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OCC: Leapfrogging Today's Enterprise Productivity Benchmarks
This article was originally published on The Mobile Imperative. View Original Article 
As the occasionally connected computing (OCC) adoption levels increase, the impact on enterprise productivity will be enormous. Just as cell phones enabled a new level of communications productivity in the 1990s, business productivity applications with built-in OCC capability will enable a new level of application productivity within the real-time enterprise.
Trends for Offline Productivity: A Three-Stage Transformation
The technology enhancements that have enabled worker productivity over the past decade are unparalleled in history. The proliferation of desktop productivity applications (first stage) were quickly followed by the accessibility and ubiquity of the Internet (second stage).
In the late-1990s, business-user reliance on the Internet had become pervasive, as the Web browser made access to information in the office easier and wireless devices made access to some information in the field easier. Enterprise workers were generally satisfied in the connected environment, but the intermittent connection and poor browsing experience using the first-generation mobile devices caused some frustration and loss of productivity for the mobile worker. Continual connectivity improvements have enabled a richer and richer user experience, but these enhancements keep leading us down a path where the next wave in productivity never seems to be here soon enough. Combine the difficult economic climate today with the fact that corporations need to improve worker productivity by reducing latency and optimizing their processes, and you are faced with intense demand to get return on existing human and technology assets.
Today we are embarking on the third stage of enterprise computing, where enhancing mobility has now become the critical factor for the real-time enterprise. The mobile worker expects ubiquitous connectivity whether in the office, the field, or at home. Better devices (notebooks, Tablet PCs, PDAs, and smart phones), broader network coverage (LAN, WiFi, GPRS), and smarter applications and enabling infrastructure (such as dynamic collaboration applications) are allowing enterprise workers to be productive irrespective of their location or device type.
Mobility Defined
There is a lot of confusion in how mobility is defined today. We simply define it as a computing work style that supports today's enterprise worker. An enterprise worker expects to be productive while at his desk, in meetings within the office, out in the field, or at home. Productivity is not predicated on being connected 100 percent of the time but on having access to relevant information and application functionality required to do the job. This is called the occasionally connected computing mode of connectivity. An OCC worker is productive online and offline by having at his disposal both relevant data and application access to get his tasks completed. This is best illustrated by the following example:
A courier driver checks into his office in the morning, downloads his delivery schedule to his laptop, and then leaves the office. While mobile in his delivery truck he can still use his laptop to access detailed delivery guidelines for his stops, access exception instructions, and look up maps that have been locally cached on his notebook. He can also add, delete, and modify information and set up alerts and notifications to his supervisor — all in an offline mode. If his notebook is wirelessly enabled, he may periodically connect to the home office, receive new, urgent dispatch requests or changes, and synchronize all the stored actions/queries he has created whenever the network is available and detected by the device.
This OCC mobility example highlights the effectiveness and efficiency that a field worker can enjoy. This and other OCC application examples in this paper should help line-of-business (LOB) managers to evaluate their mobile needs and understand how they can begin to build a business case to deploy OCC technology within their business enterprise. Developing new composite OCC applications or enabling existing applications to work seamlessly in an offline mode necessitates the integration of various standards-based technologies, all of which exist today and make OCC not just possible, but very powerful.
OCC Technology Landscape and Roles of Participants
As we embark on this current stage of mobility, we need to evaluate what technology infrastructure is required to enable OCC. The simplest way to look at the landscape is from the end-user perspective, by identifying what functionality and applications they will need to access when they are intermittently connected. Our approach is to break the end-user applications into four categories and then work backward to identify the communications intelligence building blocks that may be required to enable those applications to function in an OCC mode (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: OCC ISV Landscape (Companies mentioned are a subset of OCC ISVs in the market today.)
End-User Applications
Native OCC Applications
These applications have been designed to support both offline and online computing seamlessly.
