
As the organization grew and asthe organization expanded their
use of mobile devices, andbecause those mobile devices
were probably started out asjust something along the lines
of an add-on, they weren'tnecessarily treated with the
seriousness that an enterpriseplatform ordinarily would be
treated with.
So with the pre-existingenvironment, it's really
important to do a very detailedand thorough survey of the
(03:49):
current landscape so that youcan understand which of the
platforms and environmentsyou're going to be able to pull
forward into your new world andwhich ones are unfortunately
going to have to be left behindbecause they just lack the
technical capabilities toimplement the solution that
you're looking for lack oftechnical capabilities to
implement the solution thatyou're looking for.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It's a good segue into my next topic, next
question, which is I call it thetechnical debt and experiences
around technical debt and theway I describe technical debt
and from the software side, it'syou know, you develop something
.
There's a bunch of code thatdoes things a certain way.
It may not be the ideal.
There was a guy who decided todo it a certain way and even on
the hardware side I've seenthings like where people will
you know a CIO will come in andbe like we're going to roll out
(04:30):
iOS devices and doesn't knowanything about actually managing
devices and as a engineer, youend up having to come in after
the person and clean up thatmess or deal with that technical
data, which most people referto as cleaning up technical debt
, whether it's infrastructure oron the software side.
For you, when you think aboutthe pragmatic approaches to
(04:51):
cleaning up technical debt, likewhat to actually touch versus
not touch are there any guidanceor guiding principles you use
with your team?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, I mean you have to understand where that
particular product or solutionis in its organizational
lifecycle.
You have to understand wherethat particular product or
solution is in itsorganizational lifecycle.
In some cases you may have alegacy application that no one
intends to replace because it'sbeen performing its function for
a long time, but it's missioncritical.
In instances like that, theremay be a case for leaving some
(05:21):
of that legacy technology inplace, with the understanding
that it necessarily has to beleft behind at some point so
that you can move forward intothe new generations.
I mean, that's one of the thingsa lot of people really don't
consider is what do I do withall this hardware?
You got to understand thatthese are expensive devices for
the most part, right?
The cost of a mobile device ismuch more expensive than a
(05:42):
typical desktop solution at thispoint, not to mention it's
something that would be lost alot more readily.
So you'd want to make sure thatit's definitely a worthwhile
investment in your environment.
So, yeah, there's always goingto be a demand to maintain that
legacy equipment the best thatyou can, but it cannot be a
limitation.
It has to be identified thatthese platforms cannot come
forward.
These are the platforms thatare viable to move into our new
(06:04):
infrastructure.
And then the last part of thatis what is the forward strategy,
so that we can continue tomaintain this environment as we
grow and change over time.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Do you mainly see technical debts?
I know Windows CE was a bigtechnical debt for a long time
for a lot of companies.
On the mobile side, I feel likethere's a lot of green screen
or legacy, like AS400.
Are there certain areas whereyou see more technical debt that
falls into that category?
You described where you need tobuild that plan and roadmap.
Sure.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
The thing that I've noticed is it depends upon the
value of the business operationwhere the devices are.
So when you're dealing withvery cost-centric parts of the
business, especially in thesupply chain, there's always a
lot more reluctance to investheavily there because it's all
just cost of doing businessright.
Most of those kinds ofinnovations are driven by some
(06:57):
sort of efficiency options asopposed to driving new business.
So dealing with technical debtin a warehouse-y kind of
environment where you've alwayshad basically basic, simple
applications, perhaps just agreen screen with some sort of
ADC, either RFID reading orbarcode reading, those processes
don't change very much overtime.
(07:18):
But as you look at otherindustries retail in particular
where the mobile device is muchmore of a key component of their
strategy to drive sales anddrive revenue into the business,
there are a lot moreopportunities to justify
replacing those sorts ofinfrastructures because there is
a potential additional revenuestream that goes along with it.
(07:41):
So that's the main differencein environments as far as I can
see stream that goes along withit.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So that's the main difference in environments, as
far as I can see.
Yes, it's the employees thatare actually dealing with the
customers, make them asefficient as possible, which is
why retail has typically been aleader in that space, exactly On
the warehouse side.
Do you see that retail modelslowly, I guess, coming into the
warehouses where it's not justa green screen device, it's also
a green screen, it's training,it's communication, it's
(08:07):
multi-apps?
