The Codegate Blog

B is for Bat; C is for Codegate; D is for Dracula!

Posted on 27 August 2010 | View Comments

As you may know, Codegate occupies a beautifully converted Granary in rural Oxfordshire which dates back just over two hundred years, although in those days it was thatched and stood some eighteen inches lower than it does today.  It is not the usual pristine conversion which so often loses all semblance of the original rustic charm to modern building techniques and materials. The Granary is still very much an agricultural building, albeit with more insulation, central heating and a few less draughts, but only a few less!

We are frequently reminded that we share our office space with the sort of wildlife you expect to find in the middle of a 600-acre farm as you may have seen in our twitter photo recently. We’re also extremely fortunate in having MITIE Pest Control as a customer and valued advisor on how to deal with some of the less desirable visitors we receive. During one visit by their Managing Director, Pete Trotman, he declared in a very matter of fact way; “You do realise you have bats, don’t you?” Our response was more one of incredulity, but his explanation of the contents and makeup of some droppings brought the point home. More recently our landlord, the farmer of all those acres of land, had cause to investigate the Granary because the burglar alarm had been set off at 11:30pm. He entered the building, ascended the stairs to the third floor opened the windows then left to go back to his bed. The next day he asked if we’d noticed the windows were open and when asked why, he replied, “To let the bat out.”

On Wednesday we came into the office and found a rather poorly looking bat on the carpet, barely moving. Penny took it upon herself as Office Manager to wrap the poor thing in a towel and provided it with a small quantity of water in a disused bottle top. We now understand you shouldn’t handle these little creatures but if you must, then wear thick gloves – you’ve been warned. Meanwhile Technical Manager Chris telephoned the local vet who suggested calling the Bat Conservation Trust.

The BCT sent David Endacott, one of their experts to assess the situation and within three hours he was on the doorstep facsinated by both the Granary and our little visitor. He proclaimed the Granary wasn’t being used as a roost but on a temporary basis as a maternity unit for nuturing the young. He explained our visitor was a young male who’d got himself a bit lost and had become weak trying to find his way out. He took the little fellow away and we got back to our work. For more information look at this great web site; http://www.bats.org.uk/

If you’d like to know how our little visitor got on, let me know…

Getting your employees to buy into a mobile solution?

Posted on 19 August 2010 | View Comments

So, you’ve selected the software provider, settled the “Do I go bespoke or do I buy a packaged application?” question and you’re now looking at the most appropriate hand held devices.

—– STOP! —–

It is important that the people who understand the working conditions and constraints of your business – your workforce, should have their say at this point. Pick a number of your staff to form a steering committee, with each member representing a faction or group of your employees. An experienced workforce member and a younger staff member, a skilled worker and a novice, a technophobe and a tech geek, and task them with agreeing which hardware to use.  The first thing they’ll do is disagree but this will actually prove why this committee was put together, to ensure that agreement is met. Remember, the likelihood of everyone agreeing on the same solution is highly unlikely; the aim here is to find a common middle ground where everyone can benefit.

Individually they should consider factors which affect their specific job role, but most likely they will be looking at;

1. Screen size, resolution and brightness
2. Number of keys, alpha and numeric, QWERTY or mobile phone type
3. Ergonomic design, weight and ease of handling
4. How rugged the device needs to be
5. Battery life and if an extended battery will be needed
6. Will it be put in the pocket or in a holster when not in use
7. Does it need any accessories or a case

If you ask them to give a score out of ten for each of the above, for each device you are considering, the resulting scores should give you a clear winner.

But by scoring the elements you may discover there are two or more devices with a similar score but which have widely different total costs of ownership. To select a device which is less expensive, but which scores nearly as high as the top scoring product can be justified on cost and could determine the viability of the project.

You’d then want to pilot the device running your chosen software by asking your steering committee members (who selected the product) to trial it in the field. Their natural enthusiasm in taking part in the project will prove infectious with their peers, providing excellent feedback helping to design the training requirements.

On successful completion of the pilot, the system is rolled-out through the rest of your organisation with all employees fully aware of the project and how some of their colleagues, the steering committee, view the system. Your foresight in involving them with every aspect of the project, particularly the elements that directly affect them, will stand you in good stead. When the doom and gloom brigade try to wriggle out of having their working lives monitored, measured and managed, you’ll be able to counter;

“If it’s OK for the youngest and oldest, technologically challenged and technologically aware, experienced and novice – it’s OK for you!”

