A Framework for the Adoption and Diffusion of XML ...



A methodology for building mobile computing applications

Minder Chen

School of Management

George Mason University

MSN-5F4, 4400 University Drive

Fairfax, VA 22030, USA

Phone: 703-993-1788 E-mail: mchen@gmu.edu

Abstract: There is a tremendous amount of interest in developing mobile enterprise computing applications, driven by recent advancements in mobile technologies and standards, as well as an increasing mobile workforce population. However, many enterprises are uncertain of the various options they may have due to the emerging nature of mobile computing technologies. Additionally, they are concerned about the integration of mobile technologies with existing IT infrastructure and applications. In this paper, we propose a methodology to help enterprises develop business strategies and architectures for mobile computing. A generic mobile technical infrastructure is presented to assist enterprises in evaluating and implementing mobile applications. Software standards that may have major impacts on mobile technical architectures and application development are discussed. Finally, the implications of the proposed methodology for mobile computing for practitioners and researchers are discussed in the conclusion.

Keywords: Mobile computing; web services; mobile technical architecture; business strategies, standards.

Biographical note: Minder Chen received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 1977, an M.B.A. from National Chiao Tung University in 1983, and a Ph.D. in MIS from the University of Arizona in 1988. He is an Associate Professor of MIS and Decision Science in the School of Management at George Mason University. His primary research interests include Web services, electronic commerce, mobile computing, knowledge management, business process reengineering, computer-aided software engineering, and GDSS. He has published papers in Journal of Management Information Systems, Database, Journal of Organizational Computing, Expert Systems with Applications, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Journal of Small Group Research, Journal of Computer Information Systems, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, IEEE Software, and IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

1 Emerging trends of mobile computing

The twenty-first century workforce is becoming increasingly mobile. A recent IDC study predicted the number of mobile workers in the U.S. will rise from 92 million in 2001 to 105 million in 2006 while the non-mobile workforce will decline by 2 million to 53.8 million by 2006 [27, 42]. Therefore, two-thirds of U.S. employees will be mobile workers by 2006. Mobile workers are defined in this study as workers who spend more than 20% of their time away from theirs desks attending meetings, traveling, or telecommuting from home.

Some players in the mobile computing market focus on consumer oriented contents and service, such as ring-tones, MP3 music, and MMS [41]. However, according to studies from IT research firms, 40% of companies will use wireless technology for business applications by 2003, up from just 5% in 1999 [44]. According to this trend, more than 50% of companies have or will have wireless connectivity to corporate systems by 2005. The aggressive deployment of mobile computing is in part driven by recent advancements in mobile computing technologies and high payback for effective application of mobile technologies. Some studies show that the productivity of mobile workers may be improved by 30% when proper mobile technologies are deployed [10].

The abundance of emerging mobile technologies and standards as well as expanding opportunities to capitalize on them has created a lot of confusion among business managers and IT architects. We have developed a methodology to help organizations plan and build enterprise-wide mobile computing applications. The methodology proposed in this paper is an attempt to provide a comprehensive strategic framework to identify business opportunities for mobile business and commerce, as well as a roadmap and action plans to develop and deploy mobile applications. This methodology is intended to help firms to realize the potential benefits of mobile technologies more easily. Section 2 of this paper presents the life-cycle phases of the methodology. Section 3 discusses how to analyze the mobility of business processes. Section 4 is a detailed discussion of the development of a mobile computing architecture and emerging mobile technologies. Section 5 presents several important software standards that are important to mobile architectures and application development. This paper is concluded with a discussion of how this proposed methodology may be improved and validated, as well as a call for further research to advance our understanding of the development and deployment of mobile computing in enterprises.