Do you see more and more ofthat with some of the clients
you work with?
Speaker 2 (08:12):
You know, it depends upon the size of the
organization themselves and whattheir ability is to do
innovation right.
If you're talking about a largeenterprise customer that has
their own internal IT shops,you're always going to see a lot
more innovation there becausethey have internal resources or
they can acquire the resourcesthat are needed to be able to
innovate along those lines right.
When you get down to the smallto mid-sized businesses that
(08:35):
don't have the resources eithercapital or internal technical
resources they're the ones thatare a lot more challenging just
because they literally don'thave the resources to innovate
and change.
Nor is there really a strongdriver because the business
hasn't changed a whole lot.
That being said, right,everyone's looking for ways to
make those green screen pickingopportunities more effective as
(09:03):
applications that do more of aproduct identification, where
not only are you getting adescription of the thing that
you're looking for but you alsosee a picture of the actual item
that you're looking for.
That can help a lot infacilitating complex pick
operations that you might havein some sort of a retail
distribution warehouse.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I think.
The other thing that made methink of when you were saying
that is, the actual types of endusers in those facilities are
probably different than retail.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Retail typically has a little bit longer employment
term than a lot of thewarehouses I've worked with and
their end users Absolutely Mostof the associates in my
experience in a warehouse orlogistics operation, they're
very much task oriented, wherethey're going to perform a
specific task for their entireshift.
(09:48):
In a retail environment, ifyou're not a cashier, if you're
a reseller, there's a lot morevariability in the roles that
they perform during the day,which is why it's a lot more
important for them to have adevice that can allow them to
accomplish those different roleswithout having to switch
devices right.
In a warehouse, you scanbarcodes all day long and you
have a barcode scanner that isdesigned to scan barcodes all
(10:09):
day long.
But in a retail environment,you're interacting with
customers, you're scanningproduct, you're looking up
information, you're using it asa voice communication device,
you're sending text messagesback and forth to other
associates in stores.
So the retail environment isdefinitely a lot more
complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So you touched on mobile devices, you touched on
software and some of the backendpieces.
What's your read on the stateof I'm going to call it
networking and Wi-Fiinfrastructure in facilities?
Do you feel like it has gotteninto the 21st century yet A lot
of the customers you work with,or is there still a mixed bag on
the infrastructure side fornetworking.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, it's kind of like it depends on when your
house was built, what kind ofwindows are put in it right.
There's a lot of costs that goesalong with wireless
infrastructure and when you lookat deploying wireless
infrastructure in largefacilities that there are a lot
of, that's a tremendous capitalcost and the cost of ripping it
out and replacing it is alsoextremely high.
(11:06):
So there's an incredibly mixedenvironment of infrastructures
that are capable of supportingthe new Wi-Fi 6 and all of the
newer wireless LAN technologythat has been built for high
density client environments.
There's still a lot ofinfrastructure out there that
was built for low density clientenvironments.
There's still a lot ofinfrastructure out there that
was built for low density clientenvironments and then we've had
(11:27):
to adapt them into higherdensity right and those are
always going to be challenges,especially when you're talking
about a noisy environment like awarehouse or a retail
environment where Wi-Fi isproblematic.
That's the great benefit ofgoing with a greenfield solution
, especially if you're goinginto an environment where you're
wanting to do telephony andvoice kinds of applications that
(11:48):
are really really sensitive tolatency and the customer
experience and the end userexperience in assuring that when
you do go into productionyou're going to have the kind of
success that you're looking forright.
The older the infrastructure is, just the more challenging it
is likely to be to get theperformance that you're looking
(12:09):
for.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
There's also the one thing I'm not sure you mentioned
it the backhaul pipe.
I've seen people that rolledout Wi-Fi 6 and still have like
a crappy 1.5 T1 on the back end.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Oh, I'm sure it's still slow.
I didn't even consider that.
You know, once upon a time allof our infrastructures were
local, and so if you did havesome sort of mobile device, most
likely it was doing a lot ofits communication applications
that were on servers that werehosted on the same local network
or most often even co-locatedin the same physical environment
(12:42):
.
But that's not the case anymore.
Everything is hosted somewhereelse, and the chain of
communication is so much morecomplex that not being able to
understand where things arebreaking when it does break
makes troubleshooting much, muchmore challenging.
