Michael Facemire
Chief Technology Officer
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Red Hat Acquisition Gives IBM A Much-Needed Booster Shot Of Open Source And Cloud DNA
Yesterday, IBM announced its intention to purchase Red Hat for $34B. Assuming a successful transaction, this acquisition blends hybrid cloud and open source synergies: Both companies target hybrid cloud from different angles; Red Hat provides a compelling middleware environment with OpenShift, while IBM supports enterprise customers with monolithic and even mainframe support in its cloud […]
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Building The Web? If It’s Not Progressive, It’s Not Right!
Web apps or native apps? For a long time, that was the choice we had for building mobile experiences. And we all know the tradeoff: Native apps are really expensive but give the best experience. Web apps can be mobile-optimized, but the experience is terrible. While this was once directionally true, today it’s not true […]
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Futurology Episode 4: The Future Of The Connected Workplace
This post was authored by Claudia Tajima, Researcher at Forrester. On the second part of the forth episode of our Futurology webinar series, Mike Facemire, Julie Ask and James McQuivey convened to discuss the future of the connected workplace. Looking forward, they discussed what change in the workplace will look like and what it […]
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Mobile Experiences Just Got Better
Oh, hello friends, it's been too long! But I couldn't let today's news stay this far under the radar. With a relatively small announcement on its blog, Google announced that the first Instant Apps have gone live! As a reminder, Instant Apps are Android apps that are internally compartmentalized into individual views (atoms) that your […]
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Google’s Next Play: Your Assistant For Everything – Not Just Answers
This blog post is co-authored by VP and Principal Analyst Julie Ask and Analyst Andrew Hogan at Forrester. Google held an event in San Francisco this week to announce several new consumer products – a smartphone, a wireless speaker, Wi-Fi routers, a virtual reality headset and an updated Chromecast solution. All showcased an emerging strategic […]
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Bots: The Next Big Thing In Mobile? Not So Fast.
Everyone is buzzing this week about bots with Facebook/Messenger’s anticipated launch of bots on its messenger platform. What is a bot you ask? A bot is a chat-based interface that helps consumers complete tasks — ordering take-out food, chatting with their doctors, or checking the score of a big sports game. Many believe that this […]
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Backend-as-a-Service: Bring Out Your Dead!
Appcelerator was acquired by Axway. Parse (once acquired by Facebook) closes up shop. It’s been a busy week in the BaaS world. It all reminds me of the “Bring out your dead!” sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, except this time it’s mobile development shops driving the cart looking for the last remnants […]
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The Breathtaking Future of Software Development — It’s Already Here!
"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed" — William Gibson I recently drove a Tesla for the first time. As a kid that grew up in a car dealership (my father and grandfather both owned one) I grew up with a love of cars, speed, and pushing limits. Driving that […]
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Customer-Obsessed Technology Platforms: If You Don’t Know, You’re Doing IT Wrong
"I don't know about you people, but I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do." — Gavin Belson, Silicon Valley Writing software to make the world a better place — that's a lofty goal, even for Gavin Belson on the […]
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Mobile Development: The 2015 Crystal Ball
Mobile developers change people's lives every single day — they create innovative experiences, reshape how we spend our time, and give us continual access to Facebook and Twitter (the latter being especially important to the author!). The pace at which these new experiences are delivered continues to amaze, yet continues to speed up. As a […]
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Potholes In My Digital Experience! Is The Solution A New Mobile App?
Driving home from the Boston Logan airport in the winter can be an adventure. Fortunately, local governments have set up a means for reporting one of the perils — potholes. I know this because an overhead digital sign told me the number to call if I saw one. I appreciate the opportunity to help out, […]
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Enterprise Mobile Development: Embrace APIs Or Dig Your Grave
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. — Morpheus, The Matrix Mobile development, like Morpheus in The Matrix, offers two options: […]
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Delivering Mobile Innovation: Watch Out For Roadblocks!
I’m often asked how to enable corporate mobile innovation. While important, equally important are knowing what roadblocks you’ll hit when implementing a mobile strategy that highlights your innovation. From an application development and delivery perspective, the three that I focus on are: Time-to-market requirements. Rarely do I talk to a client and hear “We need […]
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Development In The Enterprise: The Mobile Path Is Clear And Getting Easier!
I stated a few months ago that “data is the new currency” and that “the API layer will be the core around which every successful enterprise digital strategy is based.” Fast-forward to today: two moves this week prove that Intel and CA Technologies agree and are betting heavily on this strategy with acquisitions of Mashery […]
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Mobile’s Next Era: Not Apps, Not Websites — Experiences!
I was fortunate this week to attend a presentation by James Whittaker in which he delivered his view on the next era of computing. This was one of the best presentations I’ve seen, because the content was presented in a compelling manner that created an outstanding overall experience. I point this out because it parallels […]
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Enterprise Mobility — Are You Ready For The Ride?
My colleague Melissa Parrish recently posted how perpetual connectivity will change how we experience the world. I read this and couldn’t help but get excited about the endless mobile possibilities — but I can see how enterprise leaders are filled with an equal amount of trepidation. Consumer mobile devices create countless new opportunities to engage […]
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Mobile Devs — The 3 visual tooling changes that will make your life better in 2013
2013 is going to be an amazing year for mobile and web developers for a number of reasons, but the top one on my list today is the advance in tooling. This isn't simply a turn of the crank adding a few features/functions to the existing state of the art but instead the realization of […]
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Enterprise Landscaping: Pruning The Trees In Mobile Development
"Enterprise mobility," my two favorite words. The reason I so enjoy working in this space is that the overall landscape changes almost daily. When I graduated college nearly 14 years ago, I immediately became a mobile developer working on cutting-edge platforms like Palm and Windows Mobile. Attempting to drive performance and efficiency gains in the […]
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Enterprise Mobility: How Fast Can Development Go?
I discuss mobile enablement of enterprise apps every day with our clients. The common trend is that it needs to be done now and in the most cost-effective manner (shocking, I know!). The good news is that meeting these expectations is quickly becoming easier. Recently I published a blog post about back-end-as-a-service (BaaS). I've recently published my […]
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The Future Of The Mobile Web Just Became Bright
Great apps are generally native apps. I discuss with our clients daily that, given unlimited time and money, every app should be native, as this affords the ultimate in user experience. Unfortunately, budgets rarely use the word "unlimited," so compromises must be made. Commonly, one of the first tactical directions away from native is to […]
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