By popular demand, here's that link to the video we used to launch Mobile BMC Self Service at last week's WWRUG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRzeyMOjnl4.

Thanks for all the great feedback on the new product and the mobility discussion with Doug Mueller! It was a reminder of why the Remedy community is so vibrant after so many years.

And of course thanks to Daniel Bloom, Phil Bautista, Lenny Warren, Joel Sender, Kelly Deaver, and everyone who put on an excellent event!

See you next year!

-Dan and the Aeroprise team

By Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise. Follow Dan on Twitter.

That Newton guy might have been wrong. Apple continues to defy gravity. How else do you explain 7.4 million iPhones sold in three months and the company's second best quarterly profit ever in a market reeling because consumers aren't spending? So much momentum, so many records shattered, so much well-earned praise... and yet, in the enterprise Apple's iPhone is the Robin to BlackBerry's Batman. Sure, a few green-capes roll in each Halloween but let's just say the mayor of Gotham City won't be changing his speed dial any time soon.

Every day we're asked what it will take for iPhone to become a (the?) enterprise standard. Here's my view...

BlackBerry has more than 34,000 enterprise customers because its management middleware, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), is far superior to anything on the market (today). BES makes it easy to manage devices, distribute software, and enforce security policies. But Apple's catching up fast and will close the gap if it makes enterprise deployments a priority. Let's look at each key BES advantage vs. the iPhone enterprise solution.

Device management: each BlackBerry has a PIN that identifies it to the BES. BES admins can manage any device or all devices simultaneously - for instance, upgrade the OS or wipe memory - with a direct push from the BES console. Apple offers similar features integrated directly to Exchange via the Active Directory mobile user profile. Non-Exchange users must instead use the iPhone configuration utility. With certain features, when there are updates end-users are required to manually install new config files on their devices. This is fine for environments where personal iPhones are supported but aren't the corporate standard. It doesn't scale to thousands of centrally-managed users.

Software distribution: BES pushes new applications directly to BlackBerrys. The iPhone Exchange integration requires end-users to download new apps through the App Store. With BES, admins can control which apps do and don't appear on a per-user basis. The App Store is amazing on many levels - technological, cultural, and otherwise - but for all of its strengths it lacks server-based whitelisting features because it operates locally on each device. IT has no way to discover which apps have been downloaded to each iPhone.

Security policy: one of the most basic features of the BES is policy-based device control. BES admins can centrally set policies like whether or not devices can access third-party applications or which ones can use the internal browser. As with device management, most of the same features are supported by the iPhone but they can require multiple products (a pre-installed Cisco VPN client plus a role-based third-party utility plus...) and user pull (vs. server push).

Yeah, this is a bird's eye view and could be more thorough but it's unbiased and hopefully fills a gap that exists between foot-high product docs and religious wars in the blogosphere. What does it confirm? BlackBerry's wearing the black tights today but 7.4 million iPhones and a Jobsian underdog complex in Cupertino say that may not be the case for long.

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.

-by Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise. Follow Dan on Twitter.

I was on a panel last week about mobile app stores at the Silicon Valley China Wireless Tech Association’s Annual Conference. Dev Khare from Venrock moderated the discussion and Luke Bao from China Mobile, Curtis Sasaki from RIM, Brian Vogelsang from Qualcomm, Mark Anderson from HipLogic, and Charles Yu from hiSoft participated. The central questions: what does the democratization of mobile information - heralded by the rise of the app store - say about the future of our mobile lifestyle? What does the elimination of (now-clichéd) walled-gardens mean for everyone in the mobile value chain: developers, carriers, handset manufacturers, and end-users?

Thought I’d share a few impressions from my prep and what I learned from the panelists. First, by the numbers: five major stores have been announced to date. All are chasing Apple’s wildly popular, wildly successful App Store. To wit: can you name any of the others? They are BlackBerry’s App World, Google’s Android Market, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Marketplace, and Palm’s webOS Application Catalog.

Apple’s App Store now has more than 85,000 applications submitted by more than 20,000 publishers and receives more than 2,000 submissions per week (new apps plus updates). 40 full time Apple-employed reviewers vet about 1,000 applications weekly and the average wait time for approval (or rejection) is about 13 days. There’s currently a backlog of about 15,000 apps pending review – growing at about 1,000 per week. And as of this week two billion apps have been downloaded, or roughly 37 per device.

So why should you care? Well, in the enterprise we technically don’t care about app stores. In fact, most of our thinking about them is confined to figuring out how they get uninstalled or disabled. They present massive security threats and make managing mobile devices infinitely more difficult. They’re poorly designed for client-server applications, aren’t policy-based, aren’t cross-platform, and don’t support internal custom apps.

But those are all reasons not to care, you say. What gives? First off, in the future there will be enterprise-oriented, private app stores. They may or may not be better than current app distribution methods like the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) but they’ll exist. More important, whether you love, hate, use, or ignore app stores they’ll continue to reinvent how we use mobile devices. And because mobile will play a prominent role in your personal and professional future, you should care about them.

