This presentation deck is intended to provide an overview of MobileFirst Platform Foundation. The intended audience is IT decision stakeholders, including Senior IT Managers, Architects, and Digital Transformation leaders.
For a deeper dive of the MobileFirst Platform Foundation product for developers, Architects, and IT Admins, use the Deep Dive deck found here:
For a business level overview of the MobileFirst Platform Foundation product for LOB App owner, CIO, and other business stakeholders, use the Mobile Category overview found here:
Businesses must compete today in a digital marketplace. Every industry is being disrupted by new business models through the use of digital technology. The key to success in the this digital marketplace? Stakeholders, including end consumer users and employees, expect innovate, personalized and efficient interactions with you via an array of interconnected digital technologies. We all need to be hyper focused on our customers, because engaged customers lead to loyalty which in turn drive revenue, and profitability. Focusing on engaging with our employees
Customers expect: 1) for you to know who they are, by tailoring and personalizing every interaction you have with them to their needs 2) to make every interaction efficient and innovative, by making the experience intuitive, seamless and frictionless (don’t get in their way of getting the information they need from you), and 3) for you to prioritize protecting them and their data
Employees
Everyone knows of Uber, Airbnb, and Betterment, as start-ups that are hyper focused on providing disruptive digital experiences, and have disrupted well established industry giants with their innovation. Well established industry leaders are also silently transforming to disrupt their respective industries: Starbucks, Tesco (IBM Customer), Tangerine Bank (IBM Customer) are all examples of companies that have transformed their organization with digital innovation.
[note to speaker] optional to dive into Starbucks as a case study, or just highlight the fact that over 20% of its transactions now flow through its mobile app. More IBM customer drilldown later on slide 5.
Starbucks has transformed itself from a brick-and-mortal retail into a technology company that bridges physical and digital
Mobile and app-centric innovation has been key to its business success
Deep customer engagement is possible leveraging new technology innovations: mobile wallet, mobile order & pay, mobile loyalty program, Spotify integration, Lyft integration
Today, more than 20% of its transactions flow through its mobile app
Digital Transformation enables Mobile First interactions with your stakeholders (clients or employees). Yet, according to a recent study by the IBM Center of Applied Insights, an estimated 66% of mobile app projects fail
Development must be fast:
To compete, the time-to-market cycle must be shortened. This is difficult in the reality of tightly structured development practices, slowed by complex IT infrastructure and Processes
There is no efficient way to involve all Business and IT App stakeholders throughout the design, build, test, and delivery cycle
Frequent vendor OS releases and bug fixes slows the delivery of actual app features
Testing each update against all possible configurations can consume up to 80% of cycle time
Apps connected to enterprise backend require heavy integration work for each iteration
Integration Requires are exploding:
Connecting new channels to enterprise data exposes you to an unprecedented level of risk. CISOs demand structured and governed access to enterprise data which slows progress
Large, brittle backend data and applications that are difficult to access
Mobile devices are largely uncontrolled and risk exposure is high
Lack of architected approach and limited scalability in current approaches
Difficult to control and govern constantly changing environment – especially with advent of IOT and other new digital interaction points
Constantly…:
It is difficult to leverage the constantly changing landscape of disruptive technologies to gain a competitive advantage with new, innovative and meaningful customer interactions
Difficulty is rooted in:
Each new innovation requires new skills in development
Integrating new technology into the app requires re-invention of the customer interaction moment
You only get one change to get it right - quality problems deteriorate the user experience and can damage your brand
To succeed in enterprise mobility, you have to adapt and transform your IT systems and processes. (Digital Transformation)
Many companies have IT that grew up on a different model that’s now struggling to keep up with the agility of mobile.
Existing systems, tools, security protocols and development cycles are not suited to the dynamic, always-on nature of mobile users.
Traditional processes aren’t responsive enough to support a business environment that’s transforming with growing mobile capability.
If you’re being held back by similar challenges, you’re not alone.
To succeed quickly, you need to start by creating the right environment for rapid and continuous digital innovation.
MobileFirst Platform Foundation allows you to develop the ultimate end-user experience required by the business with existing skillsets. The MADP category is often misrepresented as locked-in to certain front-end technology stacks. We allow you to use any front-end technology & framework, and tools to develop your ultimate front end experience.
