Maribel Lopez - IBM Impact 2014 - TheCUBE
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 28/04/2014

Maribel Lopez, Lopez Research, at IBM Impact 2014 with John Furrier and Paul Gillin

@thecube
#IBMimpact
In continuing live coverage of this week’s IBM Impact conference being held in Las Vegas’ The Venetian Resort and Casino, SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE, hosted by John Furrier and Paul Gillin, welcomed Maribel Lopez to discuss the evolution of mobile technology and the need for each and every company to begin implementing a perpetual mobile strategy. Lopez is the founder of Lopez Research.

As the conversation began, Furrier asked Lopez to give her thoughts on the current Cloud, mobile and social tsunami trend that is quickly permeating all facets of business. In response, Lopez commented that only just a couple of years ago each of these were discreet trends at best. “Now they are coming together and IBM is helping lead the way,” she said.

Speaking specifically to the mobile market, Lopez pointed out how it is the hot topic of discussion in company boardrooms. This acceptance of mobile as a necessity for the future of business operations is seeing a flood of spending on the technology. “Seventy-four percent of companies we interviewed this year said they would be mobile enabling five or more applications,” she stated.

Watch the interview in its entirety here:

 .


 .

This, she says, is a huge shift from last year. “Before, mobile in the workplace was limited to calendars and e-mail,” she pointed out. “Now we are seeing entire workflows being brought to mobile.”

This seems, according to Gillin, a normal progression for B2C. “What do you say to B2B companies that say they don’t need a mobile strategy?” he asked.

“If you don’t have a mobile strategy, you’re going to get buried,” Lopez bluntly stated. “Most people who don’t have a mobile strategy or an ineffectual one look at mobile as a separate component. Mobile really is the business and the business is mobile.”

Lopez continued by stating that any company that has not adopted a mobile strategy or a Cloud strategy by this point is limiting their ability to conduct business in the very near future.

“You’re fundamentally not going to be able to operate in the new world,” she said. “People haven’t really grappled with the fact that mobile and cloud change our business processes.”

She talked about how the significant disruption brought about by these technologies can be daunting but that opting for a ‘head in the sand’ mentality can only bring about disastrous results for the business.

The idea of a perpetual mobile strategy is different than what was the norm at the beginning of this decade. “In yesterday’s world, you built an app, stood it up and it was good for a year or two,” she stated. “But now, it’s never done. You are always working on it, always iterating and always changing.”

Lopez, whose book ‘Right Time Experiences’ will be released on September 29 of this year, was asked by Furrier to share her insight on why the IBM Impact conference was so important.

“Impact is important because people need to get to the next level of what their development and Cloud strategy is,” she said. “There are customers here talking about how they are changing their business by using mobile and Cloud.”