Introduction

Preface: The paper “Mobile Information and Knowledge Management: A Prototype-based Evaluation of the Apple iPhone SDK” was written in the context of a bachelor thesis at m2c lab (Aachen, University of Applied Sciences).

The current smartphone market is lively, crowded and fast moving. Vendors push massively new technology into the stores. A very popular example for this trend is Apple. The Cupertino-based company's mobile devices iPhone and iPod touch often causes stir with their latest innovations. Especially Apple’s iPhone is an interesting object to analyze, because it has proven vast potential as a technological leader in the smartphone consumer segment. Can these abilities get applied feasibly to the business sphere? Will the iPhone be a wide success story also in the corporate world?

Well, the present thesis cannot predict the future. However, it will evaluate important aspects, which give interesting points on the questions above. Every corporation, which is interested in the iPhone platform as a mobile business driver, should ask themselves individual questions for their projects. With this bachelor thesis, they will get a knowledge and decision basis for finding their very own answers.

AKIM Screenshots

Background

Most corporations today are only able to stay competitive by enabling their field workers, specialists and managers to work mobile. These companies need special mobile software solutions for their business processes. Currently, these corporations are offered a variety of mobile platforms. Many of them (e.g. Android, iPhone, Palm) are rather new to the market.

When innovative mobile platforms enter the stage and start growing, their suitability for individual projects is mostly cloudy. Right now, in this early product phases, the demand for evaluation is high.

A recent platform, which has engaged high interest of many people and companies, is the Apple iPhone. Apple has celebrated great success in the consumer market. But how can enterprises make use of it?

Every corporation requires individual use cases for their mobile business processes. Hence, finding common criterions for the evaluation was a challenge. Therefore, the thesis examined the field of mobile business software. As a result, the emphasis of the prototype-based evaluation was set on knowledge management. Knowledge management provides an ambitious test bed and inherits information management aspects (e.g. database storage).

AKIM Screenshots

Prototype-based Evaluation

The prototype's focus is on evaluating the iPhone SDK with several use cases of knowledge management:


The resulting iPhone application "AKIM" captures information and knowledge (notes, pictures, audio records) on the go. Furthermore it is able to store these items wirelessly on a corporate server. Via this backend, the prototype is able to retrieve items in mobile situations (by search or location based). Moreover, it demonstrates a way to distribute knowledge and how to implement knowledge expert systems for remote workplaces. Possible users of a similar structured application could be:

  • Industrial service workers
  • Rescue teams
  • Real estate brokers
  • and many others

Concept Scribble

     Prototype Concept Scribble

Résumé

While evaluating the Apple iPhone SDK, three different kinds of use cases for the iPhone SDK cristalized out:

1. Painless Use Cases:

Most of the standard business tasks (information input/retrieval) are covered well by the iPhone SDK and are implementable in reasonable time. The iPhone SDK is suitable for such use cases. An example for painless implementation is capturing and upload of pictures.

2. Possible Use Cases:

Some use cases are possible, but with disproportional high efforts. Corporations have to do cost-benefit analysis to asses the financial risk of using hard implementable functionality. An example for this is the communication with Microsoft SharePoint export. The iPhone SDK may be right candidate for projects that involve such use cases.

3. Impossible Use Cases:

Other use cases are not possible at all. Furthermore, most of these problems are not caused by technical limitations, but instead on political decisions of Apple. Only if Apple decides to remove some barriers, these use cases will become possible. The iPhone SDK is not the right tool to realize projects, which rely on this functionality (e.g. displaying CRM information on incoming calls).

The iPhone is just on the beginning of its way to the enterprise sphere. It clearly comes form a consumer market and tries now to adapt business functionality. The basics are already there and work very well. However, Apple has to remove some “mission critical” political limitations for their SDK in order to attract a wide range clientele in the mobile business software sphere. Over the time, the SDK improved constantly and gained new functionality. It is still in a growing phase and will hold some feature surprises for the next years.

Further Information

This microsite shows only a small preview of the evaluation. If you would like to know more, have questions on the evaluation or iPhone mobile business software, free feel to contact m2c lab or the author of this evaluation:

Author of the evaluation:
Stefan Schuhmann

m2c lab at Aachen, University of Applied Sciences
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Ritz
Eupener Str. 70
D-52066 Aachen
Telefon: +49(0)241/6009-52136
 Contact by E-mail

AKIM Screenshots