Enterprise Apps: Learning to Share

My mom always said, “It’s really worth getting along with your neighbors”. And my father would counter, “Good fences make good neighbors”. As valuable as these two conflicting bits of advice are relative to life in general, they are equally trenchant when it comes to a problem that nearly all enterprise mobile device ecosystems are going to face. In an enterprise mobile ecosystem of user supplied devices, enterprise apps and data will very likely be sharing space and resources with various kinds of personal content.

Initially, the concerns that arise from this consideration will have to do with availability of device resources, and it could be something as simple as “Will the device owner take so many pictures or videos with the onboard camera that there won’t be enough memory left for mobile business apps to function effectively?”. While introducing elements of uncertainty and the possibility that exceptional conditions will arise, these types of constraints are things app designers can work around if they are aware the potential for problems exists. Today, however, we are on the threshold of some dramatically more complex issues. Softpedia News reports that 87% of Wi-Fi Smartphones will support 802.11n in 2014.

Ubiquitous Wi-Fi in smartphones means that mobile devices will take a primary role in serving interactive content like multiplayer online gaming, streaming video and audio, and providing users with personal access to web-based assets like email and social media. Given this, it is very likely that some of the next generation mobile app neighbors will prove rambunctious. Because users own devices, and in many cases, pay for connectivity themselves, enterprise mobile apps that piggy back on these platforms have to toe a blurry line in terms of how much control they can exercise over a device and how many of its resources they can permanently co-opt. On the one hand it would be unreasonable to deny a user access to her own device or its feature set; On the other hand, enterprise mobile apps have to be able to:

• Operate with enough security to protect the privacy of sensitive data
• Operate robustly enough to ensure transactions are complete and validated
• Maintain sufficient contact with enterprise back end data repositories so they present the mobile worker with timely and accurate business intelligence

And not only do they have to be able to accomplish all of these objectives, they have to do so in a consistent fashion across a variety of mobile device hosts. Enterprise ready mobile strategy for a diverse population of Wi-Fi capable user devices demands a safe and durable sandbox in which enterprise mobile apps can live and function, without either unnecessarily impinging on their neighbors or being trampled by them.