In The Boardroom™ With...

Mr. Bryan Coapstick
Director, Mobile Innovations
HP Enterprise Services, U.S. Public Sector

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us today, Bryan. If you wouldn’t mind, please tell us a little bit about your background and your role at HP.

Bryan Coapstick: As the Director of Mobile Innovation, I am responsible for ensuring that HP’s mobility initiatives successfully help enterprises improve communications and interactions with customers, employees, constituents and partners  to ensure they have the data they need, when they need it, and in a format that is easy to interact with and consume. Additionally, I serve as the industry chair for the Advanced Mobility Working group for the American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council (ACT/IAC), whose mission is to “foster collaboration and communication on issues regarding mobile computing in the Federal Government, including citizen services, remote connectivity, employee services, workforce productivity, digital publishing, and enterprise mobility.”

Prior to joining HP, I spent nearly two decades in both the public and private sectors, focused on emerging technologies and the critical intersections between business strategy and technology. I’ve worked with several Fortune 200 companies to increase their market presence and effectively leverage their mobile and digital channels. Additionally, I have built interactive teams, worked to guide digital mobile strategies, and led an Innovation Lab focused on accelerating digital interaction models, the convergence of big data analytics with context aware applications, and emerging mobile payments and transaction capabilities.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Society is becoming increasingly mobile. Tethered to our personal devices around the clock, we can work, shop and take care of tasks—anywhere, anytime. But the real question becomes, how do enterprises manage the delicate balance of providing the right information, into the right hands, at the right time?

Bryan Coapstick: Mobile technology and devices are advancing at a rapid pace thanks to widespread adoption across consumer and commercial markets. These solutions provide real-time connectivity and feature content-rich applications that combine several data inputs (both user and environmental) to effectively communicate the situation (or context) of the user. This enables more effective decisions on the what, when, and where around the delivery of information; and how the information is delivered for consumption. This construct enables individuals to make more effective decisions on how to optimize their time and the interaction in order to derive the greatest value. HP’s goal is to deliver the right information into the right hands, at the right moment so that the context is optimized, regardless of the form factor.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Mobility has the power, it would seem, to actually define one’s brand. And as the old saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. What do you perceive is the value of a mobile strategy in regards to making a positive impact on society in general?

Bryan Coapstick: A successful mobile strategy means connecting people to each other or to the applications and information they need. You begin by focusing on getting a better, more intimate understanding of your customers. I define customers very broadly, as too often people get hung up on B2C, B2B, and B2E. Regardless if they are my employer or my customer, my audience members drive and determine what they think is useful, valuable, and desirable—and that is the cornerstone of any successful mobility strategy.  If we focus on the cornerstones of the user experience, there is no limit to the positive impact that can be delivered to society as a whole, whether it is transforming a patient’s experience, or helping a mother order dinner on her way home from work.

In reality, there is no business value in an application that is not used. I see mobility as a means to remove the distance barrier between people and bring them closer than ever before. Everyone, regardless of function, needs to focus on the customer experience— evaluating the interaction as the centerpiece in designing their overall mobility strategy. Leading organizations understand that the strategic use of digital technologies enhances their ability to interact directly with customers, employees, and partners alike, and to strengthen those relationships. 

Additionally, I think we need to take a lesson from commercial brand managers in developing a strategy for mobility.  In the past, brand managers have strived for consistency via the digital experience, with a largely uniform presentation in the marketplace (destination vs. distribution marketing). The organizations’ websites house most, if not all, of their content and serve as the one-stop shop for accessing it. This approach to online brand management historically has been possible as long as users can access a brand’s online assets through just one platform—the computer (desktop, laptop or netbook) and, even then, through only a handful of operating systems. Now the paradigm has changed, and how people want to consume content, goods, or services has also morphed and may need to be combined with any other number of other pieces of content, goods/services, to deliver a potentially more complete and holistic experience that is optimized for every user.  Recognizing the paradigm shift, HP recently launched a unique integrated, end-to-end customer experience ecosystem to enhance its overall application portfolio.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Recently we read your blog The Next-Generation Mobile Enterprise: Rethinking your core DNA. In this piece you wrote, “For an enterprise to gain access to the real advantage of the next generation of end-user computing, it will not only need to rethink how these devices are employed to transform business transactions, but how also it much transform to enable the next-generation mobile enterprise. I often hear people talking about ‘mobilizing applications’ and I picture them paving the same road by simply doing a literal translation of their current IT onto mobile devices. It makes me cringe because applications should not be ‘mobilized”— transactions should be ‘mobilized’.” Care to elaborate on this comment?