Here’s an analogy: the internet existed before broadband but it was a novelty. We (that’s the royal “we” in the geek chic community) used it for IRC, bulletin boards, and primitive file sharing. As dial-up connections were replaced, the internet changed. It became interactive, colorful, and dynamic – the hub of digital lives that didn’t exist before.

Mobile is undergoing that same shift – from pimply teen to varsity quarterback – only this time it’s more dramatic, it’s happening faster, and it was triggered by the rise of app stores. All of a sudden, handhelds are computing devices that are also phones. They’re judged less by whether or not they have a speakerphone and more by their strength as platforms for social networking, e-commerce, gaming, and business. The pace of change will only accelerate in the next few years – and app stores will continue to define the mobile experience.

A video of the panel discussion is available as a link from this blog post on iphonasia.com.

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.

-by Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise. Follow Dan on Twitter.

Why is RIM's (NASDAQ: RIMM) ascension to the top spot on Fortune's Fastest Growing Companies (FGC) list a landmark event for IT? In part, because we put them there. But mostly because it validates what we've known for years: mobile applications are big. Big like the end of cubeville. Big like no more calls to the help desk or triage-gone-awry downtime. Big like the IT guy is Einstein with piercings.

But first, some historical perspective. The FGC list typically reads like the warning label on rat poison. To get on it, either drill for something scarce and toxic or sell loads of something that kills people slowly. Until this year. RIM hasn't cracked the top 20 in any of the past five years. Only one of the last five winners (Yahoo! in 2005) is a tech company. But now, enter mobile applications. Enter a year when Grandma bought a smartphone. Enter a year when applications made mobile devices THE must-have business tool. And all of a sudden the top spot goes to the company that is synonymous with the new way IT services get delivered. No surprise but certainly a landmark event.

Remember: what distinguishes the BlackBerry from all other handhelds isn't that the Governator uses one or Bono (Apple traitor) sings about them or half of all ever sold in the past decade shipped in the past year. What distinguishes BlackBerry from iPhone and other contenders is that it's the mobile platform for business. One that has been wildly successful because of how IT has stretched and pulled it into so much more than an email device.

Five years ago, you were at a disadvantage if you didn't have a mobile phone. Three years ago, if you didn't have mobile email. Two years ago, if you didn't text. This past year, if you weren't using mobile apps. From now on, it's mobile line of business applications that will separate organizations with a pulse and a future from everyone else.

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.

-by Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise. Follow Dan on Twitter.

"Imagine a place where it's always safe and warm...Come in, she said: I'll give you shelter from the storm."

-Bob Dylan, 1974

Huge surge in customers turning on mobile reports in the past six months. It's nice to see interest in a feature I've always felt is underused and underappreciated. The recent activity got me thinking: what has changed? How come the same customers with the same business environments and devices suddenly changed how they're using Aeroprise in a pretty fundamental way?

No scientific proof but a decent amount of anecdotal evidence to back up this hypothesis...

Reports (we call them Executive Summaries) aggregate information about whatever matters to you into timely, actionable word bites. They're ideal for users who receive a lot of requests, have too little time to process them, and are driven by service targets. Our profile user for Exec Summaries is middle-aged, stashes his phone after hours (yeah, some people still do that), has 15 or more direct reports, and a bachelors degree or higher in some technical field. It goes without saying: in the past year that user's world has been turned upside down and shaken like a martini in a centrifuge.

In fact, it has changed faster than his ability to adapt. What do we do when new external pressures force internal changes beyond the safe harbor of current business habit? Since the Industrial Revolution, we've turned to technology. By definition, it helps us achieve more output per unit of input and it's needed more now than ever. It's also the reason smartphones are to modern business what ugly ties are to Wall Street.

So back to my point: just what has changed in the world of IT that makes mobile reporting so necessary all of a sudden? Here are four things:

1. In a tough economy, all decisions are more time-critical and bad ones have more impact. We're all working with skeleton crews under the watchful eye of axe-wielding CFOs. So while the volume of decisions to be made has only increased, they're more scrutinized than ever.

2. We're working with old software and equipment. One of the first casualties of the recession was the traditional upgrade cycle. So not only are we under more pressure to perform but we're working with tragically outdated tools.

3. The culture of mobility has infiltrated IT. Business users get instant updates about everything from flights to auctions to news - and expect the same level of responsiveness when they have IT issues. That, coupled with ever-evolving technologies IT must support - SaaS applications, mobile devices, and Windows 7 to name a few - mean IT is in a challenging state of flux.

4. IT is more strategic to the business than ever because the new global economy runs on technology. The line that once separated the CIO from the CTO is gone. These days, internal tools spawn external projects that often morph and spawn new internal tools. Case in point: we have a Fortune 50 customer in the oil industry that built a mobile application for monitoring the productivity of oil derricks based on their internal Aeroprise BMC Remedy helpdesk application.

