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So, the conversation has gone way past, ‘How do I manage the device?’ It really has gone to, ‘How do I generate new sources of revenue? How do I improve the productivity of my employees? How do I connect better with my end consumers? How do I connect better with my business partners and my ecosystem? How do I manage my brand? How do I create a different experience on the device?’ And that’s exactly what we are helping clients solve.

IM: It does seem the conversation is shifting. For companies today, it’s not just about what app to build and then figure out how to build it; it’s about the whole strategy. Can you talk about how your team helps with that vision?

Esposito: Sure, I’ll give you a real example. So, we’re working with a retailer today, which is looking to improve the overall shopping experience of their customers. Today, a lot of people shop online. If Rich Esposito goes online, I might shop for and buy some shirts and some ties, and there’s massive amounts of information from my online shopping. Then when I go into the store, there’s ability for the retailer to use all of that online shopping data about me and my buying patterns and connect that with my in-store shopping. Today we have a solution, called Presence Zone, which brings together that online shopping and in-store shopping.

Let me tell you exactly how that works and what we do. So we work with the retailer and help determine what exactly they would like to do and how they want to change that consumer in-store shopping experience. We’ll develop the applications around that. The applications typically will work in such a way that when I, Rich Esposito, now walk into the store, I will get a push notification that will allow me to opt-in or opt-out of their network. So if I choose to opt-in and I want you to recognize me in the store, that now brings all of that online shopping information available to the sales professional in the store. So they now recognize that Rich Esposito is present in the store. They have some view of my buying preferences. They might provide push notifications to me about sales or discounts on the shirts and ties that I was just buying a little while ago and direct me over to the men’s department. This is great for me because I want to be as efficient as possible when I’m in-store shopping. So, those are the types of solutions that we are bringing to clients. That’s a retail example, but it’s absolutely applicable in banking or healthcare or other industries where you’re able now to bring together this type of location-based technology. We’ll implement the location-based sensors, networks, and the Wi-Fi technology to provide this service.

IM: It seems to me that there could be a lot of business applications for this … a supermarket, for example.

Esposito: It would be a really great idea for supermarkets or even shopping malls. Malls are absolutely interested in this. Keep in mind, a shopper has the option to opt-out. You can choose to deselect being recognized as you walk into the store. But, through the sensor-based technology they can still determine that a person is in that department and they can now begin to identify traffic patterns. Knowing how many people actually walk through the men’s department or how many people walk through the household department is a benefit to businesses because now they can deploy sales professionals to those departments at the right time given the traffic patterns. Then they can start to understand linger time, which is important for a retailer, to determine how long people linger around a particular display.  This generates a wealth of information for a retailer, and that’s just one example of how we are engaging clients. This is beyond device management. It really is, for them, thinking through, ‘Who is their consumer and how do we help create a unique and different experience for the consumer to make them want to come back and do shopping in a different way?’

IM: Are there security implications? What is IBM doing to address security concerns?

Esposito: We have a whole security services division within IBM. We think of security in a number of different dimensions. Certainly from a user perspective—‘Do I have the security of my information? Is it private? Is there security around me as an individual, my social security number?’—all those types of things. Absolutely we have services around that. Then there is security around the policies for the enterprise. So I need to make sure—my applications, the data, the device, the network, the full infrastructure—we have security around that as well. And IBM has services on that also—we have application and development testing services. We have a team of security subject matter experts, who test the security of a mobile application before it goes into production. They will really test this device, really stress test it. Try to really determine whether or not the application or any of the data can be breached. That’s a great security service we offer today for our clients because they want to make sure that those mobile applications are secure before they provide them on the device.

So, security, I think, is always a concern. Every time I talk about mobility, clients bring it up. There’s huge concern about security and privacy, and I think it is evolving over time, but we definitely have a set of services to help our clients address those concerns.

IM: So, where is IBM’s mobility focus for the rest of 2014?

Esposito: We recently announced a set of services, and we talked about one, which is our MobileFirst Infrastructure Consulting Services, which helps enterprises evaluate their existing mobile infrastructure environment, identify gaps and build a comprehensive mobile strategy and roadmap that meets their business and technical needs. Using industry-specific points of view, IBM guides the journey, focuses clients on approaches that are specific to their business and recommends solutions that achieve the client’s service management, cloud and workplace objectives.

We also announced IBM MobileFirst Application Platform Management Services. With apps emerging as a key growth area for their business, enterprises are creating their own developer communities. With these new services, IBM will help clients build, configure, and fully manage their developer community’s app dev environment, supported by both software and a skilled team of experts.