So, yes, that's a big component.
You've got to consider yourbackhaul.
(13:02):
It's not just your local LANenvironment any longer, it's the
carrier, it's all the points inbetween, it's the kind of
infrastructure that, it's thehosting environment.
Yeah, those are all keyconsiderations.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
On that note of like thinking of putting new software
and I know one of the thingsyou and I have worked on a
couple of differentorganizations around pilots and
POCs Do you have any like hardand fast rules for here's like
the three things that Jeffrecommends If you're going to
POC you know a new piece ofhardware or software, make sure
you do it this way, like what'syour, what's your playbook or
(13:36):
runbook for that.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
You know, a lot of it involves semantics.
Right, In my world, a proof ofconcept and a pilot are two very
different things, but peopleuse those terms interchangeably
and I think that's a big mistakeand the way I differentiate the
two is.
A proof of concept is you havean idea for some technology
solution you think is going tohelp your business operation,
(13:57):
but you're not sure you know howto build it.
You know what it looks like andyou're going to go ahead and
build it and put it out therewith measured goals.
Right, I'm going to prove this.
Concept either works or it doesnot.
If the concept works, it may goto pilot.
A pilot is something that youhave decided is going to go into
(14:18):
production.
It is going to go intodeployment and this is the first
one of them.
That's what a pilotinstallation is.
So if your organization islooking to validate some new
technology or some new businessprocess, that should always be
handled with the proof ofconcept.
It should have very clearlydefined success criteria so that
(14:40):
you know if it's achieved thegoal that you set out to achieve
with, and it absolutely musthave a defined duration.
One of the biggest challengesfor organization are proof of
concepts that never go furtherthan a proof of concept.
And the next thing you know,you have seven or eight
different specialty solutionsthat are out there and the
organizations that spun them upare no longer around to support
(15:02):
them and they become zombies ofa sort.
They provide some function butthey're not going anywhere.
And proof of concepts ifthey're unsuccessful, they must
be ripped out, and that wayyou're prepared to go for the
next one.
Maybe there's going to beanother iteration, but that's a
separate proof of concept withdifferent measures of success
and a different timeline toachieve.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I love that articulation the zombie projects
, and I think it's it's.
It's so important to thinkthrough that difference between
a POC, a pilot.
A POC and I talk to people allthe time it has to have an end
date and you have to commit toturn it off.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
If it's a pilot, there has to be a day two plan.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Right, there has to be a day two plan before you go
to pilot, and proof of conceptnever has a day two plan.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Day two in your book.
I call it run, but can youarticulate how you think about
day two and what that looks like?
And you're thinkingoperationalization of a product
or technology.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, it's the ongoing care and feeding right.
Day one everyone is focused ongetting that feature
functionality out the door, upand running, and everybody knows
it's not going to be right thevery first time, right, and so,
before you go to day one, therehas to be a plan for day two in
place.
And the day two things are okay.
When it doesn't work asexpected, what are we going to
do tactically to address theissues that are affecting our
(16:22):
user right now?
And then, what are we going todo strategically to remove this
particular problem from ourapplication and make sure that
it doesn't recur anymore?
Right and so, yes, that is allyour operational concerns, but a
lot of people, I thinkoperational is commonly it's
built, we're going to run it asbuilt, but systems aren't like
(16:43):
that anymore.
There's not only the how are wegoing to run it, but how are we
going to enhance it and keep itgoing and what is the planned
lifecycle for this system?
On day two, I know that Iexpect this program to live for
two or three years.
I believe it may live five, andif those are the things that
are going to happen, how am Igoing to plan accordingly, right
?
Yeah, over the that are goingto happen.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
How am I going to plan accordingly Over the next
five years from your standpoint?
Just to go back to the POCpieces, how do you think about
cost justification?
I know one of the things a lotof clients we work with have a
heartburn around is I don't wantto POC something, spend a bunch
of money on it and then nothave it go to production, which
I think is a completely wrongattitude to have.
(17:22):
But how do you frame that forpeople?
How do you think about the costjustification of a POC that may
or may not actually?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
go to production.
