Mobility: the foundation of digital transformation

These days, information must be available and accessible everywhere, at any time and by any partner of the company, including employees, customers, suppliers, prospects, and more. This requires an infrastructure that is powerful, reliable, and secure, as well as digital processes. Welcome to the virtual IT environment.

More than ever, the enterprise is moving beyond its internal borders to open up to all its stakeholders. No longer working in isolation, the organization must make its platforms and data accessible to drive growth.

Here are some numbers that explain the extent of the phenomenon. According to a study by StrategyAnalytics, the number of mobile employees will increase from 1.45 billion in 2016 to 1.87 billion in 2022 worldwide – or 42.5% of the active population. Accenture estimates that the annual number of security breaches increased by 27.4% in 2017, showing the fundamental importance of finding the right balance between unhindered mobility and information security.

According to PwC, 50% of all employees will be from Generation Y by 2020. This generation grew up using computers and mobile technology. It is clear that companies will have to adapt to the needs of Generation Y. If not, they fail to attract the talent they need and will risk to see employees leave, as 44% of employees today – according to a Dell and Intel survey – believe their professional environment is not smart enough and not connected.

Internal organization

The old architecture silos must give way to virtual environments, relying heavily on the cloud - private, hybrid or public - to facilitate the exchange of information. Similarly, the workstation becomes more virtual, especially using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technology, making the user more mobile and stimulating collaborative work. The underlying IT infrastructure also becomes virtual to provide greater flexibility and enable change. The rise of edge computing improves employee productivity - of both remote and on-site employees - as well as relieve pressure on the internal IT infrastructure and enhance the security level of the extended IT environment.

Road congestion and workspace costs stimulate teleworking and videoconferencing, while agile collaboration methods and collaboration in virtual teams become part of everyday business. This is why network operator Proximus estimates that by 2020, 90% of organizations will deploy telework applications for their employees. At the same time, there is a rise in the use of apps, and not only to improve productivity, whereas storage evolves into shared storage in the cloud.

Apart from mobile devices and software, IP telephony and instant communication are indispensable collaboration tools. Not to mention fixed-mobile convergence and unified communications that allow employees to work wherever they are.

The network

Thanks to the cloud, the organization are able to focus on the added value of IT and on business innovation, leaving the management of its infrastructure in the hands of trusted partners. In addition, the cloud will integrate both applications and data in a more open and flexible global system, provided the necessary security is in place. The cloud will also enable better activity-based IT resources provisioning and turn capex into opex, a particularly relevant argument in times of budget cuts.

Networks – LAN or WAN – are essential links in data transmission. The focus won’t only be on WiFi wireless networks, but also on 5G technology, which will speed up transfer speeds and allow ever larger volumes, following the evolution of unstructured data growth, images and video in particular. 5G will also facilitate the breakthrough of IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (Machine-to-Machine). The technology is expected to arrive on the market in 2019 and will need to be quickly standardized and tested. At the same time, devices will need to be ready as well, allowing large scale deployment, especially in the professional market.

The outside world

By deploying digital processes, the organization opens up to its partners. As a result, customers enjoy a richer user experience. They find information faster, benefit from more personalized data, take advantage of automated processes (including the order process), and use different communication channels. As a result, the customer enjoys a richer offer of customized services.

Suppliers benefit from digitization and mobility to access a wider range of internal data and automate their logistics processes, which will improve operational excellence, reduce costs, and increase the levels of productivity, innovation, and creativity.

In the field

In any mobility project, it goes without saying that security is an important, if not crucial, dimension. Likewise, change management as well as user information and training need attention to ensure the widest possible adoption. And why not clean house before installing new mobile solutions?

To help companies succeed in their mobile transformation, Aprico respects and implements three basic rules: smart, lean, and agile. The smart approach aims at understanding the real added value of mobile technology for the organization and to set the business priorities to achieve the transformation. Aprico is open and independent. Its recommendations are based on the platforms and technologies that fit the client best. Aprico strongly believes in the lean improvement culture that involves planning the right resources at the right time and at the right cost. Finally, our agile methodology combines ongoing collaboration (involving stakeholders as early as possible) throughout the development process, rapid prototyping, and frequent testing (splitting the project into manageable entities resulting in regular delivery). Our approach reduces time-to-market, ensures easier change and maintenance, and ultimately improves customer satisfaction.

