Eric Y Lai @ericylai
active 8 months ago-
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: The Good, Bad And Ugly Of Different Mobile Printing Solutions · View
Mobile won’t deliver on the dream of the paperless office , as I argued earlier this week. We’ll read more on our tablets and even smartphones, for sure. But the ability to access and read those files on our devices also whets our appetite to print them, too. According to a February 2011 InfoTrends survey , the biggest reasons why [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Dreaming Of The Paperless Office? Mobile Isn’t Your Savior · View
Everyone loves the idea of a paperless office. Many technologies have tried to deliver on that green vision, but none so far have halted our tree-killing ways. PCs just made it easier for us to print more, while document management systems gave us more to print. Electronic forms, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and digital signatures – [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Mobile Sessions From SAP TechEd I Plan To Watch-Virtually · View
I made it to my first SAP TechEd conference last year. Not this year, which is a pity, since there are over 100 sessions related to mobile . I may not be able to make to the Venetian/Palazzo Congress Center, but I still plan to attend TechEd virtually, watching sessions and talks via SAP’s broadcast platform. Sessions begin at 8 [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP commented on the blog post How Brick-And-Mortar Retailers Can Beat ‘Showrooming’ And Amazon.com · View
Technical consultant (and SAP Mentor) Richard Hirsch has a nice deep dive into the cloud underpinnings of SAP Precision Retail:
-
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: How Brick-And-Mortar Retailers Can Beat ‘Showrooming’ And Amazon.com · View
Traditional retailing, at least in the U.S., is in a funk. Of the 100 largest U.S.-based retailers according to STORES magazine, only 17 are growing in the double digits. Fast risers are either growing overseas or are in hot categories like mobile phones (Verizon Wireless and AT&T) or discount goods (Dollar General). You could blame this on [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Why Text Messaging Still Thrives Despite Smartphones, Twitter and WhatsApp · View
The tech industry attracts the worst kind of futurists, Clayton Christensen-quoting types who behold shifting paradigms, looming inflection points and disruptive innovations everywhere they look. The futurism business is so competitive these days that technologies get declared dying at the very moment they are actually peaking. In monarchy terms, that’s like preparing to crown the boy prince when the [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: How Quickly Can Enterprises Deploy iPhone 5 And iOS 6? · View
How long did it take for your company to upgrade to Windows 7 after it became available in July 2009? Months? Years? Still hasn’t happened? Even the latter wouldn’t be surprising. According to Net Applications, Windows 7 only overtook Windows XP in popularity last month. That’s more than three years after its release. This sort of lag would never happen [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: This Is The Biggest Competitor To The iPad In The Hot Education Market · View
CurriculumLoft is the maker of the Kuno, perhaps the most successful Android challenger to date against the iPad in K-12 schools. That’s right – this family-owned Indianapolis, Indiana firm has succeeded against mighty Apple with its $375 tablet where Google, Samsung and Amazon have so far failed. It’s particularly impressive because among educators, Apple has the same cachet [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: American Airlines Now Up To 23,000 Samsung Galaxy Tablets · View
American Airlines is rolling out 17,000 Samsung Galaxy Not e mini tablets (or phablets, if you must) to its flight attendants to improve and personalize its customer service. Flight attendants will be able to record customer meal and beverage preferences, access customer info and better identify high-value customers or those needing special assistance. The 5.3-inch Notes were chosen [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Four Reasons Why Enterprise Mobile Rollouts Can Fail – Or Fail To Launch · View
Schools can stumble and fail while going mobile for four reasons , I discovered earlier this month while reporting on all of the latest tablet rollouts this back-to-school season . That made me wonder: what are the reasons why enterprises stumble or fail at their mobile rollouts? Coincidentally, several days later, I happened to be a guest on the business technology radio show, In the [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: The Five Things From Apple’s iPhone 5 Launch That CIOs Will Care About · View