All businesses have to continueinnovating and because the
mobile space is such aninnovative space, there are a
lot of opportunities for you tofind help in developing a proof
of concept, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Maybe another way to frame this is like how do you
convince the guide to say we'regoing to put money into this
even though we may turn it off?
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Fundamentally, I don't believe you can.
That's why I'm having a hardtime answering this question.
Fundamentally, I don't believeyou can.
Either they are willing toinvest what's required to do a
proof of concept successfullybecause they think it has value
as a business process right, weneed to try new things and see
if they work or not.
If that company isn't willingto innovate, I would say that
(18:22):
they're probably going to havesome struggles.
Otherwise, right, I mean, adesire to innovate in your
business has to be part of theDNA of that business.
So you have to be willing totake some sorts of risks, and
that's why it's important tohave a champion internally and
have those internal stakeholdersand make sure that your
business is aligned.
If the business is alignedbehind the concept of the proof
(18:44):
of concept, it's not a difficultthing to achieve.
But that's where it becomes.
It's an internal thing for thesponsor of the initiative.
Nobody's ever, no one was everable to sell me a project when I
was in a position to do thosethings.
It had to be something that weneeded to do or wanted to do, or
it wasn't going to happen atall.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, like that's a good point.
It makes me think of the.
When you're going and askingsomebody for something, the best
answer is yes, the second bestanswer is no, the worst answer
is maybe, maybe, yeah, for sure.
I feel like something that getsstuck where it's like we want
to innovate but we don't want tospend the money and have stuff
fail.
I think that's not going tohappen.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
It's spot on and a lot of those things.
I mean, they're reallyorganizationally dependent,
right no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Lowry has been leveraging Bluefletch for single
sign-on and some of the tools.
We have Android devices for acouple of different clients, but
are there certain areas whereyou're seeing clients outside of
what we do?
Are there certain other areasyou're seeing clients outside of
what we do?
Are there certain other areasyou're seeing clients go run
POCs and go test and try newthings out that you think
everybody should be puttingtheir hat in the ring and trying
(20:22):
different things out, whetherit's mobile devices or certain
areas of software communicationtools?
Is there anything that standsout to you as people should be
doing more innovation and POCing?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
people should be doing more innovation and POCing
.
I had the great opportunity towork with some customers many
years ago that were the firstones to sort of embrace the
enabling communications amongstyour associates inside of your
own building and using themobile devices to do that.
It's taking a while, but I haveseen more of the large
customers starting to embrace.
(20:54):
The best way I can describe itis the mobile device is no
longer a point solution but it'sbecome a general purpose tool,
kind of like a PC was.
And so, as they're realizing,hey, I can do more with this
mobile device.
I can enable them tocommunicate with customers, they
can communicate with oneanother, I can use them for task
allocations.
There's so many differentthings that can be done with a
(21:15):
mobile device.
As the infrastructures havematured and as the organizations
have matured, you're startingto see a lot more uptake of
those things, right?
You know, the whole idea ofcarrying around a mobile device
in a retail environment andtalking to customers and talking
to other associates was areally new idea, like 10 years
ago, I mean, no one was doingthat yet.
(21:37):
And all of the other componentsfrom the mobile device
platforms have become morecapable.
We've had major advances inwireless technologies that have
allowed us to put more clientsin the same space with higher
bandwidth requirements.
It's taken a while for all ofthese different technology
pieces to mature enough to bestable to see the organizations
(21:59):
willing to take a risk on theirbusiness, on them.
So I think we're definitelygoing to see a lot more of those
.
We've seen some of them in thegrocery environment.
We see a lot of it in softgoods as well.
So it's an evolutionary process, right, the early adopters got
out there a long time ago, andnow mobility and wireless is
(22:20):
mature enough that everyonerealizes it's an essential
business component.
And so everyone's coming to thetable, not just the rich
companies with lots of resourcesright, with lots of resources.
Right, yeah, and theecosystem's fleshed out a lot
better tool.
There's a lot better tools thatare suitable for different size
businesses.
Right, you don't have to runSAP to do your business.
(22:42):
There might be a smallerapplication that can help you
achieve those goals, right?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Without having to build your own right.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Exactly.
I mean, there's a vastecosystem in the mobile space of
software integrators andcompanies like yourself who can
do custom development ofapplications, who can provide
mobile device managementservices, can provide launcher
features, things that a customermight have had to go to a big
MDM solution before.
