Welcome to PR Vibes, created by Calysto Communications to provide you with insight into the publications, thought leaders and events in the communications industry. Today, we visit with Gerry Purdy Ph.D., principal analyst at Mobilocity.
Dr. Purdy refers to himself as an “edge of network” analyst, researching mobile and wireless technologies. He started his analyst career with Gartner/Dataquest in 1992 and did stints as Chief Mobile Analyst with Frost & Sullivan and Compass Intelligence, outside his own firm, MobileTrax. Dr. Purdy has a B.S. from the University of Tennessee (1965), M.S. in Computer Science from UCLA (1968) and a Ph.D. in Computer Science & Exercise Physiology from Stanford University (1972).
In this interview, Dr. Purdy discusses how mobile has moved from a technology people “tolerated” 10 years ago, (“Mobile was regarded as a fly, and people wanted to have a flyswatter and make it go away.”) to where enterprise mobility is now a strategic asset for almost every company. Plus, have you ever wondered how the Olympic judges evaluate the decathlon event? Read and enjoy!
Tell us about Mobilocity. Great name!
Thanks, my wife actually came up with it. She said, “Gosh, this whole mobile thing is going so fast, it’s like combining mobile with high velocity.” So, we took “mobile” for the front end and added “ocity” on the back end and called it “Mobilocity.” By combining the two, it defines what mobile is doing.
Are mobile and wireless the same?
We think of mobile as an umbrella term and wireless is a technology-enabling objective. If I have a great mobile app and I use wireless to deliver the app, wireless becomes more of a technology facilitator. That doesn’t mean it isn’t important. In some cases it can be critical. Each new generation of wireless results in a torrid down-stream introduction of new devices, software and services. Wireless also is not a single “thing.” Rather, it is a family of technologies that all enable communication without wires. We sometimes lose sight that when we use the term “wireless” we are talking about cellular (both 3G and 4G), Wi-Fi (with its many renditions), Bluetooth (for headsets and setting up communication between your smartphone and your car’s dashboard), etc. All mobile devices use wireless to communicate. Thus, there’s a strong interconnection between mobile and wireless.
You refer to yourself as an “edge of network” analyst. Why?
Where I sit in the ecosystem as an edge of network analyst, I focus on devices, software and services. That differentiates me from those analysts covering operator software defined networks, analysts covering wireless network infrastructure or devices such as servers. I cover things people can touch or hold. The mobile part becomes the devices. I’ve always covered laptops (there are still some very interesting innovations happening in the laptop world). I also cover tablets and smartphones and now, the Internet-of-Things (IOT) area, particularly wearables like the Apple Watch. I don’t cover factory automation, but I do cover how technology interacts with people.
How is your practice concentrated?
I cover 80/20 enterprise and consumer. In the consumer area, I cover mobile media, music and video: how it’s structured and how it’s delivered over wireless. There are also areas on the consumer side that I can give advice on, such as web browsing or how to build mobile apps, whether through native or HTML5.
However, 80 percent of my time is spent thinking about the mobilization of the enterprise. The whole world of enterprise mobility has gone through an unbelievable paradigm shift over the last 10 years. In 2005, we didn’t have the iPhone. People had some BlackBerrys, but no one suspected that the smartphone market would grow as fast as it has. When people started thinking about mobile ten years ago in the enterprise, I think “tolerance” is a good word for the attitude. “We have to tolerate giving some of these executives Blackberry’s and figure out a way to make it work.” Mobile was regarded as a fly, and people wanted to have a flyswatter and make it go away. You heard from a lot of enterprise organizations back then that mobile was something they had to put up with, not something they embraced. Now, we’re past embracing. Enterprise mobility is being able to help the organization become more productive, both internally dealing with employees and externally dealing with customers.
Such as the BYOD trend?
Yes. Mobile is now enabling companies and their IT departments to provide better services to both employees and customers. The CIO and CEO are looking at mobility as more of a strategic asset to help the organization grow, along with security built in, so that not only the employee, but customer experience can be enhanced.
In 2008, one of my professional friends in enterprise IT was running the laptop program at a large bank at the time when the Apple App Store opened up. They wanted her to develop an iPhone app so customers could access their bank account in a secure manner using their mobile phone, much like they could on the web. Her reaction was, “Are you kidding me? I only dealt with internal policies, management and controls. Now I have to look at 20 million customers?” (By the way, she did an excellent job).
It was a big about-face and a huge challenge for enterprise IT leadership to now look externally, instead of just looking internally. Millions of companies are going through this same paradigm shift right now. Some are tolerating it and some are already embracing it and making it work. Enterprise mobility is now a strategic asset for almost every company and it’s much different than it was 10 years ago. It’s a very exciting area to work in because there’s so much dynamic change.