If you install your mobile solution with this inclusive and consultative methodology, your workforce will be with you. It will be quickly evident who wants to work productively and who wants to be free to occupy their time unobserved. You’ll have the evidence to let the latter go and replace them with those that seek to be productive. In other words you’ll be concentrating on the benefits the system provides rather than trying to manage a workforce that hasn’t bought into the project.

What do you think? Is all this obvious or did your company try doing it differently and how did it work out in the end?

Let me know.

Is there life in the old barcode?

Posted on 12 August 2010 | View Comments

The humble barcode is approaching its 40^th birthday, but are newer technologies about to steal its market, or is it still an unbeatable machine readable solution for data capture?

First, a quick history lesson to set the scene:

In the UK, Plessey were the first to implement a barcode as a mechanism of presenting a unique number in a form which could be ‘read’ by machines in the early 1970s. This barcode was imaginatively called the “Plessey code” and represented numeric data as dark bars printed on a white background, very similar to the barcode we all see today on retail products. The first retail barcode was the applied to a multipack of Wrigley’s Gum in June of 1974 and was the forerunner of what is now the Universal Product Code from the USA. If the history of these things interests you, I recommend you have a look at this.

Today, there are over 40 different symbologies or types of barcode, each with its own specialist application or market. You can now barcode alpha and numeric characters, or if you use Code 128, all 128 printable ASCII characters can be encoded. What makes the humble barcode a highly utilised technology is the cost, it can be printed for next to nothing and these days the laser or CCD based barcode scanners which read them are very inexpensive. Imagine your company produces tins of baked beans. You print a two-colour label to keep the costs down and add your GS1 allocated barcode. By adding a barcode to your finished product you will increase your costs by fractions of a penny, only a small amount of printing ink, virtually nothing. In the last thirty years I’ve been asked many times what technology will replace the barcode and as you can see my answer centres on cost. Until a technology is invented or developed which can be applied to all fast moving consumer goods at a lower cost than barcodes or offering significant benefits, it won’t be replaced.

In this blog I’ve written of applications from Event Management to Warehouse Control, Voting Systems to Asset Management, all of which have utilised the barcode because it provides the lowest possible cost of application. There are less price sensitive applications for example; issuing machine tools in an aircraft factory, which could benefit from technology that unlike barcodes doesn’t require line of sight and provides a mechanism to write information to it. This technology is radio frequency identification (RFID) and is considerably more expensive to apply and read.

Today your car has hundreds of barcode labels identifying its various components, your courier supplied package is traceable because of its unique barcoded consignment number. The cutting instrument wielded by the surgeon in the hospital operating theatre is likely to have a laser etched, two dimensional barcode uniquely identifying it as his favourite scalpel. In many walks of life the barcode has become ubiquitous, as a technology for entering data automatically into computer systems, it’s achieved an enviable, even unassailable market share.

It also achieved something remarkable, long before any other technology, barcodes or more correctly the commercial influencers behind them, set international standards which allow a multipack of Wrigley’s Gum to be correctly recognised by an EPoS system anywhere in the world.

Whilst RFID remains the most talked about and least deployed technology due to the implementation costs, there is most certainly life in the barcode. I’m no gambler but even I’d wager that the mighty barcode will reach a century!

Is your IT department a barrier to development?

Posted on 5 August 2010 | View Comments

We often hear about how stretched the IT department is, many customers complain that the development and deployment of their mobile computing solution is held up because of its perceived low priority within their IT departments. In some cases they’ve been quoted years in answer to the question; “When could it be integrated”?

First let’s put this in context, any mobile solution will be of limited value unless it’s integrated with the legacy or host, back office system. Over recent years the integration at hardware level has become much easier. It wasn’t long ago that you needed to guess how many telephone lines and modems you would need to install to satisfy the need for 100 people to transmit data at any given time, without them receiving an engaged tone. Back then the focus was on batch data capture with relatively large files being transmitted each evening. All you need now is a decent broadband connection; something which we now take for granted and are frustrated by when not available.