More than ever, the enterprise is moving beyond its internal borders to open up to all its stakeholders. No longer working in isolation, the organization must make its platforms and data accessible to drive growth.

Here are some numbers that explain the extent of the phenomenon. According to a study by StrategyAnalytics, the number of mobile employees will increase from 1.45 billion in 2016 to 1.87 billion in 2022 worldwide – or 42.5% of the active population. Accenture estimates that the annual number of security breaches increased by 27.4% in 2017, showing the fundamental importance of finding the right balance between unhindered mobility and information security.

According to PwC, 50% of all employees will be from Generation Y by 2020. This generation grew up using computers and mobile technology. It is clear that companies will have to adapt to the needs of Generation Y. If not, they fail to attract the talent they need and will risk to see employees leave, as 44% of employees today – according to a Dell and Intel survey – believe their professional environment is not smart enough and not connected.

Internal organization

The old architecture silos must give way to virtual environments, relying heavily on the cloud – private, hybrid or public – to facilitate the exchange of information. Similarly, the workstation becomes more virtual, especially using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technology, making the user more mobile and stimulating collaborative work. The underlying IT infrastructure also becomes virtual to provide greater flexibility and enable change. The rise of edge computing improves employee productivity – of both remote and on-site employees – as well as relieve pressure on the internal IT infrastructure and enhance the security level of the extended IT environment.

Road congestion and workspace costs stimulate teleworking and videoconferencing, while agile collaboration methods and collaboration in virtual teams become part of everyday business. This is why network operator Proximus estimates that by 2020, 90% of organizations will deploy telework applications for their employees. At the same time, there is a rise in the use of apps, and not only to improve productivity, whereas storage evolves into shared storage in the cloud.

Apart from mobile devices and software, IP telephony and instant communication are indispensable collaboration tools. Not to mention fixed-mobile convergence and unified communications that allow employees to work wherever they are.

The network

Thanks to the cloud, the organization are able to focus on the added value of IT and on business innovation, leaving the management of its infrastructure in the hands of trusted partners. In addition, the cloud will integrate both applications and data in a more open and flexible global system, provided the necessary security is in place. The cloud will also enable better activity-based IT resources provisioning and turn capex into opex, a particularly relevant argument in times of budget cuts.

Networks – LAN or WAN – are essential links in data transmission. The focus won’t only be on WiFi wireless networks, but also on 5G technology, which will speed up transfer speeds and allow ever larger volumes, following the evolution of unstructured data growth, images and video in particular. 5G will also facilitate the breakthrough of IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (Machine-to-Machine). The technology is expected to arrive on the market in 2019 and will need to be quickly standardized and tested. At the same time, devices will need to be ready as well, allowing large scale deployment, especially in the professional market.

The outside world

By deploying digital processes, the organization opens up to its partners. As a result, customers enjoy a richer user experience. They find information faster, benefit from more personalized data, take advantage of automated processes (including the order process), and use different communication channels. As a result, the customer enjoys a richer offer of customized services.

Suppliers benefit from digitization and mobility to access a wider range of internal data and automate their logistics processes, which will improve operational excellence, reduce costs, and increase the levels of productivity, innovation, and creativity.

In the field

In any mobility project, it goes without saying that security is an important, if not crucial, dimension. Likewise, change management as well as user information and training need attention to ensure the widest possible adoption. And why not clean house before installing new mobile solutions?

To help companies succeed in their mobile transformation, Aprico respects and implements three basic rules: smart, lean, and agile. The smart approach aims at understanding the real added value of mobile technology for the organization and to set the business priorities to achieve the transformation. Aprico is open and independent. Its recommendations are based on the platforms and technologies that fit the client best. Aprico strongly believes in the lean improvement culture that involves planning the right resources at the right time and at the right cost. Finally, our agile methodology combines ongoing collaboration (involving stakeholders as early as possible) throughout the development process, rapid prototyping, and frequent testing (splitting the project into manageable entities resulting in regular delivery). Our approach reduces time-to-market, ensures easier change and maintenance, and ultimately improves customer satisfaction.

