The news that Intralinks is launching an App which will allow users to access its service via an Apple iPhone or iPad opens up some interesting avenues for debate, not least of which is the thought that this is another example of service providers putting the cart before the horse, and giving the horse quite an ego-stroke in the process.
In the current circumstances, of course, Intralinks has done exactly the right thing. It already has an interface available for the Blackberry, and given the growing penetration of Apple into the corporate executive marketplace, building an App for that delivery platform is sensible.
The fact that Intralinks is doing it also something of an ego-stroke for Apple. Given the nature of the core business of most of Intralinks’ customer base - legally and commercially sensitive areas such as managing mergers and acquisitions where serious, highly secure information management and delivery is of the greatest importance – the ability to deliver such content with appropriate levels of security to executives touting iPhones or iPads, while they are out on the road or in important meetings, is obviously valuable to those users. And indirectly, it is also something of an accolade for Apple’s kit.
It is also valuable to Intralinks itself. If it can manage and deliver information to and from the leading contenders in at least the business end of the rapidly growing smartphone business, then such a capability might just prove useful to other businesses which have a need for similar levels of security in delivering content to those platforms.
Let’s face it, the collective smartphone platform is going to be the delivery vehicle of choice pretty soon. It is still the realm of the early adopter for now, but the next iteration of devices is likely to be the ones that really establish it as `the norm’. So having interfaces available for them now is obviously sensible. If nothing else, the likes of Intralinks will be able to iron out any subtle problems that will inevitably emerge with front line use, before the smartphone market really explodes…..assuming it does.
That is a question that most in the business would say requires no answer or consideration – of course it will explode. And they are very probably right but, I do have niggling doubts about it.
First off there are my observations from Microsoft’s Convergence conference in Atlanta, back in April. There were many heavyweight industry analysts at that event, and almost to a man they were packing iPads. They were always carried in full view, like Holy Relics, and referred to endlessly. Yet, when they came to do some real work, what appeared but laptops.
That does make me wonder how many of Intralinks’ equally heavyweight customers will also, when the real work is being done, turn back to laptops?
There also another drawback I see coming. When it comes to smartphones one has to keep talking in purals, and plural `interfaces’ in particular. And that is where the cart is being put before the horse. I can see no long term logic in handset hardware or software vendors being in control of the interfaces between their products and the content providers. Different, highly defended proprietary interface standards are essentially the business tactics of the naïve. In the same way, there is no logic in individual content providers wasting development time, effort and money building new interfaces to new smartphones as they become available.
It is as logical as designing cars with different layouts and locations for the steering wheels and foot pedals. It may make short-term business sense for the vendor, but it would be a pain in the backside for the users. The standardisation of such interfaces has directly contributed to the ubiquity of the motor car.
And to those that would say the mobile has achieved similar global ubiquity I would answer - `up to a point, Lord Copper’. As a telephone, yes indeed. But we are only just starting to scratch the surface of what might be possible in the relationship between and melding of smartphones, mega-datacentre services, the cloud, and content providers (from businesses with knuckle-breaking security needs through to consumer entertainment and information services).
To make that really sit up and beg as a marketplace will require the use of standards in all the right places – and the interface between content providers and smartphones of all types is a crucial standard to help make that happen. For end users a common standard will make the difference between a smartphone being a useful additional gadget that may have the advantage of also being a fashion statement, and being the single, vital, absolutely essential, totally-lost-without-it portal to both their real and extended virtual worlds.
So, while it is hats off to Intralinks for its latest move, I can’t help feeling it would have been even better to hear that the company was joining together with other service providers in the cloud space to collectively support a common smartphone interface. And there is a candidate for such a pan-device standard, from Funambol.
Its Synchronisation Mark-Up Language (SyncML) is an open source project with contributors around the world working to build the interfaces to new phones as they appear. It goes without saying that the phone vendors are none too keen on this, or too helpful towards it. But the short answer is, in fact, to hell with them.
As smartphone potential grows they become as nothing without content. And making it as easy as possible to manage and disseminate content to all that require it (and where necessary have the authority to access it) is going to be the big driver of the market.
That will require the acceptance and use of standards by the phone vendors much more than it will require fashion statements.