2 A methodology for building mobile computing applications

The enterprise-wide mobile computing is the use of mobile devices, wireless networks and Internet connections to access enterprise data and applications. The lack of methodologies to help organizations in their mobile computing initiatives may have hindered the deployment of enterprise-wide mobile applications. Based on the literature regarding systems development, business process reengineering methodologies [3, 4], information systems planning methods [20, 36], and mobile computing [11, 13], a methodology for building enterprise-wide mobile computing applications was developed. The proposed methodology shown in Figure 1 is depicted in IDEF0 diagramming notation [18]. In IDEF0, a process is represented as a rectangular box and its relationships to inputs, controls, outputs, and mechanism (ICOMs) can be interpreted as:

[pic]

Figure 1 A Methodology for Building Enterprise-Wide Mobile Applications

"Inputs are transformed by the process into outputs according to controls, using mechanisms." The boxes in Figure 1 represent five phases of the life cycle for building enterprise-wide mobile computing applications. The arrows coming in contact with the box from the left are the inputs to a life cycle phase; arrows coming out from the right ride of a box are outputs (i.e., deliverables); controls are shown as arrows coming in contact with the top side of a box representing constraints and guidelines governing the conduct of a phase. Mechanisms are arrows coming in contact with the bottom of a box representing systems, organizations, or individuals that perform activities in a life-cycle phase.

The methodology should be treated as a suggestion and a general guideline. Companies can plan and develop mobile applications by conducting activities in various phases in the life cycle iteratively and concurrently to allow quick prototyping and feedbacks. The five major phases for building mobile computing applications are described as follows:

1. Develop enterprise-wide mobile strategies: Companies engage in mobile computing initiatives because they want to take advantage of emerging mobile computing technologies as well as supporting an increasingly mobilized workforce to gain competitive advantages in the marketplace and to better serve their customers. A mobile strategy team should consist of top level management (e.g., chief executive officer, chief information officer, chief technology officer, and business-line managers). The process of creating enterprise-wide mobile strategies should be based on existing business strategies and objectives, as well as high-level understanding of mobile technology's trends and impacts. Details of this phase are further discussed in Section 3.

2. Analyze the mobility of business processes. Until recently, enterprise communication and computing support was limited to desktop computing tools that glue employees to their desks. Mobile technologies enable organizations to redesign their business processes such that their sale forces and field services representatives can perform critical activities at customer sites. In this phase, the mobile analysis team will develop business process maps and identify promising mobile projects that may bring in more revenues and result in better customer service. Section 4 elaborates the activities involved and approaches in analyzing process mobility.

3. Develop an enterprise-wide mobile technical architecture. A comprehensive mobile technical architecture will be developed in this phase based on mobile business strategies, mobility analysis of business process map, as well as mobile application portfolios developed in the previous two phases. The technical architecture will allow companies to invest wisely in mobile technologies based on current IT infrastructure and mobile standards so that the development and deployment costs for mobile applications may be reduced. Section 5 explains important components of a mobile technical architecture. The roles of standards that are important for the development of a mobile technical architecture are discussed in Section 6.

4. Build mobile applications. The most obvious constraints in building applications for mobile devices are smaller screen sizes, less efficient data entry methods, and limited local CPU power. Keyboards and mice are normally not available for small mobile devices. Developers may need to learn new development tools and observe these constraints in building mobile applications [19]. The first step in mobile application design to reduce user input requirements by providing point and click interfaces as well as delivering only the most critical contents to mobile users. A step further is to take advantage of special features in mobile devices such as Soft-Key, telephone dialing, and voice capabilities of cell phones. An example of a design method for the building of mobile applications has been proposed by Beaulieu [2].

5. Deploy mobile applications. Proper user training and support are required in the deployment phase. Change management strategies should be applied along with mobile application deployment to ensure effective behavioral changes of people who are involved in these mobilized processes. Performance measures of the mobile business processes and workforce should be implemented to provide justification for the investment in mobile computing and to receive feedback for improving mobile enabled business processes continuously.

The first three phases in this methodology are important for enterprise-wide mobile computing effort in the methodology. The last two phases are more project-specific. In this paper, we focus on the enterprise-wide aspect of mobile computing and will discuss the only first three phases in detail.