Did you have any idea how big mobile will become?
It’s interesting because I can remember back in around 1999 or 2000, when I started my Mobility Awards program (which I later sold to Compass Intelligence), someone asked me, “Why would you want to put on an awards program for mobile?” I said, “Believe me, someday it’s going to be a big business.” At the time, it seemed like a small sector and now mobile overpowers the market. This is already a multi-trillion dollar industry when you consider 300+ operators, billions of mobile phone accounts and software as well as services on top of all that.
Who are your clients?
My clients are primarily senior executives in vendor organizations, including Tier 1 wireless operators, as well as companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon. I’ll occasionally host a webinar — I enjoy that kind of interaction as well. I have had a very successful newsletter over the years and developed the popular Go Mobile conference for mobile enterprise professionals.
What‘s different about your approach to market analysis?
I consider myself to be a quality versus a quantity analyst. I am probably not the right person to do a detailed financial forecast or market segmentation analysis composed for clients in a detailed spreadsheet breakdown. Being a qualitative analyst, I’m more along the lines of – “What does the data mean? Where is the industry going? What important paradigm shifts are coming? Where is a forecast going to change if the forecast is not going to be linearly growing every year?” My clients also like me to write articles and white papers because I’ve become a good technology translator.
There will be some major shifts going on in mobility, and I try to tell people where these shifts are going to occur, when they’re going to occur and why they’re going to occur.
A qualitative analysis is about explaining something and a quantitative analysis is about delivering numbers and statistical information. The industry needs both. I happen to be on the qualitative side.
You’ve got a PhD in Computer Science and Exercise Physiology? You’ve probably found a way to combine the two, right?
When I finished my undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee, I was a distance runner. I wasn’t nationally ranked, but just enjoyed it. Then I went to work at a division at Grumman Aerospace, previously called TRW. While I was there, I met Jim Gardner, who was also a runner. We talked about how there were a lot of coaching books about running, but there weren’t any guidelines that were specific to each runner’s level of ability. Jim and I ended up writing a book about it.
Then, when I entered Stanford’s PhD program, I was looking for an interesting area for my thesis. The decathlon has become a high profile event of the Olympics. I ended up developing a new decathlon scoring table for the Olympics and wrote my Stanford PhD thesis about it. The challenge of the decathlon is measuring ability across 10 events. How do you compare, say, jumping from the throwing event to hurdles? I developed a new system that modeled the performance of athletes running, throwing and all of that so it could help the Olympic committee create a better representation for determining who should win the decathlon.
I actually changed the methodology. I analyzed 100,000+ performances over the past 100 years, built a model based on those performances in track and field and was able to accurately represent the level of ability. Once I knew that, I presented it to the International Olympic Committee in 1972. It was used by the IOC’s IAAF Technical Committee to create a new table for the Olympic Decathlon in 1984 and it’s currently in use today.
After the Olympics, what’s the next step?
I have a book that’s been used by 300,000 runners called RunningTrax. I named it that because it’s similar to my old “MobileTrax” company. The book was the bestselling book in the track and field history. I extended my performance mobile to accurately determine what someone should do in a workout. Now, I am working with Alex Stankovic of Bluefin Software to build an iPhone mobile app. It should be in the Apple Apps store by May RunningTrax generates personalized workouts for every runner, from novice to world class. My RunningTrax system keeps runners from going too fast and increase the risk of getting injured or going too slow and giving up.
I have basically had two careers most of my professional life. Most people know me in mobile and wireless, but I got an email today from a high school coach who was using my old book and asked if I was ever going to write a new one to update it. I told him I was doing one better. I was making a mobile app.
In closing, are there three things people should keep in mind for the future of mobile and wireless?
That’s a great question. Three that come to mind are: 1) the user experience is migrating from silos of individual apps to platforms that integrate data and services from multiple sources, 2) wireless will migrate into aggregating multiple networks into one large pipe that will provide very fast connectivity with low latency that will support voice and data over the data circuit and 3) the tablet is likely to win out over the laptop over time because most young consumers know more about mobile than about desktops and laptops. They are so familiar with mobile operating systems that they will easily adapt as tablet operating systems such as iOS and Android as well as device manufactures extend the tablet platform into the realm of specifications and operating performance of desktops. This enables tablets to become the user’s desktop resource at home and in the office. The big unknown here, of course, is to what extent that everyone (young and old) will adapt to Windows 10, which is definitely Microsoft’s most ambitious and important development effort to date. I suspect that enterprises will adopt Windows 10 more than consumers because it gives enterprise IT a single platform from smartphone through desktop in which to develop and support the different enterprise IT initiatives.