Mobilizing your enterprise without losing sleep
We recently sponsored a study by Kelton Research on what is keeping IT managers awake at night, specifically in terms of mobility implementations. While some folks might be surprised at the numbers, this seems like confirmation of what we have long been trumpeting: mobility is inevitable, and 2011 will be the year of the transformation of the enterprise.
We’ve been pushing two mantras: Secure, and Mobilize. While the Secure component is what you would expect to keep IT managers up at night (is some unauthorized get-a-life accessing my network and doing unspeakable things to my data?), instead the main concern is how to make all the potentially mobilized applications sing in harmony. Nearly half of the people surveyed (44%) were staring at the ceiling at 3 am and thinking, “how do I integrate applications across device types and deliver a consistent workflow, regardless of whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet?” No need to lose sleep anymore. Once you finish reading this post, feel free to roll over and catch some overdue Z’s.
The issue of integrating apps across devices is a legitimate, complex concern, UNLESS you have a middleware platform, in which case it becomes a concern that can be addressed in a relatively straightforward fashion. The whole point of middleware is to simplify the interaction between a broad array of mobile devices (tablets, smartphones, Android, iOS, etc.) and an even broader array of enterprise applications that up to this point were only accessible if you’re sitting at your desk. What’s also interesting is that this model works equally well if the apps being accessed are in the cloud (which over 80 % of the survey respondent said would likely be beneficial ).
The really interesting statistic (particularly if you sell mobile applications) is the fact that 90% of respondents said they plan to implement new mobile apps this year and almost a fourth said they plan to introduce twenty or more mobile apps. The key takeaway here is the scope of the numbers; 90% is effectively the lion’s share, and (let’s face it) twenty mobilized apps is a nice, fast running start to the mobilization of the enterprise. Why? Because even one mobilized app will result in a significant improvement in responsiveness and speed of execution, and adding more mobilized apps increases productivity exponentially. These are the companies that are going to flip the competition on its back and take global business to the next level. Remember the huge jump when everything went on-line a few years back? Same thing is happening again.
Any cautions? Nearly half the respondents have no mobility plan in place, and the same percentage did not plan to staff around mobility. So here is the issue; lots of companies considering or actually going mobile, but also lots of movement in this direction without giving it the proper thought and support. This is a critical area to focus on; if you don’t plan out a deployment timeline driven by business objectives, your execution is going to be random and reactive—if this is your approach, expect to become very familiar with every square inch of your ceiling. The planning component goes back to three simple starting questions: 1) what does your company do, and how can mobility make it more effective, 2)what do your workers, workgroups and workflows deliver, and how can mobility make them more efficient, and 3) how are your competitors dealing with this (and you’d best assume they get it and are moving aggressively against you).
While the issue of security ran second to issues surrounding mobile application integration, it is still a serious concern to most people we surveyed. It is, however a concern that reflects a lack of familiarity with mobile device management applications, which is a core deliverable against any mobility requirement. The requirement is to secure all mobile devices, regardless of form factor (smart phone or tablet), or operating system (iOS, Android, etc.), and to ensure that securing the device is not left up to the user, most of whom struggle just to turn the device on and off. This is where a strong MDM (mobile device management) solution comes into play, and is an area where Sybase has dominated the market for nearly a decade. Again, time to catch some righteous Z’s.
Also keep in mind this is a mobile paradigm for enterprise applications. The way it looks on the desktop is not the way it looks on a mobile device, and it’s the same for the way you interact with the information. Over half the survey respondents consider customizing company information to a mobile framework as a critical part of doing business—which is good, since it’s pretty much a requirement. This is another area where mobile middleware excels, create an abstraction of the enterprise app that can then be delivered as mobile payload and optimized to the nuances of the device, which are significant (but again, not a problem if you have the right framework in play).
Bottom line? This is the year of the transformation of the enterprise, and these numbers are a good indicator that it’s starting to happen. Are you ready?