Discounting Enterprise Mobility Myths and Exploring Mobile Developments

admin | August 22, 2013

As the focus on enterprise mobility is a fairly new trend, there are numerous misconceptions that corporations must grapple with on their quest to reach greater mobile maturity. Chris Marsh, Mobile Enterprise guest contributor and principal analyst of enterprise mobility at Yankee Group, recently explored some of the top enterprise mobility myths, explaining that there are three phases that businesses need to advance through. These are opportunistic mobility, strategic mobility and mobile first.

As Marsh explained, the opportunistic mobility phase is where most corporations are today, focusing on deploying point solutions to workers and limited by the rigidity of existing architectures. Forward-looking companies have moved onto the strategic mobility phase, where policy-driven approaches reign supreme and advanced administration tools are utilized to address business mobile issues related to security, policy and compliance. The mobile first phase is where most companies will ideally want to end up, although few are currently at this stage. These businesses are leveraging mobility to redefine business processes, significantly impacting work behaviors through internal adjustments and extending its reach to consumer-facing applications.

“To move from the first to the second phase necessitates technical, organization and process change,” Marsh wrote. “This is difficult enough for enterprises facing a rapidly evolving supply-side marketplace, and an influx of consumerized technologies from their own employees. Amidst this maelstrom of change, a number of commonly-bandied around myths only confuse enterprise’s decision-making.”

Top prevailing enterprise mobility myths

Marsh continued by outlining some of the top cited myths that enterprise mobility solutions can help organizations surpass:

Solutions cannot be both agile and enterprise-grade
Businesses can wait for the BYOD trend to pass
The enterprise mobility solutions market is poised for maturation
It’s all about the tablet in business
Most businesses know what they are doing
Leveraging cloud-based mobile business applications is an impossibility
Organizations have plenty of time to wait for the industry to settle and trends to emerge
All apps utilized should be consumer-grade
Security should be viewed as separate from mobile assets management
Advice on enterprise mobility strategy is too expensive

Marsh explained that being aware of these myths can help businesses reach enterprise mobility success by enabling them to adjust their initiatives accordingly. He recommended that corporations focus on a few certain truths as they take a more strategic approach to mobility. Utilizing cloud services such as mobile unified communications solutions that are capable of supporting mobility and opting for enterprise-grade services that offer enhanced agility should be top priorities for organizations. Outsourcing infrastructure should not be feared, and focus should shift to emphasizing business resilience and availability. In addition, incorporating business intelligence and analytics into an enterprise mobility strategy can maximize the chance of success.

Adopting a successful strategy

Writing recently for Business 2 Community, mobility strategist Russ Novy outlined the four key considerations that organizations need to make to ensure a successful mobility strategy: platform, tools, applications and services.

“A successful mobile strategy begins with a common platform for integrating and managing mobile devices and the corporate assets that are stored on them,” Novy wrote. “Equally important are the tools for designing and distributing mobile applications, and mobile services that improve internal efficiencies and open up new revenue opportunities for your business.”

Novy emphasized the importance of leveraging a wireless platform that enables app creation and management as well as the ability to connect major device types to enterprise data. Without the platform, businesses will not be able to extend mobile initiatives across all organizational levels. In a recent EnterpriseApps Tech article, contributor James Bourne argued that in order to unlock ultimate enterprise mobility success, common issues with Wi-Fi need to be resolved. He cited an iPass Mobile Workforce Report that indicated that 71 percent of mobile workers research connection and hotspot availability before leaving on a business trip.

“Workers want more assurance that Wi-Fi will be available and reasonably priced when and where they need to work,” an Asia Cloud Computing Association report stated. “When those issues are addressed, mobile productivity soars.”