Choose the right front-end stack for the job. Rich support for front-end development paradigms including native, Cordova, Xamarin, and JavaScript frameworks
Any codebase, using any tools. Whether you’re developing pure native or mobile web, build from easy-to-use CLI, classic Studio Eclipse-based IDE, or use the tools that work for you
Go from idea to app. Turn your IBM Mobile App Builder prototype into professional, enterprise-grade MobileFirst app
Build with the open ecosystem. Leverage npm, Gradle and Cocoa Pods to create and manage your MobileFirst app builds
Tailored authentication policies with advanced mobile authentication
Step-up and multi-factor authentication to balance security with ease of use
SSO between apps and between back-ends
Different authentication for different human interfaces (e.g., pin code for watch, finger print for phone, password for web)
SDKs, templates, and examples for speed up development
Developer-free configuration and roll out for safe and quick updates
Protection of corporate APIs from access by unsanctioned mobile apps
App fingerprinting to prevent API access from malicious apps
Remote app disable and forced update of app code to protect users from unsafe apps
Device blacklisting to protect from device loss or theft
Device whitelisting to prevent app misuse
Protection of brand, data, and credentials on the mobile device
Encrypted on-device storage to protect data
Certificate pinning to thwart man-in-the-middle attacks
App obfuscation to hide app code
Tailored authentication policies with advanced mobile authentication
Step-up and multi-factor authentication to balance security with ease of use
SSO between apps and between back-ends
Different authentication for different human interfaces (e.g., pin code for watch, finger print for phone, password for web)
SDKs, templates, and examples for speed up development
Developer-free configuration and roll out for safe and quick updates
Protection of corporate APIs from access by unsanctioned mobile apps
App fingerprinting to prevent API access from malicious apps
Remote app disable and forced update of app code to protect users from unsafe apps
Device blacklisting to protect from device loss or theft
Device whitelisting to prevent app misuse
Protection of brand, data, and credentials on the mobile device
Encrypted on-device storage to protect data
Certificate pinning to thwart man-in-the-middle attacks
App obfuscation to hide app code
Tailored authentication policies with advanced mobile authentication
Step-up and multi-factor authentication to balance security with ease of use
SSO between apps and between back-ends
Different authentication for different human interfaces (e.g., pin code for watch, finger print for phone, password for web)
SDKs, templates, and examples for speed up development
Developer-free configuration and roll out for safe and quick updates
Protection of corporate APIs from access by unsanctioned mobile apps
App fingerprinting to prevent API access from malicious apps
Remote app disable and forced update of app code to protect users from unsafe apps
Device blacklisting to protect from device loss or theft
Device whitelisting to prevent app misuse
Protection of brand, data, and credentials on the mobile device
Encrypted on-device storage to protect data
Certificate pinning to thwart man-in-the-middle attacks
App obfuscation to hide app code
Example value of App Usage Metrics enable:
Decide on platform support and deprecation based on real usage data
Identify anomalies across device configurations
Monitor health of your back-end and analytics cluster
Discover potential security threats before it’s too late
MobileFirst Platform Foundation:
Essential backend services for your app pre-integrated with advanced safeguards, management and analytics. Natural synergy with API Connect to complement your mobile strategy with multichannel API creation and management. Together, MFPF and APIC provide you with the only end-to-end Digital Transformation platform that is built on top of hybrid cloud technology.
APIC and MFPF are engineered and fine tuned to allow you to leverage a standard platform to accelerate your app development, address exploding multichannel systems integration requirements with API Creation and Management, and leverage IBM Cloud to quickly innovate.
Around APIC and MFPF are a collection of complementary and highly synergistic Cloud services that allows you to go beyond making apps great to creating truly innovative, disruptive experiences.
Rapid mobile app builder
Ideate and prototype your app with no code, use a low-code approach to build you app. Allows you to take a radically simplified approach to cutting down on release times by involving all app stakeholders in the prototyping and building process.
Quality services
Enable total app quality management. Empower developers, testers, and end users to continuously contribute to app quality. Functional testing, device cloud, and beta testing services ensures that apps are adopted and always highly rated.