Adopting mobile technologies enables competitiveness

Thanks to networks and modern means of communication, frontiers and distances no longer exist. In this world, every business needs to provide its employees and commercial partners with secure access to information systems, at any moment and at any place. Today, businesses produce added value wherever their employees are. And those employees can literally be anywhere, as they happen to be more and more mobile. The development of mobile technologies forces them to integrate new tools into their way of working, to make sure they keep their competitive edge.

To be truly mobile, a business needs to integrate new tools. At the same time, it needs to adapt its operational processes and rethink an important part of its internal functions, based on applications that are capable of managing data. But what does that imply? Does a business have to turn its entire IT environment upside down? Does it have to start digging into its organizational structures?

According to Aprico Consultants, it doesn’t. Our approach is based on the evolution towards a more open organization, while changing the existing infrastructure to support this new openness. As a matter of fact, Aprico Consultants consider the evolution towards a mobile environment as the logical extension of the company’s existing processes, where mobility adds an extra dimension. This evolution takes place through communication and the integration of different types of platforms.

With their Mobile Enterprise strategy, Aprico Consultants aim at helping businesses innovate and rethink their processes, enabling them to open up these processes for the mobile world. We share the experience we built across numerous projects. Our customers benefit from best practices, new technologies and organizational models, allowing us to offer tailor-made transition and support every customer’s digital transformation. To achieve that goal, Aprico Consultants built a service offering that covers both competence outsourcing and tailor-made application development. It’s our creed to listen to the customer’s needs, build pragmatic solutions and offer consistent support throughout the entire digital transformation. Aprico Consultants always work in the interest of their customers and resent the idea of IT development for the sake of development.

More specifically, we believe that the key to the successful implementation of a mobile strategy is how to reconcile the objectives of a mobile platform (centered around greater customer intimacy) with the objectives of running efficient IT operations (seamless integration, the ability to execute and track end to end business processes across different platforms, etc).

Thankfully, our experience across mobile projects allows us to leverage the use of market-leading mobile technologies and frameworks, and combine them with best-of-breed BPM and integration technologies to maximize efficiency and value. This allows us to develop complex, transactional apps very quickly, and easily integrate them with diverse back-end environments.

As a company immersed in IT excellence, we also look beyond just the marketing advantages of a mobile app. Through automation and the use of DevOps, our solutions are easily maintainable, flexible enough to react to changing business realities, and future-proof.

To guarantee a mobile transformation project’s success, Aprico Consultants’ approach is based on three essential concepts – Smart, Lean and Agile – which are applied simultaneously. Smart means that Aprico Consultants really understand the added value of mobile solutions for the organization and that efforts are aimed at setting the right business and economic priorities to make the transformation work. Smart also means that Aprico Consultants work openly and independently, recommending the platforms and technologies that fit the customer’s reality best. Aprico Consultants apply continuous improvement to their Lean approach, enabling them to offer the right resources at the right time and at the best price. Finally, Aprico’s Agile vision combines discipline and permanent collaboration, involving all stakeholders into the development process at the earliest stage, allowing for quick prototyping and frequent testing, while dividing the project into manageable project sections and deliverables. The combination of these three essential rules leads to a shorter time-to-market. It allows for more flexibility and easier maintenance. Aprico Consultants’ method of working results in improved business performance and consequently in a higher level of customer satisfaction.

Use Xamarin To Speed Mobile App Deployments

Aprico Consultants can help you develop compelling mobile apps and services by leveraging the Xamarin Mobile Application Development technology This cross-platform offering lets your development teams write code in C# and quickly converts it into native iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps.

More and more companies rely on mobile apps to boost sales, raise productivity and improve customer service. The ever-expanding range of device types, screen sizes and OS versions, however, present unique challenges for mobile app developers. They also must contend with intermittent network connections, as well as user expectations of a simpler experience.

That’s why Aprico Consultants can help you develop compelling mobile apps and services by leveraging the Xamarin Mobile Application Development technology. This cross-platform offering lets your development teams write code in C# and quickly converts it into native iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps.