Client/Server Applications With Offline Functionality
These are traditional client/server applications such as ERP, salesforce automation, supply chain management, and collaborative applications that have been transformed to operate seamlessly in an offline and online mode.
Stand-Alone Windows Applications
These applications run on top of the Microsoft¨ operating system and include either the Microsoft suite of applications or other applications that utilize or are tightly integrated with the Microsoft applications.
Stand-Alone and Browser-Based Java Applications
These are traditional Java applications that run alone as an applet or by utilizing an existing Web browser. These applications have been transformed to operate seamlessly online or offline.
Communications Intelligence Building Blocks
Rich Client Enablers and Real-Time Integration Companies
This includes companies that enable a rich client experience offline and/or support open standards-based integration with multiple data sources to serve as the foundation for a business process or a composite application. These products also enable the user to view, monitor, interact, and take action in a disconnected mode. Actions and changes get updated and executed when a network connection becomes available.
OCC Network and Platform Companies
These companies sit on top of the application server and allow enterprises to build/transform and deploy OCC applications. They provide an orchestration environment, standards-based integration capability, transaction integrity and security infrastructure, asynchronous messaging support, synchronization capability, network roaming support, bandwidth management, and dynamic device adaptation.
OCC Enablers and Management Companies
These include companies that provide specific pieces of the OCC building blocks such as distributed database and synchronization infrastructure, data and application optimization, reliability and security, administration and manageability, testing, and remote monitoring.
Real-World OCC Successes Today
To highlight today's successful OCC application scenarios, we have summarized how four emerging software companies have deployed their technology to enable the real-time enterprise and improve productivity.
Peer Direct
Peer Direct enables applications to run on remote servers or notebook devices with a local data-set. Their products use an asynchronous messaging model. The data-set available on a specific device can publish/subscribe to a slice of the overall distributed data. That data-set is maintained as part of the composite data-set automatically.
An example deployment allows a large aircraft-maintenance company to give users at different locations access to different data-sets online or offline. On the airplane, crew members, using notebook PCs, have access to plane-specific maintenance data offline that they carry with them and synchronize when on the ground. At the airport, the service depots have maintenance-record information on airplanes that are in the depots or are in transit to the depots. The maintenance crew can carry this information on a notebook PC to the airplane when making repairs and update the records, order parts, and so on in an offline manner. The information is updated transparently to the user when the network becomes available. At the central office, management has the full picture of the fleet readiness, roll-up views of updates, changes, and the like.
Nobilis
A key piece of the mobile imperative has been the need for enterprise-level controls and automation to be extended across the last mile to desktop productivity tools. Mobile salesforces and management have tended to rely on Microsoft Office-type tools due to the need to operate on a mobile basis, untethered from the corporate network. The Nobilis platform allows users to create occasionally connected, process-driven applications that are fully integrated with the Microsoft Office suite.
An example deployment enabled a large health care company's mobile salesforce and management team to improve their forecasting and planning processes. The old Microsoft Excel-based process met their need for mobility (managers could work on their forecast anywhere their laptop went), but fell short of the desired controls and automation that would have been provided by a network-based enterprise application. There was no visibility into the process status, deadlines were consistently missed, data was error-ridden, rules were applied inconsistently, and time was wasted aggregating information from multiple spreadsheets. The health care company turned to Nobilis to automate the forecasting process and place needed controls on deadlines, submissions, and rule-adherence, while maintaining the ability to work in an untethered state. Nobilis enabled them to define and execute the workflow and business rules governing the planning process while continuing to use Microsoft Excel as the front-end for participant interaction. As a result, cycle times were slashed by more than half, data quality was dramatically improved, and hours spent manually checking forecasts for errors and rule-adherence were eliminated.