At the software level however, integration is an entirely different matter…

Here at Codegate we’ve developed a suite of software application interfaces that simplify the connection to legacy systems. Various host systems, for example; Sage, SAP, BARN or Oracle output information to, and integrate data from our bespoke mobile solutions. This means involvement from the IT department is minimised. Of course they’ll want to check the validity of the suggested integration mechanisms and to see how other customers use them, but the result is a considerable time saving when compared to writing the interface from scratch.

But just how much time does this save?

One of our developments involved obtaining customer order information from an IBM AS400 host owned by a large consumer electronic device manufacturer, transmitting this to wireless hand held computers in the warehouse which directed the operators to pick the order. Each element of the picking process was verified by bar code and when completed, the details were forwarded to a hand held being used by drivers to capture serial numbers when delivering the products to the retail customer. On completing his deliveries, the driver returned to the warehouse and the data was transmitted through Codegate’s software, updating the AS400. This system required an analyst from their IT department for just 4 hours. In other words the solution was implemented without major involvement of the IT department and without queueing for their resource time. From order to implementation of the pilot took only four months, far quicker than the customer expected.

Is your IT department a barrier to getting your mobile solution implemented, let us know?

Where is Event Security Heading?

Posted on 8 July 2010 | View Comments

Physical security at large sporting or entertainment events has never been more critical than it is today. The inconvenience of bag searches and the associated long queues test the patience of us all, although we take comfort knowing it’s for our protection. But spare a thought for what happens behind the scenes at these events. Who has access to which area, and when? Does anyone have clearance to all areas, are players/performers restricted on specific days? Are catering staff authorised to roam freely or restricted to kitchens and restaurants?

Each staff member, official or visitor could be allocated a bar coded badge to be displayed and scanned at each access location or internal check point. The badge would be scanned and an image of the wearer displayed on the screen of the hand held device, together with a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ access approval message.

We wrote an application running on hand held computers in 1995 to provide security staff, employees and players at The All England Lawn Tennis Club to help secure access to areas at the prestigious Wimbledon event. In those days, before their use of wireless networks and when mobile computers had considerably less memory, the system worked in batch mode with regular updates. Today they are using picture identity checks and an IBM wireless network to distribute and gather the data. How do we know this? Well, we’re still working with The All England Lawn Tennis Club and we are currently supporting the Wimbledon Tournament for the 15th consecutive year.

Advances in technology have made this type of application much easier for the security guard to follow, as the colour screen can be employed to instantly make the point if access is denied.

In future we could change to Near Field Communications (NFC) instead of bar codes and enable automatic access gates to regulate movement.  By using fewer security guards, this system would be much cheaper to run but would we feel as secure.  I suspect a mixture of various types of system will be utilised depending on the perceived security status of the event.

At Wimbledon all attention should be on the tennis, and thus the less restrictive and visible the security measures can be, the better.

What technology do you think will be keeping us secure in future?
Do you feel the measures taken are too extreme and impact upon an otherwise peaceful and enjoyable day?
Are you inclined to be more comfortable where safety checks are carried out?
Let me know

Motorola ES400; A Convergence of Consumer Technology in a Rugged Enterprise Housing.

Posted on 28 June 2010 | View Comments

Motorola have launched the much anticipated ES400 Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA) targetted at the mobile worker that may have looked at utilising consumer orientated SmartPhones.

The ES400 boasts a drop specification which meets US Military requirements for ruggedness, surviving 300 consecutive 0.5m drops and is also resilient to; end exposure to dust, moisture and rain. This level of ruggedness is important, but many Codegate customers have reported that a product road map and life cycle of over three years is equally important. Motorola say they will continue to develop the ES400 for three years, enabling companies to plan full corporate wide roll-outs with confidance in the products availability in the future.

This fully featured, light weight device (<200 gms) has an impressive array of attributes, including:

• 600 MHz ARM processor
• 257MB RAM with 1GB Flash and micro SD card supporting up to 32GB
• 3 inch colour touch screen VGA 640×480 display
• Built-in biometric fingerprint reader
• 3.2MB autofocus digital colour camera
• Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system
• 1d and 2d bar code scanning using controllable ‘Red line’ aimer
• 3-axis accelerometer enabling motion sensing and screen orientation
• Up to 500 stand by and 12 hours talk time using the extended battery
• 802.11 a/b/g direct sequence wireless LAN
• Dual 3.5G, GSM HSDPA/HSUPA plus Bluetooth V2.0 and Voice-over IP ready

In short, the ES400 has everything the mobile worker could desire from GPS navigation to sign-on glass signature capture, bar code data capture to high speed communications over the cellular network, allowing you to report data back to the office based ERP system. This device ticks a lot of the boxes listed by our customers as being key for mobile worker solutions.

