Enterprise Mobility, the Game Changer

Dears,

Happy new year to all our champions and masterminds ; Wishing you all very successful new year with lots of success, peace and harmony. This year already looks great with plenty of opportunities to pursue and lots of challenges to upgrade to the next version of ourselves. The eye candy which is making buzz around everywhere is this Enterprise Mobility. Enterprise mobility ranks high on the ‘priority’ list of most Chief Information Officers (CIOs) across the world. However, to gain from it, CIOs need to understand how to maximize business benefits in a cost-effective and secure way. Today, many CIOs are in the process of drawing up a roadmap for enterprise mobility.

The recent survey conducted by one of the CIO research magazine has some exciting findings

* An overwhelming majority (94%) of CIOs believe that enterprise mobility will be an important part of their organization’s IT strategy within the next one year.

* Almost 70% of the respondents believe that enterprise mobility solutions play an essential role in their organization.

* Only 1% of the CIO respondents believe that mobility solutions are not required.  Almost half of the respondents are either already using some solutions in this area or have deployments in progress.

* BlackBerry Enterprise Server is currently the dominant mobility platform in use.

* Android seems to be picking up some momentum.

* Almost half of the respondent organizations provide only limited support for some employee owned devices in the Bring Your Own (BYO) model.

* Improved employee productivity is the most important driver for adoption.

* Security and compliance is the most important adoption challenge.

* Most organizations are already using mobility solutions around email and calendaring applications.

* Business Intelligence (dashboard) related applications are high on the CIO wish-list for the near future.

* The cost of the handheld devices does not feature among the most important parameters for the selection of mobility solutions.

* Security as well as ease of deployment and use is the more important criteria in solution evaluation.

* Tablets are predicted to have an important role for accessing data on the move.

* Telecom carriers are the preferred source for organizations to source mobility solutions.

* CIOs prefer to utilize the services of Systems Integrators (SIs) and Value Added Resellers (VARs) for mobility application support.

Some of the interesting observations from these findings

Travel takes up at least one-fourth to half the work time for a considerable majority (almost 40%) of senior managers, across sectors. Some (13%) spend more than half their time traveling. This could be a strong reason in favor of enterprise mobility initiatives at many companies – enabling these senior level employees to stay connected and take decisions while on the move. Enterprises, where the senior workforce spends more than half their time on travel, are the ones with the maximum deployments already in place. It seems to indicate that greater the time spent on travel, the greater the need for mobility solutions to facilitate working on the move.

More than 50% of the CIOs from the Financial Services industry stated that they have already deployed

Enterprise mobility solutions. Hospitality and Media & Entertainment are the others leading the list.

IT surprisingly, takes the middle rung, while the Government/Public Sector enterprises are the laggards in the race.

BlackBerry leads as the popular platform with 80% of the respondents indicating that their companies currently use it. However, many companies also support more than one platform, including the iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

Most companies perceive gains in employee productivity as the biggest benefit of using enterprise mobility solutions. Improved employee availability, better customer support, and enhanced communication are the other key benefits. Reducing operational costs, however, takes a lower place on the benefits list, clearly indicating that organizations value productivity over mere cost savings.

Enterprises already using mobility solutions find email, and calendar and contacts, as the most useful application. Though many enterprises view better Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as one of the key gains from enterprise mobility, they currently use CRM-related applications in a limited manner (19.40%).

Most CIOs are likely to use their tablets to access data rather than to join video-conferences or merely stay connected. With better support for data management, tablets could enjoy an important role in the enterprise mobility space.

Mobile Devices PoV

Blackberry Advantage

The ease of use and intelligence of the device, backed by the security features, give it an edge over other mobile platforms/devices available. Enterprise-grade, secure, proven mobile device management, stable. It works best with email and vastly used and accepted by the users, cost competitiveness. The BlackBerry solutions were designed for enterprise mobility itself and they remain one of the best in the industry. Other players jumped into it later, copying most of the existing features. Secured, facilitation of messenger, mails and Internet access; apps for this platform are far more stable than any other platform. They already have the infrastructure in place and no other brand gives the kind of response time that BlackBerry gives. A study was done and this was found to be the best option based on several parameters.

Apples of the World

Apple mobile offers security and more possibilities to develop corporate applications on; and is emerging as the choice of users. Ease of use for senior management; allows device data encryption and remote wipe; secure data. Easy to use; popular at home. Usability, adoption rate, technology advantage. Depth of applications available. Touch screen user interface is very good; also supported API to implement mobile solutions.iOS has enterprise controls that support security implementation with mobility. IPad has been the differentiator as more people are ready to purchase it as a personal device. Apple products seem to enjoy a good ecosystem, having products such as the iPhone and iPad.

Androids

Factors that make the Android attractive to CIOs are:

• ·         Wide availability of resources.
• ·         Ease of configuration.
• ·         Low cost availability of a large number of devices and ease of deployment.
• ·         Open source – no licensing costs involved; flexibility to develop and deploy customized and tailor-made applications; processing speed.
• ·         Availability across platforms and cost of acquisition and deployment.
• ·         It has the best features – inherent or through third party applications.
• ·         ROI; decent application development support; flexibility in device options; though there are challenges in hardware support; good battery devices

Windows Mobile

Things that may work in favor of WMs are

• ·         Its commonly available technology does not need extensive technical skills to understand and operate; it’s very user friendly too.
• ·         User’s familiarity. This platform supports the widely-used office solutions, most required while on the move. With back-office based on MS technologies, it should be easier to integrate and deploy.
• ·         We have many Windows-based mobile devices and feel a Windows-based system will scale well. Because of a very large Windows application base which Windows Mobile should hopefully be able to integrate into any application?
• ·         Cost effective, Ease-of-integration, Integration with different platforms
• ·         This is one of the most widely accepted/used platforms. Compatible with all applications.

Mobility will be the end point device of computing and an essential productivity tool in the enterprise. The enterprise mobility will soon move from good to have to must have. It’s going to take some time before people start using it in a big way… concerns are around accountability and security. However I do believe that it’s going to be the way forward for application/financial management. Dashboards, reports, emails, and application access on the fly are becoming mandatory; this can only be achieved with scalable and handy mobility solutions.

I see a major role for enterprise mobility solutions for there is an increased demand for flexible work-hours from employees, reliability in establishing connectivity even from tier B and C cities, and difficulties in commuting. Thus, there is an overwhelming demand for working from outside of the office space. Simultaneously, increased customer expectations and competition places demands on the work-force to access key enterprise applications (not just e-mail) from outside the office to meet customer orders and support queries quickly. Enterprise Mobility is going to be a game changer in the future – it will no longer be optional. It will be mandatory for organizations to reduce costs, improve productivity, improve customer service, and even have pro

Loving P&C

DC*