Mobile Field Service Workforce Software WAN Design Principles: The principles of mobilized application design are actually a set of best practices for designing general-purpose client-centric applications.

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by Alan Zeichick, principal analyst, Camden Associates. Intel Corp.

I'm not a mobile user. My primary PC is a dual-processor desktop with a huge 23-inch display. I have a laptop, but mainly I use it while making a once-a-month business trip to the East Coast. My cell phone does not have Java or BREW, I don't have a Blackberry or pager, and my PDA gathers dust in a drawer. And I'm not in field sales, field service or field anything.

So, like many of you, I've found the mantra "Build Mobilized Applications" a little, well, impractical. Mobility conjures up the image of the UPS driver scanning bar-codes on my Amazon.com purchase, or the guy from Sears using a special radio-equipped notebook while he fixes my fridge, or the waitress at 'The Waterfront' who uses a spiffy handheld to radio my gin-and-tonic to the bar. It also brings to mind all those comments about field sales people using mobile devices—but do you know what? My own company's field sales people use their laptops to do presentations, not to process transactions.

So, while I've written about the principles recommended for building mobilized applications, for the most part they didn't seem to apply to me, or to the types of applications that I rely upon daily.

But that's not right. Let's move beyond the terminology: The principles of mobilized application design are actually a set of best practices for designing general-purpose client-centric applications.

For example, take e-mail. My e-mail client is Qualcomm's Eudora 6.1 for Windows. Generally, Eudora runs on my desktop PC, described above, or on my laptop while wired into our New York office's LAN. But sometimes I use it while in Starbucks on WiFi, in a hotel room or motel, or on an airplane totally disconnected. (Those cross-country flights are perfect for cleaning out messages and catching up with old friends.) And sometimes my home-office's cable modem goes down.

Turns out that Eudora offers several features that happen to empower mobilized users, although they're not marketed as such. (Many e-mail clients offer the same features.) For example, all outgoing messages go into a queue. The software seamlessly adapts to changing network conditions: If there's a network connection, Eudora will send them out; if not, they'll just sit there. So I can write and send messages at 35,000 feet, exactly the same way that I do while in my office.

Eudora has other features that are good for mobility—and for ordinary users. It can be told to check e-mail only when it's running on AC power, but not on battery, in order to extend battery life. (I don't use that setting.) It can be told to download only the headers for messages above a user-selectable size, so as to stop a 4MB attachment from hogging the 28.8kbps modem. (That's a setting that I use while in broadband-free hotels, but not otherwise.)