The reality or the Independent mobility platform

 In just 10 years, the wireless smartphone market has gone from virtually nonexistent to becoming a household term worldwide. At the start of the millennium, Research in Motion (RIM) was pretty much the only significant vendor selling what were then called "wireless PDAs." Today, there are no less than six major operating systems for smartphones. Currently, they account for 14 percent of overall mobile device sales, but it is expected that by 2012 they will make up about 37 percent of global handset sales.

Today, scores of smartphones are offered on the market, offering consumers and businesses a wide variety of options for both personal and enterprise needs. However, they have also presented a challenge for organizations looking to deploy enterprise-wide mobile solutions. Given all the device choices, as a business or IT executive, what are you to do?

If you have already embraced mobility for your workforce, great! However, there are a number of new smartphones coming to market at a breakneck pace that enterprises are trying to seamlessly integrate into their strategy. Conversely, many organizations have yet to implement a mobility strategy of any kind because of the daunting number and constantly evolving amount of choices on the market. How can you ensure that your investment is not obsolete by the time you deploy?

Platform is the answer

What's the answer to both scenarios just mentioned? In a word: platform. When planning a mobility strategy, the natural inclination may be to start with one device type and lock into it for simplicity and manageability. But today's hot device could be tomorrow's paperweight. A platform approach to mobility can minimize the dependency on the device by ensuring that new devices and technologies are easily integrated into the mobile solution.

Using a mobility platform, IT does not have to use multiple software tools to manage users and applications across multiple device types. They are freed up to design and deploy the best possible applications without being constrained by device limitations or management and control concerns—today and in the future. Also, because IT can easily manage multiple types of smartphones, business users can choose the appropriate device type for their work profile without overburdening IT resources.

With the ability to adopt anything from a rugged Windows Mobile device for technicians to a BlackBerry for salespeople or an iPhone for management, business units can use whatever devices best suit the job at hand and the unique wants and needs of the users. This freedom of choice will help to drive adoption and increase the usability and effectiveness of the applications on workers' devices.

When an enterprise adopts a mobility platform that supports multiple mobile devices, it provides its employees with unprecedented tools for productivity and efficiency. It also empowers IT to discover and create new applications to maximize mobility from end-to-end.

Talk on HTML5

As we all know, the battle between Flash and HTML5 for the future of online video is raging. But what about that other plugin some sites use for video? You know, the one made by Microsoft — Silverlight? A new posting tonight may call that platform’s future in video into question as well. Because arguably their most important client is looking to jump on the HTML5 video bandwagon: Netflix.

Netflix’s Director of Web Engineering, Adrian Cockcroft, indicates the company’s intention to embrace HTML5 going forward. The move is apparently spurred on by Netflix’s move to Amazon’s cloud, which will require a re-architecting of the codebase, Cockcroft notes. So what better time to start supporting the latest technologies? “One of these is HTML5, which is raising the bar for cross browser support for advanced user interface features, and is now supported by a large and rapidly growing percentage of the visitors to netflix.com. In addition many TV based devices now embed webkit, which is the HTML5 compatible technology that underpins the Safari and Chrome browsers,” Cockcroft writes.
It’s interesting that Cockcroft never actually mentions the video capabilities of HTML5, instead he talks about the “advanced user interface features.” Still, I think we all know what he means.
He also points out that Netflix is looking to hire to make this transition happen. The one posting he highlights is for a Senior User Interface Engineer — HTML5. The position description reads as follows:

Are you passionate about building great website experiences used by millions of visitors each day? Come to Netflix where we are using HTML5 based web technologies to move ecommerce directly onto to televisions in our customers’ living rooms. As part of our Customer Acquisition team, you will lead the way to our internationalized television user interface designed to help new customers find Netflix and start streaming movies in seconds. This new experience will be deployed to HTML5 capable embedded browsers and served from our cutting edge cloud based backend service.

This move shouldn’t be all that surprising considering that Netflix was one of the first apps to embrace the iPad, bringing its videos (h264 encoded) to the device through a native app. Still, this is a huge potential win for HTML5, presuming it happens.

What happened in 2009?

We do hoping that the new year 2010 will give more extra miles to our technological and economical milestone. Nonetheless, a lot of things have happened in the year 2009 including in technology matter. We give the ten most happening event in technology news 2009.