3 Develop enterprise-wide mobile computing strategies

Mobile computing allows the right information to be available to the right person to perform critical business processes wherever and whenever. The mobile strategy team should extend e-business and e-commerce business models to identify strategic areas where mobile computing applications may have the highest payback opportunities. From a business perspective, companies need to focus on supporting their employees, customers, and trading partners involved in their core business processes. These strategic areas include:

1. Business to employee (B2E): B2E applications can be classified into two categories:

a. Horizontal mobile applications are professional productivity tools, often been referred to as Personal Information Management (PIM), including email, instant message, calendar, and Internet access. Email is probably one of the most important mobile horizontal applications. Some researchers believed that email is "a proxy for a business process" [45]. It is often used in the context of information workflows related to enterprise business applications.

b. Vertical mobile applications directly support core business processes by providing mobile access to enterprise applications such as sale force automation, field worker automation, inventory control, warehouse management, and logistics.

2. Business to consumers (B2C): B2C mobile applications are often referred to as mobile commerce (m-commerce). M-commerce is an extension of e-commerce. Mobile applications in B2C that are unique and promising in the m-commerce space include [15]:

a. Wireless data delivery service is a critical element of mobile commerce. Popular services are weather and sports reports, traffic conditions, financial news, stock portfolio tracking, stock quotes, and telephone directory assistance.

b. M-commerce transactions often require immediate actions for people on the run. For example, typical m-commerce transactions include buying tickets, purchasing goods from vending machines via wireless devices, and trading stocks.

c. M-commerce marketing functions may alert users of shops and special sales based on their locations.

Businesses should be aware of difficulties facing m-ecommerce in this planning stage [31, 41]. M-commerce applications should be designed so that less steps and data entry efforts are required to go through a transaction. Planners should be briefed on emerging mobile technologies trends and understand their implications to their businesses. For example, using location-based services to advertise sales to customers at the proximity of your stores is a unique and innovative mobile application. Innovation in B2C mobile applications can be found in some vertical industries such as health industry and retail industry [5, 29].

3. Business to business (B2B): Few mobile and wireless B2B applications have been developed. Building mobile web sites for B2B exchanges such that mobile devices can submit bids and receive alerts of new bids seems to be a promising application in this area [30].

In general, M-commerce tends to be more successful in Japan and Europe but is very slow to catch on in the United States [8]. The driving force for the deployment of mobile and wireless devices in the United State will be enterprise-wide mobile applications.

A new vision of a mobile enterprise should emerge from this phase to guide the formulation of mobile strategies and goals. The mobile strategy team needs to communicate this vision and a business case for action to all stakeholders to ensure an organizational commitment to mobile computing. The team should also evaluate the issues involved in introducing mobile applications from technical, organizational, and cultural perspectives to plan the implementation of mobile computing initiative accordingly. The next phase after mobile strategies have been developed is to have a more in-depth analysis of the mobility of core business and applications as discussed in the next session.

4 Analyze the mobility of business processes

The challenge of mobile computing strategies and implementation is to identify and select opportunities for deployment that will provide the most payback. Based on the general mobile strategies developed in the first phase, the mobile analysis team needs to develop a business process model in order to identify business activities in which increasing the mobility of these activities can improve business performance and gain competitive advantages [11]. Using a value chain model to guide the development of the process map is a good starting point in this phase [14].

The analysis team should educate the business managers involved in this analysis phase about the capability of mobile computing technologies and challenge their current business practices and procedures constantly. The mobility analysis team needs to create a process map of core business processes first. Based on the process map, the team can identify activities in these processes in which remote access to data and applications may improve these processes. The facilitator could asks the analysis team members the following triggering questions to help them analyze the process model:

• What is the mobility of employees who are in involved in this process?

• What are the major activities of the process?

• Where are these activities performed currently?

• What information and applications are required while performing these activities?

• Can employees perform some activities while working onsite with customers?

Several heuristics developed in business reengineering have been adapted to determine how to increase the mobility of an enterprise [4].