(23:08):
Well, now there's a muchsmaller, medium-sized solution
that doesn't require as muchoverhead.
There's a much smaller, mediumsize solution that doesn't
doesn't require as much over.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah, I think what you talked about earlier with
thing everything's moving to thecloud definitely makes it
easier to try out thosesolutions, test it out and get
it and the single sign on piecethe single sign on piece that
you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
You know the mobile device was a point solution.
You came in at the beginning ofyour shift, you badged into it,
you signed on, you ran it forthe whole shift and then you put
it away at the end of yourshift.
But now you know you may handthat device off to someone else.
They may need to log in it.
Now.
It's just not a singleapplication.
You may have five, six, seven,eight, ten different
applications.
Well, you can't be signing intoeight or ten different
(23:54):
applications every time you wantto switch back and forth.
That's why it's so essentialfor the single sign-on piece to
be there.
It took time for theapplications to become rich and
complex enough on the mobiledevices to demand that solution,
just in time for BlueFlesh tocome along with the solution.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, you mentioned the MDM side.
I know you've seen a lot ofevolutions in MDM over the last
15, 20 years.
What's your readout on thecurrent state of the MDM
marketplace?
Is it Intune's eating sodiumAirWatch?
How do you feel about that whenyou look at clients and the
folks you work with?
Speaker 2 (24:20):
It's very much size of the organization and culture
of the organization.
Microsoft is so dominant at thedesktop and server world that a
lot of businesses that arealready doing Microsoft tools
will prefer to stay withsomething like an Intune,
because they already haveresources available that know
how to operate it.
That being said, you knowthere's a few major players in
(24:44):
the industry.
They all operate in similarfunctions.
Some of them have betterexposure of APIs so that you can
automate some of its functions.
Sodi and Workspace ONE inparticular, allow for external
tooling to manage the clientsthat are inside their unified
(25:07):
endpoint management solution,but not everyone requires
something like that.
But not everyone requiressomething like that.
You know what you need tomanage a fleet of 10 or even 500
devices is very different fromwhat you need to manage a fleet
of 100 or 200,000 devices.
So there are tools once againthat are available for every
layer of that stack.
It just depends on which isgoing to be a best suit for your
(25:28):
organization.
So true, so true they're allvery capable at this point.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, another just question on that.
Like the devices themselves, Iknow Android has supplanted
Windows CE.
What's your thoughts on Androidversus iOS in the enterprise?
Do you have any beliefs, oneway or the other, as to which
works better in differentscenarios?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Once again, it depends on your clientele.
What your end user wants isreally important.
I have worked with clients whoused exclusively iOS devices
because that's what their endusers demanded and it fit into
the business that they weredoing right.
There's a tool set that'savailable for iOS devices for
(26:13):
you to deploy configurations.
They have Jamf, I mean.
There's a whole suite of toolsavailable.
That being said, apple iOS hasand always will be designed for
a single end user type of usecase.
That device is designed to betied to a person, a single
(26:33):
individual.
Android, at least, still hasthe concept of a shared device
and has that functionality whereI can enable all the
functionality of this devicewithout having to tie it to
Brett Cooper at bluefletchcom,which is something that's still
really challenging in the iOSworld.
Not to mention, ios is iOS.
(26:54):
You get what you take.
They release a new versionevery month.
There's an extraordinary amountof churn that goes along with
those new iOS releases if you'rerunning at an enterprise level
and having to go back throughand validate all of your
applications and revisedconfigurations that have changed
with new features.
Android, to my notion, isdesigned for the enterprise user
.
It was designed for amulti-user environment
(27:18):
Originally, a lot of the devicemanagement kinds of features
weren't necessarily built intothe operating system itself, but
that created a vibrantecosystem of third-party vendors
who were building tools thatallowed you to manage an Android
platform the way it needed tobe managed in enterprise
controlling the user interface,controlling the configuration of
(27:38):
the wireless LAN, making surethat certificates were deployed
and all those things.
So I that's probably thebiggest difference there.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, definitely be interesting to see how it plays
out.