So what does all this mean? I don't know - but it does explain the popularity of mobile reporting, a tool that helps make better decisions faster. Reminds me of the parched guy in the desert panting toward the mirage of a lake with a bottle of water in hand. That bottle won't quench his thirst forever but it will clear his head long enough to find a map. I guess what I'm saying is if you're using Aeroprise and not using reports, try it - sure beats dying of thirst.

Contact us if you need help configuring reports or just a pep talk to get you started. Oh, and if you're using them and have a success story to share, check out our customer reference program.

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.

-by Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise

Dear CIO:

I'm here to divulge your secret. That one you keep guarded from vendors then brag about over beers at bonding events. We're on to you. But I want you to know there's nothing to be ashamed of and you're not alone. Every one of the 500,000 gear heads lining up for a 3G S this weekend knows exactly how you feel.

You don't purchase mobile software based on Return On Anything - investment, capital, or otherwise. At the moment of truth, you buy because you need to, because you don't want to be left behind, because your peers would mock you for being a laggard if you didn't.

You purchase mobile applications because it's a new world and even though you're not exactly sure you believe those payback models or all the MBA speak you know mobile applications are here to stay. And while you can't predict where the S&P 500 will be next year you know your users will be more mobile in 12 months than today. And you know mobile devices keep getting better, networks keep getting more reliable, service costs keeps falling, and battery life keeps improving. But most important, you know you're roadkill if you think you can survive without staying connected.

One of your brethren told me last week (in confidence, no names to protect the sheepish) that he'll never look at the Aeroprise ROI model his analyst built. But it'll be there for posterity, confirm he did due diligence, and ensure his decision sidesteps CFO scrutiny. Why did he buy? There are a dozen reasons and while all of them relate to saving money and providing strategic support to the business not one involves numbers on a spreadsheet.

The problem isn't that ROI is obsolete. In fact, it’s more relevant than ever. It's just necessary but not sufficient - like the rental car rider on your auto insurance policy or the cardboard sleeve for your latte. ROI is particularly useless as a guide for mobile projects because so little is known up front about where actual cost savings will occur. Oh, they're there - but the most successful projects are ones that ooze into new business units and creep across department lines to generate returns never anticipated.

So don't let me burst your bubble oh deity of data, sultan of servers. Feel free to pretend we don't know. Keep ridiculing our gullibility. But then do more of same - believe in the power of mobile solutions to transform your business. Think beyond the spreadsheet and create your own ROI reality unfettered by macros and pivot tables. Then, if you're so bold, share your story. You'd be amazed at how many closet ROI heretics will benefit from it.

-dan

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.

-by Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise

Stick 5,000 BlackBerry enthusiasts of all colors, races, shapes, and sizes under one roof for four sleep-deprived days and magic happens. Two lasting impressions from WES 2009:

1) The surreal scene at the will.i.am concert when he asked the booze-soaked crowd (tragically, most didn’t know who he was) to wave their BlackBerrys in the air like lighters. The place lit up like a Christmas tree.

2) I saw a great demo yesterday of a BlackBerry that is also a projector. Not an input to one but an actual functioning LCD projector fitted with a surprisingly sharp, bright laser that projects whatever is being presented on the device onto a 17” window on the wall.

When we first attended WES in 2003, it was in a basement in Chicago. Us and a few other ISVs traded war stories and wondered aloud if we had bet on the right pony. But mostly we crouched in lotus positions near windows or outside in the pouring rain trying to get a Mobitex or DataTAC wireless signal (yeah, well, it wasn’t funny then). Today, there are hundreds of exhibitors, thousands of customers, and hordes of media-types all clamoring for a peek at the next big thing – and, in so doing, creating it.

It’s not just a great time to be part of the BlackBerry community. It’s a way to watch a cultural phenomenon evolve from the inside. We exhibited with BMC and were amazed by how many conversations started with “Finally! My manager’s instructions were to find a way to use Remedy on BlackBerry and here you are.” Great energy but that wasn’t the most notable part of the show.

It was the reminder that even though there is only one RIM and many ISVs that develop BlackBerry applications (well north of 500 at last count), it remains the case that BlackBerry (the device, company, and pop icon) is every bit as dependent on its partners as we are on RIM. No mobile OS has an enterprise ecosystem even 1% as evolved as BlackBerry and what was clear this week is the gap is only getting wider. Call us the clownfish to RIM’s anemone. It would all seem hero-worshipy if it weren’t genuinely symbiotic.

RIM’s success is the result of years of paying close attention to unmet customer needs, not competing with its partners, and aggressively expanding its platform by focusing on the things we value – a stable device that is second-to-none with the best security model, battery life, a crack team of experts at our beck and call, and solid developer tools.

The iPhone, you say? A phenomenal device and a ground-breaking app distribution model – but a black hole for enterprise ISVs. RIM is light years ahead when it comes to go-to-market strategies, carrier sell-through, partner sales support and, most importantly, experience supporting large enterprise customers. But what was most motivational about WES is that despite years of torrid growth, five minutes in the exhibit hall confirmed we’ve only seen the opening act of a show none of us can afford to miss. Bring your BlackBerry.

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.