Conversation with Peter Poulin, CEO Motion Computing
On February 5th I had a chance to speak with Peter Poulin, who was appointed Motion Computing’s CEO on December 11, 2014. An industry veteran with more than 25 years of sales, marketing and general management experience in the public and private sectors, the company’s press release said 
Poulin’s goal will be to capitalize on the company’s deep mobility expertise and aggressive investments in the design and development of ruggedized tablet platforms and integrated mobility solutions to expand its reach within target vertical markets.
Over the years, I’ve been covering Motion’s vertical market tablet lineup in some detail, going back to a meeting in San Francisco in 2001 where Motion CEO, Scott Eckert, and founder, David Altounian showed me the prototype of their first tablet. Motion was a startup then, formed to be part of Microsoft’s Tablet PC initiative.
While the overall Tablet PC project was not as successful as Microsoft had hoped, and it would be almost another decade before the iPad finally put tablets on the map, Motion established itself as a provider of enterprise and ruggedized tablets in various niche markets. Motion succeeded where many others failed with their early tablet efforts due to focusing on tablets and tablets alone (Microsoft itself had flip-flopped during the Tablet PC gestation period, switching emphasis from pure tablets to convertible notebooks), and also by displaying an unerring ability to recognize new trends and technologies at an early stage and making them available to their customers.
One look at Poulin’s resume shows that he’s uniquely qualified for the job as Motion’s CEO. An electrical engineer with a degree from Cornell, Poulin worked for Compaq for 13 years in sales, marketing and management. He then broadened his expertise and horizons with sales and business development stints at such diverse technology companies as Segway, NetBotz, APC, internet solutions providers Hoovers and Virtual Bridges. Poulin joined Motion Computing in July 2012 as VP of marketing and then ascended to CEO.
Here are some of the highlights of our discussion:
RuggedPCReview: Microsoft’s Tablet PC initiative wasn’t a great success and most early tablet providers exited the market within just a couple of years. Except Motion. What made Motion successful with early Microsoft-based tablets where others failed?
Poulin: The answer is, it’s not just about the tablet. It’s really about understanding the customers’ workflow, and integrating the technologies that enable that workflow, of which the tablet is one component. Motion decided early on to focus on a limited number of verticals. In the process we gained a great amount of expertise on how customers use technology. I believe what differentiates Motion is that we have very purpose-built devices that truly make the job easier. An example is the unique keyboard pairing we use with our R12 tablet. It’s super-easy and there’s none of the frustration users often have with Bluetooth pairing sequences. We know how field service workers work, we know how to build docks that work for them, peripherals that work for them, features that they need. Yes, we seek to grow as a company, but we are careful not to lose that depth and connection to our customers and spread ourselves too thin.
RuggedPCReview: Ever since the introduction of the iPad, tablets have become a huge success. But the success is primarily in consumer markets and to some extent in the enterprise. Why is that?
Poulin: We see the tablet as a very successful enterprise tool, and we have the mass consumer adoption of the tablet to thank. However, the consumer and the enterprise have very different needs. For many enterprises and vertical market businesses it’s a matter of how to reduce deployment risks. They want to know how they can protect their investment. They need to leverage existing investment. They need to reduce downtime. They need to focus on user work flows. And they know that if their users don’t embrace a technology it just won’t work. One of our customers, Thames Water, engaged in extensive user testing (200 users) before making a decision. Our Motion F5 was chosen as the clear favorite in user testing with 86% preferring the device over two competing alternatives. Our tablets are replacing a fleet of legacy handhelds to run Thames Water’s SAP and ClickSoftware asset and field management systems. User testing and user acceptance were key elements in Thames decision to choose Motion.
RuggedPCReview: Over the years, Motion has generally been a pioneer in quickly making new and better technologies available to users. Examples are superior displays, input technologies, the latest processors, new form factors, etc. Is this art of Motion’s corporate culture?
Poulin: Motion has always had a lot of excellent tech people. We have the discipline of big corporation experience, complemented by the agility of startup experience, and that helps us moving fast, being first, being innovative. This has undoubtedly shaped Motion’s culture. But I believe we also have a great balance between technical and customer experience. While the tech innovations are most visible, we’re also constantly working on details, peripherals, modules, and how to easily make them part of our tablets. That takes a lot of risk out of integration, and our customers appreciate that.
RuggedPCReview: We currently have this interesting situation where Apple and Android-based tablets almost completely dominate the consumer markets, whereas Microsoft remains strong in tablets designed for enterprise and vertical markets. For now, all of Motion’s tablets use Windows. How do you see the Windows versus Android situation?
Poulin: We watch that situation very, very carefully. I think one difference between consumer and vertical markets is that on the vertical side it all depends on application software, the kind that does all the heavy-duty lifting, and almost all of that runs on Microsoft. Are verticals adopting Android? Yes, to some extent. Some of our customers are trying Android with very narrow apps for certain very specific tasks. The challenge for Android comes with heavier duty apps, development and maintenance cost, and the fact that, for now at least, Android changes so very quickly and older versions are no longer supported. For IT organizations, that cadence of change is painful.
RuggedPCReview: Microsoft is putting a heavier emphasis on cloud services. Where do you stand on that?
Poulin: Given the ubiquity and ever-increasing performance and reliability of broadband connections, Motion is paying a lot of attention to cloud-based applications and services. Along with that, security is becoming an ever-greater concern, both in the cloud and also with broadly distributed devices. Motion has long considered security as an integral part of our products and services with TPM, Computrace, multi-factor authentication, etc. In our newly-released F5m and C5m tablets, we’re stepping security up by another level with self-encrypting drives.
RuggedPCReview: While Microsoft certainly still has a huge edge in enterprise and vertical market deployments, there are also challenges as Microsoft attempts to integrate mobile markets into its OS strategy.
Poulin: Yes, there’s certainly a challenge with Windows 8 and 8.1, but overall they’re getting bashed a bit too much. Microsoft hasn’t done bad, and things are only getting better now. Microsoft is just so eager to get it right that perhaps they moved to catering to consumers a bit too fast, and that can be very disruptive to the enterprise. Then there are the migration issues. Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and soon Windows 10, and they need to support everything. It’s not easy to make an OS attractive to consumers as well as corporate customers.
RuggedPCReview: On the hardware side, Intel has been charging ahead at a very rapid pace with successive generations of Core processors. How difficult and important is it to keep up with Intel?
Poulin: It’s not that complicated on the high end, because the performance levels are there, and have been there for a while. Motion customers do not always want such a rapid pace, so sometimes they skip a generation, and sometimes it’s tempting to skip two. It’s not so complicated at the low end where it took Intel a while to get up to speed with the Atom platform. That was a bit tough for a while, but they’re now sorting that out, and Motion is very confident in the range and predictability of Intel’s product roadmap.
RuggedPCReview: We can’t help but notice that Austin, Texas, seems to be a hotbed for tech development and rugged systems. Dell is there, of course, and Motion, and also Xplore. What makes Austin special?
Poulin: There’s lots of talent in the Austin area. There are lots of big companies and also a vibrant startup community. Somehow it all came together.
RuggedPCReview: Where, overall, does Motion stand now, and what are the plans for 2015 and beyond?
Poulin: Motion is in a good position. According to VDC, Motion is the #2 player in rugged tablets, more than twice as large as #3. And we’ve just totally revamped all of our platforms, the CL-Series, the C5 and F5 Series, and the R12. All have much greater performance, and we also enhanced wireless communication and ruggedness. And we have other products in the pipeline. So we’re quite optimistic.
— Conrad H. Blickenstorfer, Editor-in-Chief, RuggedPCReview