TMCnews Featured Article
August 23, 2011
Enterprise Mobility- Are You Embracing the Opportunity?
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
When the first consumer mobile device emerged in the U.S. in 1981, did industry analysts at the time foresee the market exploding to 5.3 billion users throughout the global market? Did employers who once viewed these devices as unnecessary distractions at work anticipate they would eventually become an important part of a new focus: enterprise mobility?
This recent Forbes article highlights a leading phenomenon within the corporate environment. Businesses still don’t fully understand how enterprise mobility affects their workforce or their bottom line. This is surprising given that a July 2011 Unisys study conducted by IDC (News - Alert) showed that mobile adoption is accelerating in the corporate world.
The biggest failure, however, is that IT organizations are not preparing their organizations for this drive towards enterprise mobility. Only 6 percent of IT decision-makers indicated that they had modernized their customer-facing applications to ensure they would work with mobile devices. Another 89 percent said they had no plans to move this direction within the next year.
Given the rapid pace in which businesses are adopting enterprise mobility, it’s surprising that IT executives do not see this as a priority. They are already facing significant challenges in relation to effectively securing and managing the explosion of mobile devices and applications already in use within the enterprise. Simply adding age-old IT management, governance and purchasing models won’t solve this problem, but instead compound it.
It is true that some executives in all divisions of a company have yet to embrace enterprise mobility as a key business advantage. As a result, a number of organizations have made only surface-level attempts to modernize their applications to leverage the advantages of mobile channels. Customers are demanding access to information, solutions and self-help through mobile applications and mobile professionals need enterprise mobility to be effective and maintain a competitive edge.
To truly leverage the business value of enterprise mobility, organizations need to make mobile devices a first-class citizen within the workflow of the enterprise. This requires that enterprise leaders look beyond mobile versions of their websites and dig deeper into their business processes and models to develop the right engineering design so they fit into the any time and any where business paradigm.
Aside from the flexibility enterprise mobility can provide to professionals in the field, it also offers the potential to develop and offer differentiated services that are not available through other channels, including near field communications, location-based services, augmented reality and even motion sensors.
To get started on embracing enterprise mobility, organizations need to clearly define objectives, access transactional mobility capabilities, develop an integrated mobility roadmap and then consider existing and new delivery channels. This process is a great first step to embracing enterprise mobility and allowing it to delivery clear benefits.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Stefanie Mosca
Internet Telephony Magazine
Click here to read latest issue
CUSTOMER 
Cloud Computing Magazine
Click here to read latest issue
IoT EVOLUTION MAGAZINE