I see the ES400 as having a bright future. Motorola have finally reaped the benefits of combining the scale of consumer electronics manufacturing with the application knowledge of the rugged data capture market experience of their previous acquisition – Symbol Technologies. Codegate are already receiving requests to port software to the ES400 and we expect many more customers to follow.

Will the ES400 work for you or is the screen/keyboard too small? Do you see this as a attractive mobile worker tool or will it be too attractive to technology theives? Let me know…

Can the iPhone 4 Work for Business?

Posted on 18 June 2010 | View Comments

Steven Jobs’ keynote speech at Apple’s worldwide developer conference in San Francisco was again used to launch a new product, this time the iPhone 4. I’m a particular fan of the iPhone because it has brought simplicity of operation to what was previously an over complicated Smartphone market, the user interface is very intuitive, but above all because it has the best mail client available. But is the new iPhone 4 suited to the enterprise business arena?

Whilst security is still a potential concern when introducing a very consumer orientated device into the enterprise market, the versatility and capability of the iPhone does have benefits which could outweigh those concerns for many businesses considering a mobile solution.

The new device brings many new features that could, subject to software development, be interesting in some vertical markets, for example;

1. The ‘Retina’ display has an amazing 960 x 480 pixels, equivalent to 4 times the existing iPhone display. At 326 pixels per inch with a contrast ratio of 800:1 this could prove ideal for displaying PDFs of wiring diagrams or building plans.
2. The accelerometer and digital compass are joined by a gyroscope with the ability to detect pitch, roll and yaw, plus something called ‘rotation about gravity’. This would allow precise user orientation to be determined, with a 6-axis movement detection. While games designers will love the possibilities this presents it could also provide interesting benefits in warehouse and in-store retail applications.
3. The digital camera at both the front and back of the device allow video calling, showing the face of the caller to the receiver of the call. Apple calls this ‘Facetime’ video calling and while it only works for calls between iPhone 4s at the moment, they are sensibly making the protocols ‘open’ to all. Facetime would make some financial calls, where proof of ID is required, possible. Our Auto ID industry would call this biotechnology recognition, but a video call provides facial recognition and has many potential applications.
4. Apple has recognised businesses need controls over the device, which a consumer product doesn’t necessarily need. They have added SSL security and strengthened VPN protocols to cater for this need, reducing the security concerns generated by previous generations of the iPhone.
5. Another crucial addition for the industries in which we operate and deploy solution(s) into is a toughened screen. Long the preserve of more rugged devices, Apple has created a toughened glass for this purpose. Said to be “20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic” this capability certainly adds more viability to the device over previous incarnations.

In short, Apple changed the market with the launch of the original iPhone and competitors have since been trying to catch up. The iPhone 4 seems to be better suited to the business data capture market than previous models and offers unique features to help open previously unaddressed applications.

This may account for why Codegate are receiving an increasing number of requests to develop applications specifically for the iPhone platform.

Of course, limitations are still there; including a non interchangeable battery, a screen which is not test proven or rated and a security infrastructure which is yet to be tried and tested in a data transfer environment. However, these may all be irrelevant if the capabilities of the platform and the apps offer advantages over more traditional data capture devices…

What do you think; will the iPhone 4 make an impact on the business data capture market or are core capabilities such as long battery life and environmental ratings still at the core of the decision making process?

Is Cloud Computing all White and Fluffy?

Posted on 1 June 2010 | View Comments

We’ve all heard of Cloud Computing, using the image that frequently represents the Internet as a title for a ubiquitous, all encompassing computing environment. But what does Cloud Computing actually mean?

