There’s an App for That
This guest blog was contributed by Mike Stramaglio.
Who would have thought that after all of the change and innovation that the Internet has brought to our lives and businesses, Web browsing would become “old school” or mundane?
In 2011, we saw continued exponential growth in smartphones and the beginning of the era of the tablet – with Apple leading the charge and Android catching up fast. Over the holidays, I was astonished to read that more than 700,000 Android devices are activated each day, and 3.7 million Androids were activated over Christmas weekend alone!
With all of this device growth and the excitement over the next cool “app,” software development has shifted away from creating a great Web presence to creating apps; and this change point will affect our lives for many years to come. Just think of how things have changed already. No longer do you need a desktop computer to access the Web; instead, you can use your phone, your tablet, your e-reader, your laptop, your netbook, and even your car to get pertinent, on-demand information instantly. Apps allow users to get specific information on a specific device without the need to browse or search. Apple’s tagline “There’s an App for that” really says it all.
Where’s all of this going, and how will affect our industry? Well, most of us already have a persona in the cloud so that no matter which device you happen to be using, you’re already synced up with your files, music, videos, pictures, email, calendar and contacts. How convenient is that? Imagine what it will mean when the machines that we work with every day – printers, scanners, and MFPs – also have a persona in the cloud? Well, it’s already happening. When you think about machine to machine (M2M) or machine to people (M2P) technology, it’s simply leveraging the cloud and the smart devices to automatically communicate pertinent information instantly. No longer does a technician need to go onsite to diagnose a problem; instead, they can communicate with the machine directly to troubleshoot, pull the history or check the status and then, if need be, make a “smart” service call with all of the right tools and parts.
The challenge is that with all of this smart communication going on between machines and people, there is way too much information to consume. In fact there is clearly an information overload today, and it’s not going to stop anytime soon. In a study titled “Extracting Value from Chaos,” IDC predicts we will see a 50-times increase in the world’s data in the next 10 years leading to even greater information overload. In 2011 alone, they reported that 1.8 zettabytes (or 1.8 trillion gigabytes) of data was created. This is the equivalent to every U.S. citizen writing three tweets per minute for 26,976 years! This is where smart applications come in.
An app typically helps users and devices to slice and dice all of the available information and deliver precise data that is pertinent to the user or device in a particular situation. Consider the apps you use every day and how they divide all of the information that you have access to and only deliver what you want, when you want it. Whether it’s your Facebook, banking or navigation app, each one browses the Web for you, and delivers only the information that you want/need.
So, as we look to grow our businesses and make them more efficient and profitable, we need to consider where we are applying apps and how they manage information effectively in an integrated architecture. For example, most of our industry considers MPS to be an integrated printing architecture, when in fact, it’s just an app. An effective integrated architecture for our industry needs to encompass a lot more than just MPS alone. Think of all of the information exchange that your business does outside of your MPS practice. How do you integrate your service fleet, customer communications, industry knowledge and sales data into an integrated architecture that will empower your business to be more efficient, profitable and enhance the value of your core product offerings while enabling expansion into new markets and opportunities?
Simply said… there needs to be an app for that.
Contact Mike Stramaglio at mike.stramaglio@mwaintel.com.
Mike Stramaglio
Mike Stramaglio has a long history of leadership in the Office Equipment industry. Over his nearly 30-year career, he has served as president and COO of Hitachi Koki Imaging Solutions Inc., and held senior management positions with Minolta Corporation and Ricoh Corporation. Under his stewardship, Hitachi earned the prestigious Most Innovative Manufacturer of the Year award for two consecutive years. He was also formerly CEO of Imaging Portals, Inc., and a two-time winner of the Executive of the Year award, presented by Marketing Research Consultants Inc. He joined Electronics For Imaging as General Manager of EFI's Service Automation division in 2003. In this role, he was responsible for Automated Dispatch Systems and the Intelligent Device Management solution set, bringing them together under a new name: Mobile Workforce Automation. In acknowledgment of his experience and expertise, M2M Magazine elected him M2M Technology Advisor (Imaging) in early 2007.
Posted on 01/17/2012