Salesnet
Salesnet is a Web-based salesforce automation application that offers an offline extension of its application, blurring the line between connected and disconnected computing. It uses a subscription model that allows users to choose what information they would want when offline. It uses a relational database locally, ensuring high performance (overcomes latency issues) regardless of number of records brought offline. When synchronizing, it transparently updates not only the data, but also revisions to business logic and the user interface offline. It also supports integration to numerous other data sources using standards-based XML application programming interfaces (APIs) to provide more comprehensive data to the offline user and to enhance their productivity.
Digital Harbor
Digital Harbor builds software that allows users to develop rich composite applications. The applications give occasionally connected end users access to the rich decision-making capability that comes from combining data, processes, and rules. One of Digital Harbor's deployments has enabled the central command and remote tactical operations centers for the U.S. Department of Defense. The application allows reports to display real-time information when connected and static snapshots when disconnected. In either case, the analyst can correlate all of the data and use all of the functionality, because it is stored locally on the desktop. To act upon the report, the user can execute functionality on the client and reconnect to submit a transaction stored as an asynchronous query. Applications capture data from multiple data sources and display information of multiple types. Not just the data itself, but the relationships among the data and the functionality to manipulate the data are stored locally on the desktop, so when in offline mode, full data manipulation and application functionality is available.
For instance, an intelligence officer can navigate a geospacial system and update alerts about targets while disconnected from the network, and he will still be able to drill through the data-set, which contains a union of map coordinates, map images, target data, and status information. Users can enter data into a form on a laptop and reconnect to update the underlying data-store.
What the Future Holds for the Enterprise and the End User
As more software vendors start embracing the OCC model as the new computing work style that supports today's enterprise worker, we will start to see multimodal functionality and communications intelligence either offered or supported by these vendors. Below is a list of some of the OCC communications intelligence features that you may see being offered by software vendors over the next 12 to 36 months.
Automatic Data Roaming
We will see applications that support persistent connectivity functionality while roaming across networks. Users will be able to seamlessly roam across different networks without losing their session.
Heterogeneous Device Support
We will see applications being designed once and being deployed across multiple devices intelligently rather then having to modify or write user interface for each category of devices.
Data and Bandwidth Management
We will see applications offer least cost intelligent routing across the most optimal network available (WiFi, Satellite, GPRS). Additionally, based on the connection available, the application will determine what and when to transmit — transparent to the user (not transmitting signatures or images via a satellite connection, for instance, but waiting for a WiFi connection to transmit that data type).
Offline Asynchronous Messaging
Applications that utilize and support Web Services protocols today offer asynchronous messaging support while online. An enterprise worker will be able to gather information in real time while the application automatically and seamlessly populates the screen as information becomes available.
Today the user is forced to hit the refresh key. We will soon see applications support asynchronous messaging offline as well, whereby a user will be able to invoke queries and requests when disconnected and seamlessly execute those tasks when connected.
Enhanced Data Integration Capability
With the increasing acceptance of Web Services, application vendors will start exposing their core data and functionality using standards-based XML APIs. This will accelerate the current trend toward new composite applications, where users pull together information from multiple, loosely coupled data sources rather than browsing across multiple applications.
Ease of Development and Deployment
We will see an increasing trend toward easier application design and development tools targeted at business users to enable them to build and deploy their own OCC composite applications to automate myriad activities, such as time and expense reporting, PO approval, and financial planning. Companies like Nobilis (integrated with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word) and Adesso Systems offer some of that functionality today.
Conclusion
As we embark on the next stage of enhanced enterprise productivity, getting business users to understand the value that mobility and OCC bring to the extended enterprise is a key success factor. Mobility is here to stay. OCC application functionality is being deployed by large enterprises today, and as the OCC adoption levels increase over the near term, the impact on enterprise productivity will be enormous.
Just as cell phones enabled a new level of communications productivity in the 1990s, business productivity applications with built-in OCC capability will now enable a new level of application productivity within the real-time enterprise that will allow the business user to be more responsive to the needs of co-workers, partners, and customers, thereby creating an ever-increasing return on both our human and technology assets.