Mobilizing the Workforce

According to the IDC, the mobile enterprise application market will surge to $3.5 billion by 2010, and in the grip of a recession, with strict budgets and cutbacks in place, it seems few organizations can afford to be left behind. IDC’s Stephen Drake reveals the multiple business benefits of enterprise mobility.

“You want to deploy a strategic platform that supports a heterogeneous environment and allows for flexibility and scalability”
-Willie Jow

Organizations today are looking at mobility as a strategic tool, much more than in the past, and in these challenging times are expecting increased productivity from their mobile workers. Organizational efficiencies have no doubt improved and while many people believe the end user receives all the benefits, thinking about all the processes for a particular application, it improves the company all the way up. "Colleagues of that mobile person are communicating in a much faster, more real-time perspective," explains Stephen Drake, Program Vice President for Mobility and Telecom at IDC. "Those that are receiving the data that need to do something with it are doing so much faster and it a much more accurate way. It improves the entire organization's workflow if you will."

In terms of deployment, Drake believes a key issue management teams need to consider is identifying the types of employees that are being considered as potential mobile workers. "You need to understand what applications you'd like to roll the mobility out to, because typically as organizations look at this there may be multiple business units or multiple types of workers that they'd like to roll this down to. While it may start as one group, understanding the best group to start with is critical and demonstrates how you can leverage whatever deployment you initially make for other business units that are waiting in the wings," advises Drake, who goes on to identify two sets of workers. The first kind are the horizontal workers, those in sales or management that may start to mobilize though mobile CRM or mobile sales automation. On the other side are the vertical workers, who are perhaps out in the field or are technicians, and are looking at very different applications and devices, instead of email they will be looking to use a specific vertical or composite application, for example.

Willie Jow, VP of Mobility Product Marketing at Sybase, believes that there are two further key issues that management must consider when evaluating enterprise mobility. Firstly, he says that management must ensure that investments must be considered 'future proof'. "Deployment of enterprise mobility evolves through the years because devices change, the backend systems change and the business processes change. You want to deploy a strategic platform that supports a heterogeneous environment and allow for flexibility and scalability," suggests Jow.

Secondly, despite the numerous benefits to an increasingly mobilized workforce there are also a number of risks associated with the use of mobile devices, including the loss of sensitive data. "The introduction of innovative mobile technologies that provide employees with a competitive advantage must be balanced with IT governance that ensures the safety of you organization's data and assets," says Jow. And, in terms of developing a plan around managing and securing devices in terms of a large mobility deployment, Drake is keen to highlight the importance of securing devices before a mobile solution is rolled out, for example, device management, device wipe, device lockdown, software distribution and inventory, is critical. "Compliance is another issue," explains Drake. "On a PC or on an office-based device it is unthinkable that items would exist without being compliant, whereas with mobile devices, well, many organizations don't even know what's out there. The awareness and recognition at the point of rolling out these applications to the user is a critical area in terms of device management and security."

Beyond security and compliance, there are a number of challenges to implementing, developing and deploying mobile applications, not least the multiple providers involved.  "You've got software issues from the back end systems, down to the mobile device and the software and applications that reside on the device, so you'll have software players involved, you'll typically have a mobile operator as well as perhaps a systems integrator, and it gets complicated with these multiple moving parts involved. One of the most critical aspects is to trust your providers so that you feel comfortable and understand the delivery and complexity of mobility," says Drake.

While there are currently "multiple moving parts" involved in the deployment and operation of mobility devices, more integrated partnership offerings are emerging, offering mobility as a service. Drake believes that the emergence of these all-in-one providers is encouraging and believes it may well affect the uptake of mobility technologies. Also becoming increasingly common is the increased integration of partnership, for example the likes of RIM with IBM and EDS. "We've seen the likes of Sybase, for example, partner with Samsung," says Drake. "So the idea of these players coming together to deliver much more integrated solutions, delivering a strong partnership in that they know each other quite well in the delivery of their solutions, and it's not four or five different providers clumped together but companies who understand and recognize each other's solution."

There is no doubt that there has been more activity over the last year or two, with a deeper level of integration being seen. Larger system integrators are getting involved in earnest and changing the way that solutions are being offered. Looking at the key criteria for choosing a next generation mobile platform, Drake believes that first and foremost it is crucial to look at the provider and do some research into their history of delivering solutions as well as the history of the business itself; the technological liability is just as important as the financial liability. "Having an offering that's kind of built on some of the next generation technologies, whether it's web services based or allows for rapid application of development, can be quite proprietary, which is something to watch out for. Getting your hands around an organization that can deliver a platform that's based on standards is important," says Drake. "It will also be critical to have some key components, like device management and security, baked into the platform."

Technology

There is no doubt that technology has had an impact on the mobility sector. Networks, processing power, storage capacity and the devices themselves have dramatically improved and the growth of operating systems and the maturity of some of the operating systems have made devices increasingly effective. "The move towards a web-based or standards-based architecture on the platform side provides the ability to leverage some of the Web 2.0 technologies that allow for a much better integration with an organization and enable a much more rapid deployment," explains Drake. "In the past, applications could take six months to a year to build, whereas today people are building them in days and weeks, which is a huge jump."

However, despite the increasing improvements in technology, Drake is keen to point out that challenges still exist and that limitations mean that devices still require back-end integration with intelligent technologies. He believes that it will continue to be vital over the next couple of years, even with much improved devices and networks, there is a real need for software. That said, the software is progressing: "If you look at the devices that have come out in the last two years from RIM to Apple and Nokia, we are seeing some incredible devices that are beginning to catch up to capabilities allowing people to do much more than text, voice and email. And that's where we're starting to see the catch-up from the devices and networks and software all come together, we're at a pretty exciting point where this is beginning to happen," says Drake.   

With the infiltration of consumer devices into the enterprise, Jow believes that there has recently been a shift in the mobility paradigm, which is reshaping the industry. "This 'consumerization of IT' has repercussions well beyond the device types that enterprises must support. I believe it will fundamentally change the mobility landscape and the traditional role of the information worker. Information workers will have access to business critical information, along with instant connections to the contacts and resources needed to utilize that information, from anywhere at any time. This causes a step change in the productivity levels we already see increasing with mobility solutions today," explains Jow.

So, what does Drake predict for the future of the mobility sector? Well, he expects to see continued growth in the software space and double-digit growth in the key areas around mobile middleware, mobile device management and mobile security, and a drop off in the mobile phone space, although the smart phone market is expected to grow. "We expect to see a big turnaround mid to late 2010 and continued growth opportunity over the next few years, particularly in the software space," says Drake. "Carriers are seeking out the idea of leveraging their networks for data services and that will continue to be a very big growth component for the carriers. And all of that plays in as these pieces come together that really help the idea of business mobility, so we're fairly bullish over the next several years in terms of the growth opportunities there."

A global alliance

In August 2009, the worldwide leader in software and the world's largest smart phone manufacturer entered into a global alliance to deliver a new solution for mobile productivity. Microsoft and Nokia are set to begin collaborating on the design, development and marketing of productivity solutions for mobile workers, which IDC estimates to reach one billion worldwide in 2011.