Any computer system consists of many constituent elements; a computing engine, an operating system, a user interface, a communications infrastructure, applications and some form of storage, usually hard discs. In a Cloud Computing system a web browser is used to interact with an application running on a web based server(s) residing in a protected data store site. This approach has several advantages, namely;

1)    All server maintenance and upgrades can be performed by professionals at the data centre without the end users knowledge and without interrupting their work.
2)    Maximum availability of the system can be assured through Service Level Agreements.
3)    Device and location independence, accessing the system through any Internet connected device, at work, at home or on the move.
4)    Most Cloud Computing systems can be implemented quickly without the large capital expenditure usually associated with in-house solutions, and may be supplied on a pay as you go or ‘software as a service’ basis.

Many applications have been made available as Cloud Computing applications, including those from; Google, Amazon, SalesForce.com and others. Perhaps the most famous example of a Cloud Computing application is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. But from a mobile computing perspective what are the implications of utilising Cloud Computing?

A Cloud Client might use a rugged mobile computer to provide the hardware interface to the Cloud application. This could operate a simple browser application running Windows Mobile to access data held on the Cloud servers, thus minimising the users investment in server infrastructure. The resulting solution would be easily scalable and involve minimal intervention for operating system or application upgrades.

However, mobile computer users experience some unusual environmental conditions, running out of GPRS signal for one. As the Cloud Client relies on connection to the Cloud Server to display data and to capture input, a disconnection through lack of signal could be most disruptive, inconvenient and above all, costly!

If the Cloud Client uses a web browser, or ‘thin client’, the interface will have no control over the communication link and will only be able to display a ‘404 Page not found’ error if the Cloud Server isn’t reachable.  Herein lies the problem, by taking away many of the elements that allowed control over the solution and relying on a ‘thin client’ for access, we’ve introduced the uncontrollable, the one thing which we’ve been trying to negate through tested infrastructures.

If instead, we utilise a ‘rich client’ or bespoke application on the hand held device we can instigate controls that enable local data storage when out of GPRS coverage and meaningful messages to transact and guide the user to a resolution.

So a ‘rich client’ provides the best way to provide control and to interact with a Cloud Server, which in turn provides the most scalable way of gaining computing power. But isn’t that what mobile systems have been doing since inception? Have marketeers created a new name for something the mobile computer industry has been providing for so long?
If they have, there are more yet Cloud Computing terms and implications to consider;

•    Software as a Service
•    Platform as a Service
•    Infrastructure as a Service

Each of these could be the subject of a separate blog post and have specific implications for the mobile system user, or are they new names for what’s been in use for years? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this as the Cloud gains momentum and develops as an enterprise focussed technology.

Are Smartphones Costing You More Than Just Lost Data?

Posted on 14 May 2010 | View Comments

Yes, of course you comply with the Data Protection Act’s requirements for you to take sensible precautions with all individual’s private information, but what about your mobile workers and their everyday job related transactions?

Did you keep the overall cost of the mobile solution down by using inexpensive smartphone based devices instead cost effective, rugged terminals, after all any solution was better than paper!

Now the system is fully installed you should be reaping your rewards. You’ll hopefully be starting to notice some of the savings you were expecting but, they may be a little less than you initially thought. There may be an alarming number of returned, broken devices, and the time taken to repair/replace them, may come as a shock. The calls from each region in the field asking for an increase in buffer stock units may come as an unbudgeted expense. But the biggest shock may be the cost of recapturing the lost data from these damaged devices.

Those shiny smartphones with the latest Windows Mobile operating system, 3G connectivity, GPS satellite positioning and WiFi network communications were a ‘bargain’ but, they lack an important feature – a battery backup! If they’re dropped, broken, run out of power or are simply worked for too long, they lose memory. Vital system settings and transactions captured during a hard days work, but not yet transmitted back to your host system, may be lost.

To recover critical, confidential information, your team must;

• Get a new device out to your worker
• Collect the old one, remove it’s SIM and send the unit for repair
• Insert the SIM in the replacement device and configure it’s network connection
• Set up any user specific details on the replacement device
• Establish data connection and download/update as required to get your worker operational
• Determine if any transactions are missing and if possible, collect the data again…this is not a luxury easy to come by!

The associated costs are high. To get the new device out to the worker and critically recover any lost data will require a qualified supervisor or super user, taking time out of their role to travel to the distressed worker, which means two people are now unproductive. The supervisor will need to have a spare device available for him to take, implying that you are storing a buffer stock of devices in each region or with each team leader. The number of buffer stock devices required will be determined by your experience of how many units break each week, a lesson which can only be learnt the hard way!