I feel like Google is startingto get a little bit too much
like iOS, with some of theirreally focusing on the consumer
and not thinking as much aboutthe enterprise as they have in
the past.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, in a previous life I did have an opportunity
to meet with some of the Googleengineering team where we had an
opportunity to express thedirection that everything seemed
to be headed was more of anApple IOS-y kind of environment
where the Google Play Storewould be the end-all, be-all for
distributing applications, bethey internally developed
applications or third-partyapplications.
(28:24):
And while that kind of a modelworks really well for smaller
medium businesses, there was aconcern that they were going to
engineer out all of the thirdparty unified endpoint
management, mdm kind offunctionality, and so I think I
would like to think that maybewe were influential in helping
them understand that while, yes,android is largely a consumer
(28:47):
operating system that's most ofyou know the vast majority of
the installed base is consumerphones there is a massive
installed base of enterpriseusers who have a slightly
different usage model than atypical end user would, and so
I'm optimistic that the factthat we do still have this
feature functionality, that thedevice owner versus device admin
(29:09):
, that they've been continuingto build bridge solutions right,
are going to keep us from beingall forced into an Apple Play
Store in the Android world inthe future, and that's one of
the reasons why I prefer Androidtoday is because it is open
that way.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, same here, and I don't know the idea of a
vendor automatically pushingsomething to me without me being
able to control.
It is terrifying.
And it's even more terrifyingafter the Microsoft CrowdStrike
issues in the last couple ofweeks.
So it's yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
And you have some customers who want.
I mean, once I have anoperating system particular
version, I am locking it on this.
I do not want it to change toavoid all of those kinds of
things, and that's a lot moredifficult to do.
You can put off iOS updates fora short time in the Apple world
, but eventually it's going tocreate challenges for you.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, you got to take those, got to make them happen.
And then just a bit further outor further afield, do you have
any thoughts around some of thenewer technologies, like some of
the AI pieces?
I feel like it's pretty nascenton the mobile enterprise device
side, but are you seeinganything with AI at all in the
next six to 12 months thatyou're looking at or you're
(30:17):
playing with?
Speaker 2 (30:20):
I know a lot of people that use it to write
marketing literature and dothings along those lines my kids
writing their homework with it.
Yeah, I mean, I remember whennanotech was the big thing.
I remember when blockchain wasthe new thing.
I remember when RFID was thenew thing, right and so a new
(30:45):
thing being a new thing, and theperiod in time when it becomes
viable as a technology and theindustry and everything else.
Sometimes there's a really longperiod of time there.
So I think a lot of the AI isgoing to be much more on the
data analysis on the back endside, at least early on that,
and creative spaces, because Ithink it's going to allow people
(31:05):
to take shortcuts at doingthings like writing papers and
doing copy and even writingcodes.
That's doing things likewriting papers and doing copy
and even writing codes, but,specific to the mobile space, I
think the compute limitationsare going to keep all that stuff
in the cloud and that'sprobably going to keep it at
least somewhat out of thebusiness space for a while.
I don't know.
It's going to be kind ofinteresting to watch.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, we'll see where it goes.
See where it goes, awesome.
So, just in summary, a coupleof key points.
I had goes, see where it goes,awesome.
So, um, just in summary, acouple of key points.
I I had a number one um, youthink about innovation and poc
is definitely something thatthat if you want to be an
innovative company, you have tohave the pocs.
If you'll write those off, um,I think, on the technology side,
understanding that changes ininfrastructure, as uh seems
(31:47):
important.
I think some areas talk aboutthe wi-fi, the backhaulhaul,
those pieces, and then, from astandpoint of technical debt,
understanding when to clean itup, when to leave it, how to
build roadmaps around itdefinitely key and very, very
important.
So, jeff, thanks for coveringthose with us today.
If people want to find out moreabout Lowry, where would they go
(32:07):
?
What's your website?
Or where are you guys onLinkedIn?
Sure, we're onlowrysolutionscom.
Um, that's where you can findeverything about w lo w r y, no
e, no e, okay, correct, yeah,lowry solutionscom.
And then, uh, you guys are onlinkedin or any, any other good,
(32:28):
good spot to see you.
We're in all those places, allthose social media places.
Well, jeff, thank you forjoining us today.
We'll include a link to Lowrywith the correct spelling,
because I'm bad at spelling.
We'll include that in shownotes and, as always, if you
have any questions, feel free toreach out to myself or Jeff
Brown.
Appreciate it and have a goodone.
Thank you, brett.
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