• Bring mobility to office-bound activities. Enabling mobile access to information allows corporations move office tasks into the field where their customers are. Mobile access to information (such as service records and product pricing) will empower employees in the customer-facing processes to make more informed decisions to serve customers better. Information generated while away from offices can be captured at the place where events occur.

• Extend mobile access to customers and trading partner. The processes in the process map should be an extended e-process map that contains links to customers and trading partners. By extending business processes such that mobile customers can access data relevant to cross-organizational business processes, an enterprise is forging a stronger tie to their customers.

• Create new and innovative mobile applications. New applications, such as mobile web sites, downloadable offline data sets and applications, location-based services, and mobile commerce, are new areas that an enterprise should exploit to extend their reach to employees, customers, and trading partners. New or reengineered business processes and applications should be designed to embrace these new services.

• Extend current enterprise-wide applications. Mobile computing offers a new channel for communication and data access to improve operational efficiency and increase added value to customers [13]. Enhancing current client-server based enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) enterprise-wide application packages with mobile technologies is a natural logical step forward towards operational efficiency [33].

At the end of this phase, the mobile analysis team needs to evaluate and prioritize mobile projects or applications to be implemented by considering two major factors. The first factor is the impacts and the benefits of these mobile projects. The second factor is the difficult in implementing these mobile projects. A more detailed cost-benefit analysis may be required to select appropriate projects for implementation. Ideally, one should select projects that have a high impact but are easy to implement. Mobile projects that have the following characteristics should be given high priority:

1. Projects that target broken business processes. These broken processes are caused by the lack of mobile access to data or by the complicated data synchronization procedures involved between mobile devices and back-office systems.

2. Projects that deal with customer-facing processes. These processes have high added-value and involve front-line workers including sale force automation, field worker automation, and mobile CRM.

3. Projects that involve time-sensitive processes. The cycle-time of these business processes can be reduced by capturing data in computer readable format at the point of creation. Hence, companies can eliminate duplicated data entry from different applications.

1. Projects which are easy to implement. The development team should choose some quick and effective mobile projects at the beginning of the mobile initiative to secure continuous support from top management and ensure buy-ins from stakeholders.

The analysis team should involve functional area managers, mobile workforce, and trading partners to brainstorm new ideas and learn to challenge basic assumptions of why certain activities in processes need to be done in the office. Creative applications of mobile technologies are often coupled with the conceptual breakthroughs of business practices. New processes and applications may be developed to create more added-value for the mobile enterprise.

5 Develop a mobile computing technical architecture

Gartner, an IT research firm, predicted that "more than 50 percent of mobile applications deployed at the start of 2002 will be obsolete by the end of 2002 [23]." Many applications get outdated quickly due to the complexity of the various mobile technologies involved. The best practice in managing these constantly evolving and competing technologies is to define and develop a standard-based mobile computing technical architecture. A sound mobile technical architecture is an extension and enhancement of existing IT infrastructure components to facilitate the integration between mobile applications and existing IT applications. A comprehensive mobile architecture can also enhance efficiency in developing and deploying new mobile applications [13].

We have developed a generic mobile computing architecture, depicted in Figure 2, based on recommendations from IT vendors and researchers [3, 9, 11, 28, 45]. Standards that are critical for defining an enterprise-wide mobile computing architecture are addressed in Section 6.

[pic]

Figure 2 A Mobile Computing Technical Architecture

5.1 Mobile clients

Mobile clients consist of mobile devices, mobile operating systems (OS), and client-side mobile application software. Mobile devices include cell phones and low-end PDAs that have Web access, as well as high-end PDAs and notebook computers that have wireless network connections. There are many mobile operating systems for PDAs (e.g., Pilot Research's Palm OS and Microsoft's Pocket PC). Additional programming frameworks (i.e., virtual machines) such as J2ME and .NET Compact Framework, specifically designed to run on mobile devices, may be required to deploy some offline applications. For consumer oriented cell phones, Symbian OS is a popular mobile OS for phone-based devices supporting 2.5G and 3G networks and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) [35]. All mobile devices are expected to have a wireless Internet connection, Web browsing capability, and some degree of local process capability.

