Consumer apps should be fueled by enterprise-grade features in order to fly.
For as long as I can remember, there’s always been this notion that things that are carrier grade are better; more robust than enterprise grade, and thus more so than consumer grade. While many users would not be able to tell the difference, you have to carefully look at how these products are built. They are designed with different specifications and requirements. More recently, the major trend that’s plowing through enterprise IT is this concept called the “consumerization of the enterprise.” Simply put, it basically means that enterprise employees are becoming consumers with consumer-like expectations, usage patterns, and behaviors.
Because of this consumerization, enterprises are adopting and demanding that their technologies be more user-friendly, have consumer-esque UI, and be intuitive. I think this is a great thing. It used to be the case that the technology people used at work was the state of the art – your Windows 3.1 PC at work with a mouse versus your DOS 5.0 PC at home. Recently, it’s been your quad-core iMac at home versus your four-year-old work PC that allows you to go down the block to get a latte before the login screen comes up, and then hold a staff meeting between when you log in and when you can launch a browser. Mobility is driving the enterprise pendulum back.
But here’s the danger – some people out there think that just because we’re taking a consumer product or technology and enabling it in an enterprise setting, that enterprise features are no longer needed. Cloud computing is not running your enterprise apps in a consumer grade environment. It’s taking your enterprise apps and running it in a carrier grade environment. The fundamental robustness of the enterprise-grade or carrier-grade platform should not be discounted!
In addition, some people are also saying that it’s easier to go from B2C to B2E (likely because they’re just riding on this consumerization bandwagon). But is it really? Ask any IT administrator whether it’s easier or cheaper to deploy and manage 1000 Windows based PCs or 1000 MacBook Pros. All this chatter recently about enterprise appstores – guess what? Windows environments have had this for IT for a decade in the form of “Add/Remove Programs.” Just because something has a consumer centric design doesn’t mean it’s ready for enterprise-grade, mission-critical deployment.
While it’s challenging enough to deal with consumerization in the B2E sense, it’s just as difficult to deal with enterprise requirements B2C. Consumers don’t want degraded performance and reliability for beautification of their apps. They want it all. Marketing and sales departments want their B2C apps to be a robust “mission critical” service that they provide to their customers, no matter how simple the app may be. To say that it’s easier to go from B2C to B2E, or that B2C doesn’t need enterprise grade features is just flat-out wrong. Remember that B2C offerings are part of your brand, your marketing, your message. What’s worse is that these people (customers that experience your mobile app/Web site) don’t tell you that you’ve screwed up (unlike that employee that creates 10 trouble tickets), they simply take their money and buy someone else’s product.
I’ll give you a perfect example. I am a frequent traveler on Continental Airlines. And since I’m a heavy mobile user, I use my mobile device to travel all the time – including checking flight status, mobile boarding pass, checking upgrade status, even booking flights. To me, the Continental Airlines app is Mission Critical. I was running late and upon arriving at the airport, I decided to look up flight status. The screen did not show the data.
What had just happened? I had to take a guess and headed to Terminal C. I had problems refreshing the data as the phone went into 2.5G EDGE mode, which put me onto the wrong terminal. I made the flight, but three hours later, during my layover in Chicago, the same thing happened again on my mobile app.
So the take-away here is this:
*B2C and B2E apps are both mission critical – it is how you will run your business and sell your products
*B2C and B2E apps are both in need of intuitive and beautiful user experiences, but not at the expense of sub-optimal functionality or performance
*An app with a “pretty face” doesn’t make you B2C ready, not to mention B2E
*An app needs to be backed by an enterprise-grade platform that can ensure there is no degradation of performance no matter the device and signal strength.
Tags: B2C, consumerization, Continental Airlines app, Mission Critical, Mobile Masters, The West Side, Tony Kueh