What’s more, Aprico’s architectural blueprint and out-of-the-box accelerators can vastly reduce the effort needed to design and implement mobile apps.

Code Once, Deploy Anywhere

The Xamarin Mobile Application Development technology allows you to leverage your organization’s existing C# development skills and expertise to deliver Android, iOS and Windows apps with native performance.

From a single code base in C#, apps are turned into native code for target mobile devices. Sixty to seventy-five percent of the code, for example, is usually common to Android and iOS. The other twenty-five to forty percent can then be handed to user experience people for creating fully native UIs customized for each platform.

By using Xamarin, your team develops its apps once, creates reusable elements and distributes them on multiple platforms, accelerating your time to market.

Build:

The Xamarin studio – now integrated in the Visual Studio IDE — gives you access to all iOS, Android and Windows Phone platform-specific device functionality to deliver truly native apps. You can create iOS and Android projects, e.g. define screens, flows, images and any other media, while reusing the code from one platform to another. The result? Significantly reduced development time and end-user training.

The Xamarin.Forms is a cross-platform UI toolkit that lets you easily create native user interface layouts that can be shared across Android, iOS and Windows Phone. In addition, you can customize the user interface in each platform by creating specific views with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android. Xamarin.Forms includes more than 40 controls and layouts, which are mapped to native controls at runtime.

Integrate:

Back-end software and services are what delivers real productivity. With Xamarin, you can easily integrate new apps with legacy apps and data sources, depending on where your back-end data is stored: in the cloud, on-premise, or both.

Microsoft web Apps, in particular, let you rapidly build, deploy and manage back-end services supporting your mobile applications. Many mobile-optimized cloud services functions, such as identity and security, off-line data synchronization and locations-based messaging, can be introduced with a few clicks.

You can also quickly build and consume APIs in the cloud using the language of your choice. As part of its Mobile Framework, Aprico has abstracted messaging system support for major suppliers, making it easy to implement push notification in the Azure back-end. We also support full offline mode, providing native sync experience across your iOS, Android and Windows apps.

Test:

The vast array of devices and OS variants, as well as their associated emulators, creates major testing challenges. Mobile apps must undergo tests across multiple form factors and operating systems, including UX functionality and flow under a range of conditions, such as offline, WiFi or cellular network operations.

Xamarin takes care of most of this tedious work. It lets you test every new feature and perform comprehensive regression tests from the UI down to ensure high quality releases. For example, you can automatically run UI tests locally or execute them on Xamarin Test Cloud where they can run on thousands of physical devices. Xamarin Test Cloud’s parallelization feature can split test runs and execute them across multiple devices simultaneously, increasing testing speed and frequency.

Reports give you the details that you need to know when a test fails, including statistics about UI, memory usage, duration, CPU usage and overall navigation.

Deploy

Software deployment can be a repetitive and sometimes fastidious task. That’s why Xamarin orchestrates deployments across multiple targets and perform rolling updates. Once you create a new build, for example, it automatically gets sent through a testing phase, and then onto the deploy phase. Delivery options can include different OS, public, private, and hybrid cloud deployments, or on-premise solutions if your organization has specific governance or regulatory requirements.

Hockey Apps, in particular, is great for distributing your apps in a unified way for all platform end-users. You can distribute beta versions, collect live crash reports, get feedback from real users, and analyze test coverage.

Continuous integration, automated testing, distribution, monitoring and engagement capabilities give you faster release cycles. Bugs, app crashes, or code failures can be detected and fixed much faster than with traditional development methods. Detailed data results let you rapidly determine where and why issues show up, and decide when you should focus your efforts to respond quickly.

What’s more, you’ll appreciate the Notification Hub. This multi-platform push engine integrates the different providers’ native push systems. It lets you engage your users via push notifications, by sending them targeted messages at the right time.

Fast-Track Approach:

At Aprico, we have implemented a Mobile Framework for using Xamarin technology to reduce costs and increase performance. It addresses the complete mobile app development life cycle  — from development and testing to deployment.

For more information on how to accelerate the delivery of your mobile apps, call 02.712.05.92.

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