Horizontal mobile applications include personal information management (PIM), messaging services such as email, short message services, and multimedia message services [17]. Vertical mobile enterprise applications can be custom-built or are extensions of ERP, CRM, and SCM packages for mobile workforce. Enterprise applications are the main driver of mobile computing growth in the United States. High-end PDAs and notebook computers have better input mechanisms, large screen size, and more local processing power; therefore, they are better positioned to support online mobile enterprise applications that require both online and disconnected offline processing. A comparison of mobile Web clients and Mobile rich clients is listed in Table 1.

5.2 Wireless networks

Wireless deployments have been accelerated more recently, including a rush to serve data over cellular networks (2.5G-3G) and wireless LAN (Wi-Fi). In the near future, applications can expect always-on connectivity from anywhere. IDC estimates that 85 million notebook PCs will be sold in 2005. Most of them are expected to contain Wi-Fi. There are three types of wireless networks that compliment each other to serve different needs.

Table 1 A Comparison of Mobile Web Clients and Mobile Rich Clients

|Features |Mobile Web Clients |Mobile Rich Clients |

|Devices |Smart-phone, Cellular phone, PDA |PDA, Notebook |

|Operating System |Symbian, Palm OS |Pocket PC, Palm OS; Programming frameworks: J2ME and |

| | |.NET Compact Framework |

|Online/Offline |Online only |Online or offline |

| | |High end offline applications may require the |

| | |installation of J2ME or .NET compact Framework. |

|User interface |Web browser interface rendering markup web|More flexible user interface |

| |pages encoded in WML, cHTML, XHTML, etc. |Web browsers rendering HTML web pages |

|Screen size |Smaller |Larger |

|Input |Stylus and virtual keyboard |Keyboard and mouse |

|Locations of business |Reside on the server side |Offline applications: Reside on the client side |

|Logic and data | |Online applications: reside on the server-side |

|Client-side installation |No |Yes |

|and configuration | | |

1. Personal Area Networks (PANs) are short-range to link an individual user's computing and communication devices, such as PDA, notebook, cell phone, and printer. The primary technologies are infrared (IrDA) and Bluetooth [16]. It is touted as cable-less technology that enables data synchronization, peer-to-peer ad hoc file exchanges, and printing without using cables to connect these devices [12]. Earlier efforts to implement Bluetooth encountered adoption barriers including security and compatibility issues.

2. Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) may become a major driver for wireless networking of mobile devices. The dominant standard for WLAN is IEEE 802.11b, also referred to as Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) supports a data rate of 12 Mbps. The data transmission rate is a little better than the 10 Mbps data rate of 10-BaseT Ethernet, but less than 100-BaseT Fast Ethernet's 100 Mbps. For most enterprise applications, the speed is appropriate. For example, "the paradigm shift to notebook computers as the default platform" was completed at Intel by the end of 2002 [10]. There are increasingly more hotspots in public places, hotel, conference rooms that are equipped with base stations to support wireless LAN connections that provide access to the Internet.

3. Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs) are provided mostly by wireless network carriers. There are several generations of technologies and standards available in the marketplace. The first generation of cellular wireless (1G) was based on analog technology designed to carry voice. The second-generation (2G) technology converts voice to digital data for transmission over the air and then back to voice. Most 2G systems provide 9.6–14.4-Kbps circuit-switched data service.

2.5G refers to technology that is added to a 2G network to provide packet-switching data service. In practice, 2.5G is synonymous with the GPRS technology that has been added to GSM networks. The third-generation (3G) systems have been designed for both voice and data. By International Telecommunications Union's definition, 3G systems must provide a packet-switching data service from 144-Kbps to 2Mbps. The availability of 3G WWAN is slower than expected. Wireless gateways are required to connect the wireless carrier's networks to the Internet in order to support Internet-based applications.

