Pilots to Profits: Getting in Sync with the Mobile Mandate [Paperback]

Rip Gerber (Author), Craig Settles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2005

Benefit from the 20/20 hindsight of over 50 executives, business managers and IT professionals whose detailed roundtable discussions present their experiences, insights and useful tips for implementing applications with measurable ROI. Planners and implementers will all benefit from these lessons.

Pilots to Profits helps you define, pilot and effectively deploy mobile and wireless applications. Security, change management, budgeting, pilot project logistics, build-or-buy decisions, and aligning business objectives with IT initiatives are just some of the topics addressed.

Starting with "why is now a good time to seriously consider mobile and wireless," this book moves readers through the key strategic and tactical issues that affect the process. Each chapter is designed to be effective by itself so you can read cover to cover, pick and choose chapters based on your pressing needs.

About the participants

- Roundtable participants
- come from several countries
- represent organizations of all sizes
- bring experiences from the commercial, government and not-for-profit sectors
- collectively have deployed a wide range of applications

These individuals range from people who are planning their initial deployment to those who have completed one or more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Craig Settles, with 18 years experience helping organizations understand how technology can improve their bottom line, punctuates participants’ observations with additional points to consider.

Rip Gerber, Chief Marketing Officer for Intellisync, adds critical viewpoints from the vendor side of the deployment equation. Any major project involves multiple-vendor participation which brings with it multiple opinions, agendas and solutions.

Together, their industry, technology consulting and strategic planning expertise helps you avoid many pitfalls and setbacks. Whether you’re starting your first mobile or wireless deployment, or you already have some battle scars, "Pilots to Profits" will be your constant companion.

Product Details

• Paperback: 234 pages
• Publisher: Hudson House Publishing (December 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587768356
• ISBN-13: 978-1587768354
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,669,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rip Gerber is a biochemical engineer, technologist and author. In addition to writing science-based thrillers, he has patented and created technologies that he's turned into companies. Rip took one public on NASDAQ, sold another to Nokia. He's now President & CEO of a mobile platform company, delivering location data to over 300M wireless subscribers.

So how did this true advocate of technology come to write thrillers in which 'tech runs wild' and scientists, left unchecked, wreak havoc on the world?

The back story provides clues. Rip began his career at the Central Intelligence Agency, categorizing Soviet newspapers and evaluating recruits in the Psychological Assessment Division. He left the CIA and joined Firestone Tire & Rubber, where he designed the company's first chromatic polyethylene manufacturing plant in Hopewell, Virginia. Hopewell, a city created by DuPont to manufacture kepone in World War I, was a rare east coast ghost town until Firestone and Allied-Signal moved in. But the soot and decay of Hopewell pushed Rip out and up to New York City and American Express, where Rip designed and launched the financial industry's first online credit card application. After getting his MBA from Harvard Business School, Rip headed west to San Francisco. He was a strategy consultant for Deloitte & Touche, and ran global marketing divisions for two advertising agencies, first for Digitas and then for the $40B Carlson Companies. But technology kept calling. He founded @once, an email marketing company acquired by Yesmail, and then took Commtouch, an Internet security company, public in 1999. He then served as EVP and Chief Marketing Officer for the world's leading email platform company Intellisync which, after two years of turning around this product and brand, he sold to Nokia for half a billion dollars. After taking some time off to rebuild a house lost to a San Francisco fire, Rip became a board advisor and consulant to several large tech companies, including PRGX, Newell Rubbermaid and TPG Ventures. He returned to the mobile industry as President & CEO of LOC-AID Technologies, Inc. in 2009, after writing three more thrillers.

*(Truth be told, shortly after Y2K, brain pathologists from Harvard discovered that Rip suffered from acute career attention deficit disorder (ACADD). At the advice of his doctors and loving family, Rip turned his attention to fiction. Neither the biochemical degree from the University of Virginia or the MBA from Harvard afforded much help in fiction writing, so he turned to the experts: the amazing authors in several writing communities. Rip is a a graduate of the Squaw Valley Writers Community and a member of the San Francisco Writer's Workshop. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America. Really, there are so many remarkable writers in these groups. I am schooled by my talented author friends every day. It is a list to long to include here.)

In 2007, Random House published Rip's first novel PHARMA which became a best-seller in Germany. A sequel to that book, currently titled KILLER VIRUS, will be released by Randon House/Heyne in Germany in October 2010. In June 2010, Rip's short-story THE LAST SUPPER will appear in the ITW Thriller Anthology edited by Lee Child. Two other thrillers are in development, as is one mystery.

Rip has accompanied DEA agents on drug raids in Los Angeles, run marathons with the elderly, gone mushroom hunting with the world's leading mycologicalist, documented Burning Man, debated the NIH, disrupted his local MENSA chapter and watched 5 full seasons of LOST in a single month...all in the name of thriller research. Rip lives in San Francisco and Point Reyes, California.