There was a ton of news from Apple’s event today, many of which may have sounded earthshattering to those nattering away on Twitter (raises hand) , but upon more reflection, are probably irrelevant to those of us in the enterprise and business worlds. Skittles Rainbow of colors for new iPod Touch? Leave that for the kids. New and improved EarPods? [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Real-Time Is The Wrong Reason For Your Enterprise To Go Mobile · View
First, it was the Scandinavian-style Smorgasbord. Later, it was Old Country Buffet. My parents were immigrants who grew up in a time and place where starvation was a reality. Naturally, all-you-can-eat restaurants seemed like one of America’s Greatest Wonders. When I was in elementary school, we would drive into the Big City (Minneapolis) and chow down at Valhalla [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Chart: Top 100 iPad Rollouts by Enterprises & Schools (Updated Sept. 10, 2012) · View
As part of my research mapping the largest iPad and other tablet deployments by schools and universities, I also updated my list of the largest publicly-known iPad deployments, including companies, governmental agencies, etc. Notable additions include Roche (formerly Genentech), now up to 13,070 iPads, McAllen School District in Texas (moved from 5,000 to 25,000 iPads deployed), Clinton [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Map: Back-To-School Drives 100+ Huge iPad & Tablet Deployments · View
My kids returned to school this week. They attend a suburban elementary school built only one year ago. Everything there is beautiful and state-of-the-art – with the glaring exception of its computing technology. Not only does the school still use computer labs, but they run an outdated platform, as I discovered after quizzing my son: Me: “Do [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: How Did SAP’s CIO Spend His Summer Vacation? · View
Summer is not when CIOs usually start or ramp up major projects. Not so for SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann. Apart from a family trip to Vienna and the Croatian seaside resort of Dubrovnik, Bussmann and his team had a full plate this summer, especially on mobile initiatives. Here are some of the highlights: 1) Introducing a new [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Gartner: Mobile Is Not The Edge, But The Center, Of Your IT Universe · View
My ZDNet blogger-in-arms John Fontana is at Gartner’s (formerly Burton Group’s) Catalyst conference in San Diego this week, and wrote up two interesting pieces about mobile (even though he’s more of a security/privacy expert). The first is Gartner’s take on What’s In and What’s Out in mobile. Some of the things that are Out: Corporate devices, business tools, Crackberries, [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: Will The New Wave Of Prosumer Tablets Beat The iPad In The Enterprise? · View
(Corrected 6 PM PT, August 21, with information provided by Avaya.) Consumer appeal has been the most important factor in the business tablet war to date. That’s because the vast majority of tablets used for work - five-sixths, by one estimate - have been brought in by workers via their employers’ Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs . It’s why the [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: CIO On Windows 8 Tablets: “Best Solution Currently Available” · View
My blog last week, ” University Deploying Thousands of Windows 8 Tablets Is Smart Tactics, Flawed Strategy, ” generated quite a bit of reader reaction. I’m actually quite excited about what Windows 8 will deliver . But I felt that Seton Hall’s plan to standardize completely on Windows 8 tablets and ultrabooks (initially all from Samsung) and effectively ban Apple and [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: iPads In The Enterprise Aren’t Overhyped. They’re Properly Hyped. · View
Bill Simmons, aka the Sports Guy on ESPN/Grantland, is probably my favorite writer on the planet. In the last decade, I’ve read more words by him than anyone besides myself. There are several reasons for this. His stuff mostly appears on the Web. Like every guy I know, I stopped reading actual books around the time DSL [...] -
Eric Y Lai from ZDNet/Sybase/SAP wrote a new blog post: India’s Aakash-2: iPad Guts In A Miraculous US$21 Android Tablet · View
Inexpensive homegrown tablets - think between US$60 and $200 – abound in India, where the per-capita income, despite the fast-rising economy, remains US$3,700 per year. But the uncrowned king of inexpensive, Indian-made tablets is the Aakash tablet. I say uncrowned because the student-designed, government-subsidized Aakash has yet to hit the market. And for awhile this year, the [...] - Load More