The build up of wireless LANs is not only occurring inside corporate campuses, but also at publicly accessible hotspots such hotels, airports, college campuses, and conference centers. People can logon to these public WLANs to access the Internet. For example, Starbucks started to offer T-Mobile Hotspot's Wi-Fi service at 1200 locations on August 21, 2002 [1, 21]. The usage of wireless LANs in public places are encroaching on the domain of 3G network [45].

5.3 Data synchronization

Data synchronization servers are necessary when client mobile devices such as PDAs and notebooks are capable of handling data offline. Mobile devices using software such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes often need to have access to "personal information" including address book, to-do lists, e-mail, and a calendar. Business data that need to be stored offline on mobile device such as customer orders and product data may require the use of mobile versions of database management systems, such as SyBase SQL Anywhere, Microsoft SQL Server CE, Oracle Lite, etc. Mobile database software packages have a much smaller memory footprint. For example, SQL Server CE delivers its functionality in approximately one megabyte [26]. A synchronization server may be needed to handle the data synchronization between the mobile databases and centralized database servers. Data synchronization services simplify data exchange between mobile devices and back-office systems.

New database programming models have also emerged to support offline and disconnected data management and batched database updates. For example, in the .NET Framework allows programmers retrieve data from database servers or XML data sources into datasets (i.e., in-memory databases). Data that needs to be accessed by disconnected mobile devices can be stored offline as XML files or in mobile databases. Changes made to data locally can be sent to the server based on an optimistic concurrency control mechanism when the mobile devices are connected to the network.

5.4 Mobile application servers

Mobile application servers provide a broad range of functions, sometimes under different product labels. Major functions in a typical mobile application server include: content adaptation, notification, and security.

1. Content Adaptation or Transcoding Services. Various markup languages are used by different mobile devices. Building contents in formats specific for each mobile device is very costly and impractical. There are server-based solutions that dynamically translate Web contents and applications into multiple markup languages and optimize them for delivery to mobile devices. IBM's WebSphere Transcoding Publisher [7] and Oracle 9i Wireless are examples of such products. Microsoft takes a different approach by providing a programming tool, Mobile Information Toolkit, to support the development of mobile Web applications in one code base. Contents can be generated dynamically in various formats for more than one hundred devices.

2. Notification services. In an increasingly mobile environment, people want access to the information they need regardless of where they are. Notification services can provide data subscription and delivery mechanisms. Applications that use notification services can provide their customers and employees with the information they need when they need it to empower them to make timely and informed decisions [6, 26]. The user is required to subscribe to the service by specifying triggering events when the notification should be generated and sent to the user. Delivery preferences can be specified in advanced. Notifications are sent to users' mobile devices as SMS or to their e-mail accounts. Notification service is an essential component of the mobile infrastructure and is a unique feature in some innovative mobile applications.

3. Security. Securing information from unauthorized access is a major problem for any network – wire-line or wireless. In a mobile enterprise, anytime and anywhere access to mission-critical data by mobile workers is necessary for them to perform effectively in the field. Such a trend is a major security challenge for the mobile infrastructure because wireless communications rely on public airways. For sensitive business data, proper measures, such as secure end-to-end encryption, are required to protect the privacy and ensure the integrity of the data. There are multiple facets of security in mobile computing including: network security, system security, information security, and physical security. Security mechanisms of existing IT infrastructures provide the basic foundation for mobile security management. Security technologies may be embedded in mobile devices and also integrated in various layers of mobile architecture. Important security technologies include firewalls, authentication servers, biometrics, cryptography, and Virtual Private Network (VPN) [38].

6. Standards for mobile computing: Markup languages and Web services

Many standards have been developed to provide interoperability among various mobile devices and software components. A mobile computing architecture should be defined and developed according to standards to ensure the flexibility and expandability of the mobile architecture. In this section, we focus our discussion on software standards for mobile computing.

6.1 XML and markup languages

XML definition language is a meta-language to define new markup languages. Currently, there are two "standards" used as XML definition languages: XML 1.0 W3C Recommendation and XML Schema. The structure of a document is defined by XML DTD or XSD files. The content is captured in actual XML documents. There are two approaches to handle the display aspect of XML documents: XSL and XML parsers. XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) 1.0 is a W3C Recommendation [39] that specifies how one can convert an XML document to another document format. XML parsers are program libraries that can be used by a programming language to process XML data.

