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IBM and Microsoft appear on the iPad and SharePoint will be next

Microsoft released a mobile Xbox app today, bringing the 'Metro' style interface to Windows Phone devices, iPhones and iPads everywhere. It looks pretty smart and further evidence that Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division really is on a tear (my PS3 is ashamed, it's being so left behind).

Also released today were a number of tablet-focused enterprise software apps from IBM:

The new software, available for download today from popular application stores, takes what IDC rates as the industry-leading IBM social networking, real-time collaboration and online meeting capabilities from behind the company firewall and places it into the hands of tablet users.

We can definitely expect more major software to come to the iPad, and that includes SharePoint. In meeting and board rooms across the world, Apple dominates the tablet market. "We're getting sign off for iPads for all of us" is something many executives have said to me in the past few months, the grin on their faces says it all. It's no wonder that at #Share2011 late in November here in Sydney, Microsoft's Jerry Smith was being none too subtle about SharePoint's arrival on 'other tablets" and "other phones". I wonder when we'll see it... and what it will look like.

Award winning mobile intranets

Step Two Designs has just published a brand new report on the topic of the moment - Mobile intranets. 

Read on for the full description, or head to the Step Two Designs site to purchase the report.

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As mobile devices continue to transform our daily lives, there is increasing pressure for organisations to provide staff with mobile access and functionality. To date, there have been few examples to follow, making it hard to know what to deliver, and how.

This report provides three compelling case studies of mobile intranets, covering the corporate, government and education sectors. Providing dozens of screenshots and 45 pages of insights and guidance, the report is a must-have for all web, intranet and IT teams.

With some web companies moving to a “mobile first” strategy, mobile devices are transforming how we access information as consumers. Within organisations, the pressure to deliver mobile functionality to staff is becoming overwhelming.

Senior managers now have iPads. Field staff have smartphones in their private lives, and are demanding similar functionality in their working lives. There are a hundred reasons why staff need to access information when they are away from their desks.

The challenge has been knowing what to deliver, and how. This report answers these questions with three real-world case studies:

• UK Parliament delivering key functionality to MPs, who are rarely in their offices.
• Queensland University of Technology providing staff and students with a mobile portal of remarkably simplicity.
• Lafarge, a global corporation, supporting the yearly senior management retreat with a mobile site.

Each of these case studies won an award in the 2011 Intranet Innovation Awards. In addition to the three compelling examples, the report provides further insight from the team at Step Two Designs:

• key themes from the winning case studies
• what staff want on their mobiles
• four types of enterprise mobility
• elements of a mobile intranet strategy

If you are planning to deliver mobile enterprise functionality, this report will give you invaluable ideas and examples to help shape your plans and designs.

(Want to know more about the rest of the winners of the 2011 Intranet Innovation Awards? The case studies are just three of the ten winners this year, and we recommend purchasing the fullIntranet Innovations 2011 report.)

15 intranet case studies / examples and over 200 intranet screenshots

Alongside the announcement of the 2010 Intranet Innovation Award winners, Step Two Designs has published the Intranet Innovations 2010 report. This features 15 detailed case studies/examples of the winners and commended entries this year, and over 200 screenshots in full colour.

It's a must-have for intranet teams, who rarely get to see the work of others in their field.

I also think this year's Platinum winner, Canadian law firm Bennett Jones, has created one of the most sophisticated, fit-for-purpose and business-critical intranets ever seen. Described in a 17-page case study, BenNet is the result of two years of hard work by the Bennett Jones team and their partnering consultancies.

Together with this example, the report also contains key themes and editorials from the six international judges (myself, James Robertson, Catherine Grenfell, Martin White, William Amurgis and Jane McConnell) and covers topics including:

• Content is no longer king
• The tipping point of social media
• The dominance of SharePoint
• Personalisation that works
• The increasing focus on user experience
• Garnering exectuive support and buy in, and more

We also discuss future trends, including intranets on mobile devices, the increasing focus on data and analytics, and the potential of gaming mechanics and gamification.

I know I'm biased, but there's so much to learn in all of this I think it's an invaluable resource given the meagre price. As a PDF, it also looks great on iPads ;-) (below: Framestore's customisable homepage entry).

Head to the Step Two Designs site to find out more and purchase your copy instantly.

The latest articles from Step Two Designs - Creating effective intranet 'shop windows' / Elements of a mobile enterprise strategy / Intranet access challenges

Over on the Step Two Designs site we've published our latest articles. They are:

Creating effective intranet 'shop windows' by James Robertson

Elements of a mobile enterprise strategy by James Robertson

Intranet access challenges by Stephen Byrne

As ever, all articles are free to read and download as PDFs. We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments and experiences.

iPhone suitable for legal folks who need document management access

Apple has posted a case study today of DLA Philips Fox, a large Australian law firm that's using iPhones right across the business. Not only is it used for email, calendar and mobile web (and as a phone, of course), it's also being used for document management, with a custom-designed application.

The other interesting aspect gleaned from the video - 'after the 5 minute training session with a new employee, off they go and you never hear them again.' So very little training is needed.

Intranets and internal systems on mobile devices is something of a special interest for me, but aside from the odd example, there's really very little progress with it in the grand scheme. While this example is clearly very favourable to Apple (being a case study published by them), it's good to see custom business apps like this being designed.

Downloading the entire intranet to a phone?

That sounds like a crazy idea doesn't it: having the entire intranet available on your mobile device, even if you're not online, or in a mobile/3G/Wi-Fi reception area (like a plane at 35,000 feet).

While the mechanics are undoubtedly different, and you very likely wouldn't need the entire intranet on your phone, this O-Reilly interview concerns a developer who has ported all of Wikipedia to the iPhone. It provides food for thought if you're charged with providing detailed knowledge bases and information resources to mobile operatives and employees:

Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's Encylopedia iPhone application does.

In making Wikipedia fit on the 8GB phone, and robust enough to use, Collison stripped out anything and everything that would derail the application from its ambition:

"It's around 12 or 13 gigabytes uncompressed. The very first thing we do is it comes in this very verbose XML format. We have our own custom format that just includes the bare minimum amount of metadata. And then compacts it in this fairly space efficient binary way. We manage to strip out 20 or 30 percent of the content just by doing that.

Then we apply bzip compression... we also remove some of the content from the applications, the kind of stuff that's not particularly useful on the phone. We strip out the links, for example, to the article in other languages because those links don't work in an offline application. We don't have the other languages. We add links to pictures because we're not storing the pictures. We strip out references because I'm assuming you're not too interested in analyzing the minutia of the references when you're using the phone, and that kind of stuff. And so that, again, saved us another 20 to 30 percent or so.

And really, that's it. I mean what ends up being transferred to the phone is just this huge two gigabyte bzip2 encoded text file that we then index in various ways to allow it to selectively decompress various chunks when a user wants to load an article."

This is clever, and there's definitely some potential uses for such a process in the corporate environment - that's if intranets on mobile devices ever really take off.

Encylopedia - Wikipedia on the iPhone $12.99 by Steam Heavy Industries (iTunes link)

[O'Reilly Radar]