Bryan Coapstick: I touched upon this topic in the previous question when discussing composites and the ability to combine content, goods, and services with additional components in order to deliver the right experience, personalized to the user, within the context they seek. Mobility is an interaction model that centers around fit-to-form computing. Moving applications to mobile requires a lot more than merely taking your web content and pushing it down to be rendered on a mobile device. Too many people are looking at mobility as a bolt-on to their existing strategy (both business and IT), or conversely looking at mobility and as a standalone strategy. Mobility is a component in the broader digital strategy that enables the organization’s goals and objectives, which are translated into the applications and infrastructure, fulfill customer needs. HP in fact, recently published a video discussing the rise in mobility as a term we have coined, the ‘People Renaissance’.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Today’s cyber environment has never been more challenging with threats on the horizon 24/7 from organized foreign governments to the lone wolf— and they are constantly probing for the weakest link to gain access to networks and data. What is your perspective on security best practices related to mobility that clients should be considering in today’s climate?

Bryan Coapstick: From my perspective, network and data security has been broken in several ways, before mobility took hold; mobility merely accelerated the problem. The old adage in security has been to put up a wall around your perimeter and keep making it stronger and stronger by adding more layers of security from the perimeter inward— network, server, PC.  

Now, with the advent of mobility, there is no perimeter. It has been extended by definition and, therefore, is more fractured and porous. In a cloud-ready, highly mobile, highly distributed environment, security threat vectors grow exponentially. In the last two to three decades, we have heard about malicious network acts. Often, malicious behavior is only discovered by constantly reviewing what is on your network and re-evaluating what bad is.

Too often, organizations are always reactive and playing catch up. Most forward-thinking enterprises are moving towards risk- or behavior-based detection—what we call ‘Security in Context’. Certain behaviors or activities outside of established individual parameters are deemed suspicious and, therefore, merit greater examination of the types of applications a user is running and the context in which they run these apps (i.e., Financial Transactions systems). To help automate the detection process, HP has developed a continuous monitoring capability that supports this Security in Context approach. In my opinion, security in the future will be delivered “as a Service” through a vendor like HP who can provide a more holistic view that extends from the corporate data center, to the cloud and all the way to the individual device.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com:  Congratulations on HP’s recent announcement regarding a mobile application which HP developed for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which will allow “citizens to easily access useful information regarding housing discrimination, file complaints with HUD, and find regional contact information via their iPhone.” Can you tell us a little more about this new mobile applications and how it benefits the agency and its constituents?

Bryan Coapstick: The Fair Housing Equal Opportunity complaints application enables citizens to report and file a housing discrimination complaint to HUD easily, in real-time. The app is an automated tool that helps ensure that all persons living in the United States are afforded the same rights, laws and protections that prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability and familial status. HUD sees the app as benefitting fair housing groups and other civil rights advocacy organizations that help individuals pursue their housing rights and for industry, to educate members on their responsibilities.

SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Are there additional examples of mobility successes within government you’d like to share with us today to underpin the relevancy of how mobility has been used to enhance agency missions and services?  

Bryan Coapstick: HP has had numerous customer successes with regards to implementing mobility as a tool to do business with stakeholders. However, the ones that really resonate for me are those that leverage the power of while – the ability to deliver the good or service more effectively while still reducing costs. We developed an app for the city of Anaheim that enabled more effective reporting of 311 types of incidents through geo-location— eliminating time traditionally wasted driving around looking for the service area. Or, our investments in context-aware, real-time location services that leverage sensor technologies within integrated health systems which create more efficient and effective clinical workflows and improved patient care. We talk about these successes and many others in our Mobility in Government—Industry Edge magazine and discuss how HP is effectively helping to transform the delivery of government services through a thoughtful approach to mobility.