Today IBM announced a (re)new(ed) mobile focus with MobileFirst. Those of us in the IBM ecosystem know that IBM has been getting serious about mobile with their acquisition of Worklight and the push for great mobile experiences through their IBM Portal and IBM Connections product with responsive templates out of the box and integrated mobile web and app experiences, respectively. What is bigger about this is that IBM is taking a very serious look at making the mobile ecosystem easier to work with. Redmonk captured it in a nice way here:
MobileFirst is a really big deal, because it doesn’t come alone. Mobile first means Cloud First. It also means Social First. It also means Big Data First. API-first. You get the picture. When a customer has a problem they think is a mobile problem, it turns out its a Cloud-hosting problem, and so on. Every mobile engagement IBM does with a client is going to have significant pull through in other areas. In that respect IBM’s mobile commitment is somewhat like its Linux commitment back in the day. IBM won’t make money directly selling a mobile operating system (it will leave that space to the likes of Google), but in associated revenue streams and product lines.
Mobile is more about the device and well summarized this is not about the device but the services. We have a great mobile practice around mobile web, mobile strategy and mobile application development and often the wiser people lead a mobile discussion about HOW they are going to get data or application functionality to a mobile device. I also think the investment into making the products work better together is also going to be a big win because they will allow companies to strategically bring services firms in to write or rewrite the services layers to make overall development easier not to mention the mobile side of things.
We will be keeping close tabs on how this will affect our customers and the mobile world in general.
