Creating a Roadmap for Enterprise Mobility

The virtual workplace is a reality. Gone are the days of all employees in a work group showing up to a single office. Today, work groups are comprised of workers located across cities, states, countries and around the globe. There are telecommuters and road warriors. Employees expect access to corporate networks, systems, applications and data – anytime and anywhere. Times have changed and so has technology.

Today’s businesses are increasingly on the move. The acceleration of the mobile workforce is driving the need for enterprises to deploy more advanced tools and capabilities to facilitate, manage, monitor and secure an increasingly dispersed workforce. Getting the right information at the right time to the right people in the right place has never been more important. Today’s businesses are increasingly embracing new ways to communicate, whether it’s voice over IP or unified communications to address a highly dynamic and often 24x7 work environment.

While the need for better, faster enterprise communications is nothing new, a number of key technology developments are contributing to the recent rise in interest among organizations of all sizes and types.

Today, the goal is not to deploy stand-alone networks but to seamlessly blend wired and wireless capabilities to create a powerful platform for enabling communications across the entire enterprise. Improved access to business information helps enhance employee productivity and collaboration. It can also help enterprises drive revenue, boost responsiveness to markets and customers by enabling customer delivery and playing a key role in the development and introduction of new products and services.

Key Market Trends Driving Adoption
Continued globalization has led to an increased requirement for secure, high-performance, application-enabled networking. Companies today are strategically connecting to partners, suppliers and customers around the world to optimize efficiency and drive cost out business costs.

Another key driver is the move toward global ‘greening’ and the need for solutions that are eco-friendly, such as conferencing and collaboration. The ‘green’ initiative is helping to drive the uptake of mobility services, as companies increasingly focus on the business and environmental costs of travel.

More companies are also focused on helping employees achieve an optimum work-life balance – another key factor driving the need for enterprise mobility. Remote access solutions, encompassing a variety of broadly available access methods and devices, and underpinned by sound security practices, are important building blocks of an overall enterprise mobility strategy to deliver enhanced workforce flexibility and productivity. Additionally, remote access capabilities enable companies to strengthen business continuity efforts should an unforeseen event come into play.

Seen as business strategists, chief information officers are now being asked to ensure the close integration of business and technology to help control costs, enhance productivity and achieve a wide range of corporate objectives, often times leading to a greater use of mobility solutions.

Leveraging Mobility in the Enterprise
Michael Marcellin, vice president of global product marketing at Verizon Business has no doubt that mobility can help organizations create a significant competitive advantage.

“Mobility solutions have evolved in recent years,” he says. “Previously, you had tactical deployments whereby only select users had access to mobility solutions that enabled specific tasks. Now, we have enterprise-wide deployments that enable business process transformation via secure and seamless Web-based applications that provide extended access to a broad-based internal community, in addition to suppliers, partners, distributors and customers.”

Verizon Business is at the forefront of these developments. The company delivers advanced IP, data, voice and wireless solutions to large-business and government customers globally, and offers a broad enterprise mobility portfolio, including wireless voice and data capabilities.

These capabilities can seamlessly integrate with other collaborative tools, often as part of a company’s overall unified messaging strategy. These include one voicemail box, and integration with Microsoft Outlook Exchange, as well as secure instant messaging and presence capabilities. With “anytime, anywhere” access, employees and can tap into time-saving communications tools such as audio, Web and video conferencing, and VoIP.

“Verizon Business’ enterprise mobility offerings can be best thought of as the building blocks to create and implement a seamless and transparent enterprise mobility strategy ,” says Marcellin.

“Mobility enables the extended enterprise, making work an activity not a location. With always-on connectivity from anywhere in the world, employees can check email, download files, access the Internet and return phone calls. They can also securely access business-critical data and applications; sync mobility devices to their desktops; and collaborate more effectively thanks to innovative technology solutions.”

Such solutions are backed by 24/7 customer support and include comprehensive security from the network to the end-point – enabling enterprises to deliver the tools and access required to conduct business away from the office.

In addition, a comprehensive array of professional consulting services underpin Verizon Business’ capabilities. Working closely with customers, Verizon Business consultants can help enterprises develop flexible mobility deployment strategies through network assessments, technology selection and gap analyses.

“ Our professional services can help enterprises fully assess current network infrastructure and its capabilities to support mobility applications, and provide recommendations for upgrades that will allow enterprises to fully exploit emerging mobility technologies and securely integrate them into existing capabilities,” says Marcellin.

The Future of Enterprise Mobility
Indeed, Marcellin believes today’s evolving business trends require a different kind of technology provider.

“Currently, there is a mix of systems integrators, software vendors, information technology (IT) outsourcers and carriers all offering different services,” he says. “However, in the near-future we’ll see all these different services – network services, IT services, wireless and applications services converge. The new service provider will need to be able to leverage the power of the network and at the same time integrate all these different IT solutions to deliver a seamless solution for enterprise customers. This is a challenge that Verizon Business is meeting head on.”

At the heart of Verizon Business’ mobility strategy is fixed/mobile convergence. In terms of the customer experience, this will mean the ability to enable the seamless communication between fixed and mobile devices such as Blackberries, cell phones and the like. By integrating and standardizing wired and wireless networks on a global basis, enterprises are setting the stage for the deployment of advanced collaborative tools, such as unified communications.

Six steps to a world-class mobility solution

1. Think strategically
Enterprise mobility helps increase remote worker productivity, offers access to business applications and information, and enhances collaboration and communications. Mobility can also play a key role in the delivery of new services that make your enterprise more responsive to your market and your customers.

2. Put security first
Enterprise mobility means a myriad of new network access methods, applications and devices. That means security is priority number one. Select a provider that understands how to engineer security into the very core of the network infrastructure, as well as the end points.

3. Enable collaborative applications
Integrate voice and data traffic to control network costs and enable advanced functionality. Remote workers need the ability to interact with colleagues as if they were in the office, by using features such as reservation-less ‘instant meetings’ and “find me-follow me” functionality.

4. Don’t try to do everything in-house
Having the right partner to design, build, support and, most of all, administer a new mobility strategy leaves in-house technical staff free to focus on their critical business imperatives. .

5. Select devices with care
Different people need different devices. A personal digital assistant is more valuable for some, for others the laptop is the best solution. Enterprises need to identify the right tools for each employee and implement a solution that can handle a myriad of devices.

6. Choose the right partner
The right partner should offer a truly integrated solution, including consultancy, devices, and infrastructure. They will also help devise a strategy that meets your individual business goals and IT requirements of your enterprise.