As CTIA Wireless 2012 winds down, I’m left with some strong, even indelible impressions of the event and its impact on enterprise mobility. First, a big hat tip to 151 Advisors and the Enterprise Mobility Forum for creating a truly unique environment. Bringing so many players together — vendors, practitioners, and systems integrators alike — generated an incredibly comprehensive view of the enterprise mobile apps industry.
We also have to give a shout out to Apperian, our cohorts in the Mobile Application Management (MAM) space. During the App-Solutely Enterprise pre-conference event, we were able to exchange ideas, debate and discuss MAM, MDM, security and a host of other relevant topics in a civil and constructive way.
Really, it proved to be a remarkable moment where competitors in the marketplace united to help define the very industry in which we operate. While the definition of MAM seems to change almost weekly (try keeping up with the Wikipedia page edits) we sat down as frontline allies to really start putting the most credible, and hopefully consistent, definition in place.
We agree that the faster vendors coalesce on what MAM is, the faster the market gets our way of thinking and wants to buy our great products. So again, thanks to all the vendors for helping us determine the rules of the game!
Afterward, it was time to walk around the convention floor and absorb the impact of everything mobile happening in that massive Morial convention center. There’s more than 1.1 million square feet of exhibit space there in the Big Easy, and every inch of it was reverberating with mobile innovation. In the midst of it all, I realized that for all my devotion to enterprise mobile apps, that constitutes only a slice of the the entire mobile pie. Line providers, carriers, RF measurements, signal strength, heck even the vendors who sell ruggedized smartphone cases — we’re all part of something that’s a lot bigger than we might realize.
The opportunities are just going to get bigger.
CTIA, thanks again. It was an incredible experience. We realized the real size of mobility, and I think we just might have defined the real meaning of MAM.
