Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Mobility in Light of Tragedy...

Wow, can mother nature deliver a blow or what?   Looking at the destruction caused by the F4-F5 twister that roared through Joplin, MS shows the stark reality that in just minutes, a reset button can set back decades of development.

More devastating is the loss of human life, personal injury, loss of property and the despair many feel in seeing what they've built and labored over become a scattered pile of rubble.  Our thoughts go out to those that are suffering the great loss caused by this vicious tornado.

We don't want to exploit tragedy as a way to drum up business, however scenarios like this inspire thoughts on using mobile technology in remote or damaged areas.

Take a look at the picture on the left.  Notice anything left standing over about 10 feet tall?  Those 190mph winds took down everything in their path, including access to basic services such as electricity and cellular services.

In situations like this, mobile solutions can really shine for people generating insurance claims and gathering other types of information.  The lightweight form factor, long battery life, photo capture and signature collection enables claims adjusters and inspectors to gather data for an entire day without needing to connect to a power source.  More important, properly engineered, mission critical mobile solutions will allow the operator to continue to collect data in places of devastation where an Internet connection may no longer be available.

We preach about the expectations of 100% connectivity and how building mobile solutions that require an Internet connection generally leads to frustrated users, loss of productivity and unacceptable contingency plans.  To know more about how mobile solutions can work in areas of natural catastrophe or limited connectivity, we have years of experience building mobile solutions for such environments. 

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