Once on-site, the supervisor will take some time to transfer the SIM or set up the new device with the mobile field workers’ details and to determine what, if anything, has been lost. Jointly they will determine the course of action necessary to restore the device to operational status and complete the tasks the mobile field worker was charged with.

At best, this whole process will stop the worker for half a day, planned calls won’t be completed and customers will need to be contacted advising them of the delay. The supervisor, unless employed purely for this purpose will also have his day rescheduled, losing any planned productivity. If their combined salaries are £40,000 and they’re expected to work 230 days a year, including employers NI contribution, this has cost you £197 plus travelling expenses and courier shipping costs of the broken unit. Additionally, the costs of recovering/rewriting/capturing the lost information must also be considered. Finally, and potentially the biggest cost of all, the cost of a customer loosing confidence in your mobile solution.

So one broken device in the field costs over £200, but what may worry you most is how often they break. One of our customers established a trial of a popular PDA smartphone with 70 users, he cancelled the trial after one month because, on average, over 24 (34%) were in the repair loop.

“X” Marks the Spot

Posted on 6 May 2010 | View Comments

You’d have to be living on a different planet to have missed the constant publicity and coverage of the politician’s campaign to get our vote in the recent election, but this has spurred me into thinking about how we vote.

Application voting systems require a full audit trail and absolute integrity of data, a lost or misplaced vote here and there could critically alter the legitimate outcome. The votes or scores captured are sent via a wireless connection to a central system for instant analysis and scoring, giving the results within seconds of the last vote or score being recorded. Codegate has created electronic voting systems for numerous organisations, enabling individuals judging an event or activity to capture their score on mobile, hand-held computers.

Compare this to how we determine which party or politician we want to represent us in the National or Local elections and manage the country in which we live, where we manually write an “X” on a ballot paper and post the slip, having folded it to hide our intentions from prying eyes, into a ballot box. When voting has finished the ballot box is delivered to the counting house where the slips are removed, unfolded and placed into piles by party or politician, ready for counting. Or, for those unable to physically attend the polling station, a postal slip is completed, folded and inserted into an envelope and posted to the counting house.

If this strikes you as somewhat archaic, then we’re on the same wavelength. Over 75% of us are lucky enough to have a broadband connection at home and in its ‘Digital Britain’ report, the Labour Government confirmed it wants to deliver broadband access of 2MB/s or greater to virtually all UK households by 2012. So why with all this earnest on being digitally connected can’t we vote on-line? OK, right now not everyone has broadband or a computer, but the polling booth must be connectable by broadband – they are in population centres after all!

Here’s my vision;

1. Send out the Official Poll Card with a unique barcode representation of the individuals existing electoral registry number.
2. Equip the Polling Station with as many workstations with touch screens as there are booths and attach simple slot read bar code scanners.
3. Connect these workstations to a Local Area Network, which in turn is connected to a broadband service.
4. When a voter places the bar code of their registry number under the scanner the workstation then;
   • accesses a central database to confirm this voter hasn’t already voted, looks up and displays the voter’s name and address and asks for confirmation that the voter’s details are correct
   • displays a list of candidates the voter touches the candidate of choice and “X” is displayed alongside their selection
   • asks the voter to confirm their selection(s) when finished
   • updates a central database confirming the voter has made their choice
   • updates the central database count of votes by delegate.

Postal votes would be unaffected; as they already have a bar-coded representation of the voter’s registry number and once the above system was proven, it could be expanded to include home voting through a web connection and mobile voting through mobile smartphones. Ultimately, when the Government’s target of broadband for all becomes a reality, the Polling Station would surely be unnecessary.

Once votes were cast, and in almost real-time, results could be displayed showing full statistical analysis increasing interactivity and visibility to the nation. Live debate and consideration could be conducted with much greater foundation. The whole experience would become much more insightful for those who are ultimately affected by the outcome, making them feel more involved whilst also removing many barriers which stop so many people from bothering to vote.

What would it cost? Any estimation by me would be something of a stab in the dark, but surely it would be a lot less than the current manual system! Whilst the up font costs may be significant, a proven system through testing would reap rewards in the long run. In this digital age, the most important matters for our everyday lives should simply not be handled by fallible manual systems.

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