Anyware, Tulsa
Yesterday I was the keynote speaker at Anyware University, an event hosted by Anyware Mobility Solutions in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was a good day on many fronts.
I spent 15 years in Tulsa before joining Sprint and many of the personal stories I tell in The Power of Mobility actually happened in Tulsa (the Word Processing window, the CEO who called the Internet a toy that businesses would never pay for, working with Pennwell Publishing to digitize and connect their magazine content, etc.), so it was a bit of a homecoming.
Also, Clint Parr, CEO of Anyware, was one of the first hires into Digital Frontiers, the Internet company I started in 1995, Chris Kingham, VP of marketing for Anyware, was our main contact at Pennwell in those days, and Jim Dutton, SVP and CFO for Anyware, was the head of business development that we worked with in selling Digital Frontiers when we sold the company to Williams and I went on to work with him on a number of M&A deals while I was with Williams.
Of course Sport Clips, an Anyware client, is one of the case studies in the book. I also had a chance to personally connect with Sprint’s sales team in Tulsa, including Sam Sibala, another old contact from my heady Internet boom days in Tulsa.
But the best aspect of the day was having a great gathering of smart folks who deeply care about keeping their companies and organizations on the right technology path and who specifically came to learn about what mobility can do for (or to) their businesses. The Q&A session was one of the best I’ve been part of in months - with well directed questions that really got to the heart of how this technology will impact the decisions these businesses are making today.
There were two other notable presentations at the event.
One was the presentation of money, which is always notable! Anyware sponsored a contest for University of Tulsa students to identify a business need, design a mobile solution to meet that need, and then develop the solution using Anyware’s development tools. The grand prize went to a team that developed a solution for campus housing and the second prize went to a team that developed an application for social workers to file documentation required for government funding. (Winners also received autographed copies of my book, but I’m guessing that students get more excited about money than yet another book to read. 
)
The second notable presentation was by Mike Ishmael, Anyware’s VP of Sales. Mike introduced four different levels of capturing the power of mobility:
- Productivity - such as mobile e-mail and mobile calendars
- Information - gathering and distributing information via mobile devices
- Transaction - performing tasks in the field with mobility
- Transformation - redefining how a business or industry competes through mobility
Mike also gave examples of Anyware clients in each of these categories. Two of his examples were particularly interesting to me.
CH2M Hill is “a global leader in full-service engineering, consulting, construction, and operations.” FEMA engaged the firm to manage providing some of the temporary housing to those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. While some of the other temporary housing projects turned into PR disasters, CH2M Hill wasn’t one of them. In fact, their successful management of the effort so pleased FEMA that it led to additional contracts with the government agency. Anyware helped CH2M Hill develop a mobile application for the post-disaster temporary housing developments - including asset tracking, recording of utilities and sewage facilities to ensure reliable and safe service are available, and ongoing management of the developments.
Mike’s second example was docvia.com - a web-based “solution that saves patients time and money while allowing physicians to offer better face-to-face care for new and existing patients.” Anyware helped docvia.com take their service mobile. Mike gave the example of a family out-of-town for a kid’s sports tournament who needs to ask the nurse a question or have a prescription sent to a nearby pharmacy. Docvia.com is a great example of a company using IP and Mobility to reinvent an industry!
I think the whole day gave attendees a lot to think about as they figure out how mobility can transform their businesses and their industries.
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Now playing: Andrew Peterson - All Shall Be Well