Mobile Enterprise Unicorns: Why You've Never Heard of One

Have you ever wondered why despite all the hype about mobile, you can't think of any mobile enterprise app unicorns yourself? That's because there's hardly any of them. The purpose of this post is to explain why there are very few truly mobile first enterprise B2B unicorns today. The dominant problem is that most teams who have tried to build a mobile enterprise product, have assumed that desktop-oriented software techniques could be used. Cross-platform native mobile development to meet enterprise specific performance and security requirements is an enormous challenge. This is something we’ve found both exhilarating and gut-wrenching at Medigram. What are the issues?

PRIORITIES

-The above is very hard to do in a lot of environments, especially in healthcare where consistent connectivity is lacking. Building apps for specific industries is unrelated to consumer and web development strategies.

Do You Know What’s Under The Hood?

In today’s world, there's no separating performance of software from its hardware and the impact of an application’s operating system in all of this. Many developers tend to default to a set of standard tools they used to make office desktop programs in the past whether they apply to a new (for mobile) use case or not.

Universities Do Not Teach Mobile Computing

I’m not just talking about mobile UI design, I’m talking about writing software that performs with an increasing number of cores like our little handheld supercomputers have. Web software of the past will increasingly be challenged and become further lower performing on mobile as mobile phones continue to rapidly evolve.

Houston, We Have Mindset Problem

Developers most often still think in terms of “desktop first” or even desktop only, even when making apps for mobile phones. 

Technologies originally suited for websites on desktop use cases contribute to slow loading & slow transitions between screens on mobile. None of these descriptions below state that their purpose is for mobile enterprise apps though they have been labeled "modern". In our field, healthcare physicians who are highly mobile will vote with their taps, not clicks.

Thinking about a web app for mobile? Don’t do it for enterprise. Technology gaps exist between browser and native rendering engines. Paul Kinlan writes an excellent article about this issue

Is Security Baked in or Bolted On?

Then there are security issues: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/could-slack-work-healthcare-security-considerations-sherri-douville

Very Few, If Any Teams Have The Necessary Grit & Stamina For Mobile Cross-Platform Build

Beware the treacherous (complicated, time consuming) multi platform terrain to meet mobile enterprise requirements. Is your team really up for it and can you get the needed investor support to execute? 

Image credit: EIPM

In my daily life as a consumer, I use plenty of mobile apps built by originally desktop office oriented software teams. For my life as a consumer, I don't care about loading times, performance, and military grade security.

If you're interested in the technical details of these issues, please visit the original, expanded post preceding this summary on Medium. https://medium.com/@SherriDouville/the-elusive-mobile-enterprise-unicorn-a28b02776bc2

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sherri Douville is CEO and board member for Medigram, the modern, mobile communication platform that allows healthcare providers and professionals to instantly communicate in any environment, on computers or smart phones, even when there is limited or no wifi connectivity or cell phone reception. Ms. Douville’s and Medigram’s primary goal is to dramatically reduce the leading cause of preventable death: communication delays. Ms. Douville serves on the Board for HIMSS and is the Co-Chair for program panels and served on the board nominating committee. Ms. Douville is also an active member of the advisory board for the National Bundled Payment Collective, and she serves on the Santa Clara University Board of Fellows. Sherri Douville earned her BS in Combined Sciences from Santa Clara University and three IoT and Data Analytics certificates from MIT.