Telecom Web: Meeting the Challenge of the Mobilized Enterprise
by Matt Bancroft
TelecomWeb March 30, 2008 (subscription required)…
Until recently, enterprise mobility has been a piecemeal affair. Mobile email is currently the only really well-established category of mobile enterprise application. Even so, the majority of corporate email inboxes have not been mobilized. Outside of email, some enterprises have mobilized a single application driven by a specific business requirement. These are often custom applications tailored to a particular enterprise’s needs, for example a mobile application that enables field engineers to access customer project information through their mobile devices, or a mobile version of a company’s order processing system.
Now, however, the conditions are starting to fall into place to support a more general mobilization of enterprise activities, from “supply-side” conditions such as the delivery of ever more powerful handsets, applications, networks and security capabilities to “demand-side” conditions such as attractive pricing, and financial and productivity incentives for “going mobile”. All of this is creating a “perfect storm” that is driving up adoption of mobile devices and applications within enterprises of all types and sizes.
ON THE SUPPLY SIDE…
Mobile handsets are becoming more powerful with each new release, to the point where the newest and “smartest” mobile devices are more like handheld computers than cellular phones. Not only do they deliver clear and dependable voice services, but also they are increasingly being used to deliver many of the capabilities once only found on laptop computers, including Internet access, email, calendar and various business applications. With this sort of power in such a small and portable package, many executives and managers are finding their mobile handset to be as irreplaceable as any laptop.
Wide area networks are being continually enhanced, delivering the sort of bandwidth necessary to support the new data-heavy mobile services and applications. At the same time, access to local area networks via WiFi and new network technologies such as WiMAX and LTE are making broadband mobile access a reality, enabling ever more sophisticated data-heavy mobile services and applications.
Certain key enabling technologies, including mobile security and device management technologies, are maturing. Both security and device management are critical issues for the enterprise. Without the ability to ensure the security of their mobile devices and data, many enterprises will slow or even halt their mobilization initiatives. IT departments need to be able to manage policies and processes on corporate mobile assets in exactly the same way, and with the same rigor, as they do on fixed assets. The availability of advanced mobile security and device management capabilities is helping to drive up corporate mobile adoption.
ON THE DEMAND SIDE…
Some operators are beginning to target the enterprise for mobile devices and services by offering attractive pricing and packaging. Predictable costs are critical to the enterprise. So, rather than per-minute, per-transaction or per-byte pricing, which is difficult to budget for and therefore very unattractive to enterprises, data services are being offered in all-you-can-eat packages, making them much more attractive.
Applications such as email and remote access to the corporate network are now integral parts of the enterprise communications toolset. These data services must seamlessly integrate with such tools as wired Internet access in much the same way mobile voice calls are integrated with fixed-line telephone service in the office and home.
Enterprises are finding that “going mobile” can significantly increase the productivity of their employees and bring added flexibility and cost reductions, helping many companies gain a competitive edge in their market. In a 2007 survey of CIOs of top-500 companies from independent research firm Coleman Parkes, 81 percent of CIOs interviewed reported that they have already seen significant productivity increases from their mobile investments, and the same percentage expect further significant productivity increases from new mobile products over the next five years.
ENTERPRISES ARE MOBILIZING…
With drivers on both sides of the equation, the enterprise mobile market is already sizeable and growing fast. Analysts are predicting double-digit growth in mobile enterprise applications, driven by increased adoption of a wide range of applications, including productivity tools, push email, and corporate applications such as CRM (customer resource management), SFA (sales force automation) and ERP (enterprise resource planning). One example is a recent forecast from ABI Research that mobile application revenue will grow at a CAGR of over 102 percent to reach $5 billion US by 2012.
The Coleman Parkes CIO survey shows similar patterns, indicating that the use of mobile email, Internet and calendar applications is already pervasive within the companies surveyed. Use of new applications, including mobile VoIP, file sharing and SFA, is expected to grow significantly over the next two years.
Nor is it just executives carrying mobile devices any more; smartphone use is driving into the ranks of middle management and staff workers. About 67 percent of CIOs responding to the Coleman Parkes survey reported that the proportion of non-managerial staff with access to advanced corporate mobile devices will increase, with fully one-third of them indicating that it would increase significantly.
WHAT DO ENTERPRISES NEED?
Enterprises recognize that the trend toward increased corporate mobility brings with it some critical challenges. First, the increasing number of corporate mobile device users—particularly at the staff level—means more management, security and control problems. Second, as more, and more sophisticated data applications are used on these small and very portable devices, the risk to a corporation from loss, theft or misuse of the devices or the data on them only grows. Finally, as employees begin to depend on their mobile devices and applications more heavily, managing them effectively becomes a much more business-critical issue for CIOs.
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS FOR CIOS
In some ways, mobile devices are not much different from any other IT asset—many mobile devices are more like small computers than like phones. Like other IT assets, they have much the same management requirements. They need to comply with corporate policies, they need to be inventoried and tracked, they need to be properly secured and the data on them properly protected, and the help desk needs to be able to diagnose and repair problems on them as well as distribute patches, updates and new software.
In other ways, mobile devices are very different from other IT assets. They are not likely to be physically present when they need service or an update. There are thousands of different device types, running many different operating systems and connecting through a wide range of access technologies, making the management tasks that much more complex. The rate at which the devices, services and software are changing is still increasing exponentially.
In addition, IT is often faced with the need to manage devices that are not owned by the company, even though critical and sensitive company information is stored on them. It is not unusual for an executive to say, “I want to use my personal iPhone” [or the latest cool mobile device] while still expecting the IT organization to support the device as well as manage and protect the applications and data on it. It is difficult enough to create standard profiles for company-owned devices, much less devices the company does not own.
Managing corporate mobile devices—configuring settings to ensure the applications work properly, updating or replacing applications and firmware, finding and fixing problems, implementing policies, securing the devices and the data on them, backing up critical information and restoring if something goes wrong—clearly cannot be restricted to those occasions when the device is in the office.