There are several web page specification markup languages such as WML and cHTML. Wireless Markup Language (WML) 1.0 used in WAP-enabled phones is a XML-compliant document format. cHTML used in DoCoMo's iMode is a subset of HTML for small information appliances. WAP 2.0 has adopted XHTML which is a reformulation of HTML 4 as an XML 1.0 application. iMode may migrate to XHTML in the near future [34]. When a mobile device requests a web page implemented by a server-side scripting program such as ASP and JSP, the program can detect the requesting browser type by examining the HTTP_USER_AGENT CGI variable [43]. The program can then dynamically apply an appropriate XSL template file to transform an XML document to a format (e.g., WML, cHTML, XHTML, and HTML) that is appropriate for the requesting mobile device.

6.2 SynchML

As mobile computing devices continue to proliferate, users will demand ubiquitous and consistent access to up-to-date information and applications. IT organizations will need standards to ensure consistency and a common data protection protocol for mobile device access to the corporate server. SyncML is the leading open-industry standard for universal synchronization of PIM data leveraging XML standards [22, 32].

SyncML is sponsored by leading mobile and wireless organizations and vendors such as Ericsson, IBM, Motorola, Nokia, and OpenWave, etc. It is a standard for implementing two-way synchronizing mechanism for all devices and applications over any network. Some vendors have remained non-committal. For example, Microsoft has developed its own ActiveSync synchronization software for its Pocket PCs for applications such as Microsoft Outlook.

6.3 Web services

Web services provide a standard-based approach to implementing distributed components. Web services offer data and business logic services over standard protocols such as HTTP, XML, and SOAP over the Internet. Gartner, an IT research firm, defines Web services as "loosely coupled software components delivered over Internet-standard technologies" [37]. "Loosely coupled" implies that the Web services are impendent of any programming languages, platforms, and object models. Using the ubiquitous and low-cost Internet, Web services can easily provide software functions over the internal networks and the public Internet for mobile computing applications [24]

Mobile computing devices that are capable of consuming Web services can use distributed components implemented as Web services to get access to legacy data and applications [40]. This approach will enrich the functionality of mobile applications as well as increase the reusability of distributed software components. As a result, maintenance of business logic that is shared by both mobile and non-mobile applications will be easier.

7 Conclusions

With mobile computing and wireless networking, people can conduct businesses at any time without been constrained by the availability of physical networking connections or specific computing platforms. With information delivered to employees at their fingertips while away from their offices, employees can increase their responsiveness and productivity. The proposed methodology in this paper is an attempt to identify some guidelines and formulate a life-cycle approach to assisting enterprises in planning and developing enterprise-wide mobile strategies and applications.

The methodology may also help researchers identify areas where further research may be called for. For example, in our literature research, we found that there is a lack of research on mobile workforces. More rigorous and large scale studies on mobile applications usage patterns are very much in need. Field studies of how companies plan and deploy their mobile strategies in conjunction with measurements of the resulting business performance improvement can help the further development of the proposed methodology.

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39. W3C (2001) ‘Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.0’, W3C Recommendation, 15 October,

40. Wigley, A. and Roxburgh, P. (2002) Building .NET Applications for Mobile Devices, Microsoft Press.

41. Wohl, A. D. (2002) ‘Is There a Killer App for Mobile?’ wa0231.htm

42. Wrolstad, J. (2002) Mobile Workforce Nears 100-Million Mark, 1 July,

43. Wyke, R. A., Rehman, S., and Leupen, B. (2002) XML Programming, Microsoft Press.

44. Zeosoft (2002) ‘Wireless Trends/Perspective’, /about/wirelesstrends.cfm

45. Zetie, C. (2002) ‘Essential Elements of a Mobile Enterprise Strategy’, Giga Information.

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