Hyper-contextual services
Enables you to incorporate intelligent context and insight with hyper contextual services that goes beyond capturing GPS.
Contextual services
Enable a new generation of cognitive apps that are able to have intelligent, interactive dialogues with the user, resulting in a lasting and sustainable competitive advantage
Entire solution is built on Bluemix using runtimes and services. We have seen in some cases the customer already has some assets on AWS or Azure, so they can connect to this existing software implemented on non IBM Cloud providers. Great pattern for net new apps that are not connected to the onprem infrastructure. Everything is paid by a consumption model. Start small for all of the services. Scale up if the app takes off, else infrastructure burn rate is low.
Some enterprises already have the necessary endpoints to their backends exposed through the firewall. Typically they would have done it for a web portal. In such cases, there is no need for a VPN, just have the adapter call the REST endpoint on the enterprise. However some IT governance policies demand that they will allow connection only from a whitelisted IP. Bluemix Cloudfoundry does not operate on a fixed IP. So you can use a intermediate service called Statica that provides a static IP that can be added to the firewall’s IP table.
Some enterprises have Datapower or are OK to run the IBM Secure gateway client in a VM in their firewall. In such a scenario use the Secure gateway service.
See https://console.ng.bluemix.net/docs/services/SecureGateway/secure_gateway.html for more information
Some enterprises have a pretty strict policy where they will not install anything in their firewall nor will expose the enterprise endpoint through the firewall. The only option is to dial into their pre-existing IPSec VPN gateway. In such a case – the VPN service is useful. However the VPN service in the Bluemix catalog works only with the standalone (non Kubernetes) container groups. This means MFP will have to be running in a IBM Container group. The Container option is available only with the BYOL option. This cannot be used with the MF service on the bluemix catalog.
Take mobile experiences to the next level to outflank competitors and disrupt your industry with Cognitive Mobile Services like:
Personality Insights extracts and analyzes social and transactional data to help discover actionable insights about users.
Concept Insights goes beyond traditional text matching to recommend more relevant content.
Concept Expansion enables apps to learn industry-specific euphemisms or colloquial terms by creating dictionaries from massive amounts of unstructured data.
Tradeoff Analytics helps people make better decisions when balancing multiple objectives.
You can also incorporate capabilities that let your users interact with your app in the same way they do with friends and family.
For example:
Language Translation translates news, patents, or conversational documents across several languages.
Speech to Text produces transcripts from speech in multi-media files or conversational streams.
Text to Speech makes web, mobile, and Internet of Things apps speak with a consistent voice across all compatible platforms.
Dialog enables your apps to use natural language to automatically respond to user questions, cross-sell and up-sell and more.
Natural Language Classifier allows your app to interpret natural language with confidence, answering common questions that are typically handled by a live agent.
Enhanced contextual services make delivering on this expectation infinitely easier with:
Presence Insights to help understand mobile activity in and around a physical location (e.g., malls, stadiums, airports)
Mobile App Content Manager to engage app users with rapidly-updated personal and contextual content in the moment.
Insights for Weather improves the user experience with integrated forecast, historical and real-time weather data
Geospatial Analytics track when mobile devices enter or leave defined regions to allow apps to adapt in real time.
Organizations are undergoing Digital transformation to adapt their IT systems and Processes in order to compete in the digital marketplace. 88% of organizations recently surveyed are now undergoing digital transformation initiatives to disrupt before they are disrupted.
[speaker’s instructions] This is a good chart to pause and link back to why your customer should be buying an integrated platform with you as opposed to going open source or building their own digital infrastructure. From the picture on slide 3, rapid iterations of your mobile apps requires a finely tuned, tightly integrated infrastructure. 2-6 weeks development cycles requires systems and infrastructure that are tightly integrated with processes, including DevOps and Testing processes, that seamlessly leverage cloud technology in order to enable fast innovation.
IDC:
Forrester: https://www.forrester.com/Companies+Will+Thrive+And+Fail+In+The+Age+Of+The+Customer+In+2016/-/E-PRE8724
Gartner quote: http://www.networksasia.net/article/5-mobile-technical-trends-will-impact-organizations-2016.1448935462