Glenn Gruber, Senior Mobile Strategist at Anexinet was a guest on VANTIQ TV’s The Real-Time Enterprise.
Glenn is Co-Founder of The Emerging Technology Council and a conference Co-Chair of the nGage event series.
What follows are some takeaways from the conversation. You can watch the complete interview here!
Blaine: Why don’t you start by telling us more about Anexinet and what your role is there.
Glenn: Sure. Anexinet is a company based in the Philadelphia area. Basically, we provide strategy consulting and also delivery around all different elements of digital transformation. We all know that there are a lot of different elements to that journey that need to come together for it to really work. There’s the frontend piece, there’s cloud, there’s mobile, the legacy apps, new stuff like machine learning and analytics, you name it. It all needs to get together.
That’s actually one of the cool things about Anexinet is that we have all of those competencies together to really help create a holistic approach to taking people down that path. I’m a senior mobile strategist, so I’m on the enterprise mobility team. I’ve been with the company for about five years now. It’s really a pretty cool firm. I’ve been enjoyed my time over the last five years. They keep me challenged. That’s all I can ask for.
Blaine: Great! What’s particularly exciting you these days about the intersection of business and mobile technologies?
Glenn: One of the things I’ve always loved about mobile was the opportunity that it brought for business process reengineering. There are so many things that we used to do in a certain way. When you start to consider all of the information that we know through different systems and services, sensors on the device, that can really make those business processes a lot better, more streamlined, and more productive. [They] get us out of things that add extra time for no extra value.
I think that that business process, reengineering stuff, is really interesting to me. Now, I think that when you look at some of the other technologies that are now available to us, especially which can be done on the mobile device, like machine learning, has the potential to reshape so many parts of the business; digital twins and AR, chat bots and voice, all of those things are interesting on their own. But then, when you consider that all of those components are available to us on the mobile device, whether it be a smartphone or tablet, there’s so much potential still to be had. All of that is really intriguing to me.
“There is still so much for us to do with mobile. All these new, sexy technologies out there like machine learning, AR, and voice, there are really interesting. I’m excited about all of them. But sometimes, it’s that shiny object syndrome: we get enticed by what the next thing is before finishing what we’re already working on or already should be working on.”
– Glenn Gruber
Blaine: So, you can’t have a mobile discussion these days without talking about 5G. What’s your theory about the impact of 5G on mobile and is this going to be God’s gift to the mobile revolution?
A couple of things: 5G I think is great. I’ll always take more bandwidth and the opportunity to more easily create coverage areas where I don’t have coverage areas. But on the other hand, today’s bandwidth with the LTE coverage that we have, primarily talking about here in the US, but even around the globe, it’s pretty damn good. The speeds and the coverage is not what’s holding us back. What’s holding us back is just not doing enough at this point.
Blaine: With the technology we already have, with the bandwidth we all already have?
Yeah! Think of the devices that we have. There’s still all these old Motorola and intermeshed devices that are out there that are not connected at all. We did field force automation back in the early 2000’s and a lot of those guys are still using the same devices that we gave them 15 years ago. There’s so much to do if we just did it. That would take us a great way forward. 5G will make things better, but maybe for IoT, 5G will have more of an impact than just standard enterprise mobility.
Blaine: Cool! Well, I think that’s a very insightful answer and really aligns with everything you’ve been saying so far in this discussion. Is there another area where you’d like to call BS on conventional wisdom?
Glenn: There is still so much for us to do with mobile. All these new, sexy technologies out there like machine learning, AR, and voice, there are really interesting. I’m excited about all of them. But sometimes, it’s that shiny object syndrome: we get enticed by what the next thing is before finishing what we’re already working on or already should be working on.
I just think that you [shouldn’t] jump to all that. it’s also not a binary choice or a mutually exclusive choice. Doing one doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do the other.
Click here to watch the complete interview!
Blaine: Those interested in hearing more of Glenn’s thoughts, you can follow him on Twitter @ggruber66, Anexinet, and also, check out The Device Squad podcast that Glenn just mentioned.
You can reach out to us anytime at [email protected].