The Mobile Enterprise Myth

Tag : mobile phone tool
Depending on your point of view as a worker, the mobile network iseither the greatest productivity tool around or the longestelectronic leash ever invented.

If you are in the IT department working for a small to midsizedenterprise, odds are good that you have received orders to enableany one of a number of mobile applications for your company. And,in the privacy of your cubicle, you might have expressed disgustabout what the new mobility initiative would mean in terms ofnetwork confusion and overtime hours.

“The bitter truth is that any company that wishes to‘mobilize the workplace’ first has to mobilize squads ofprogrammers from its internal IT department or favorite servicebureau and then be prepared for a protracted, costly, and, in theend, unsatisfying implementation that is obsolete before it isdeployed,” says Webalo CEO Peter Price.

“There are only so many platforms that IT can support withupgrades and patches,” says Sean Ryan, research analyst withIDC’s Mobile Enterprise group. “You’re going to beyelled at if the user’s phone can’t access applications,does not sync properly, or shows funky error messages. MultipleOSes will have different versions, different firmware. You need tostandardize to control that.”

Ryan continues, “The best scenario is to give workers freerein . . . but for IT to mitigate risk, IT needs to pick a coupleof platforms and standardize on them.”

Price says that the mobile networking industry still is in theearly adopter stage of becoming a boom market. “Over the next24 months, we will start to see a community of users built aroundan enterprise’s services or business. It will be served by acommunity of carriers and vendors,” he says.

Mobile Workforce Complications

Without proper tools to implement it, the mobile enterprise willremain only a vision. Price says that enterprise employees all want“my data” in “my way” on “myhandheld” in “my lifetime.” Mobile workers do notsee the challenges these demands make on their IT manager. Inshort, supporting mobile employees is a big pain for ITdepartments.

This will affect users, too. Price says the current world ofmobility, such as it is, is user-centric. “What we haveworking today is minimal compared to what we can do in thefuture,” he says. Today’s mobile user is interested in“me” and “my” and little else. The user looksat his own email, his own calendar, and his own contactinformation. “We have 15 million mobile devices deployed inthe enterprise and millions more that are used byindividuals,” Price says. “It’s a personalizedexperience, so it is comfortable for the user.” What he wantsto see is mobility broadened to get enterprise connectivity, bothto a broader range of devices and to a wider range of back-officeapplications.

“Today, IT is comfortable building one-to-many solutions, noton a one-to-one basis,” Price continues. “That is a majorblock in the mobile world. You have to be able to get the user todo all sorts of things on that little screen--ERP (enterpriseresource planning), CRM (customer-relations management), HR--or thewhole concept will not work.”

Limit The Platforms

Ryan sees the challenges, too. His solution would be to choose acouple of platforms and limit the company to those. Perhaps acombination of two platforms, such as Windows Mobile, BlackBerry,Symbian OS, or another system that has internal value, would besufficient for the workforce, he says.

“It doesn’t have to be a hard line, but it needs to be aline on how much capability users have, to some extent,” Ryansays. “If IT is going to allow access behind the firewall todifferent applications for access to assets, databases, andcustomer records, there has to be some standardization.”

Ryan says he would make an exception for lower-level uses. He putsAT&T/Apple iPhones or Palm devices that access personalinformation and provide email access in that category. “Allowthem to do some things but not have a free-for-all,” he says.“Draw the line there.”

Price says hosted services, such as the one his firm provides, giveIT a way to avoid another huge development project followed by amajor deployment. “Users want it to be easy to connect to awide variety of sources and access methods,” he says.

Hosted services will provide SMEs a way to manage devices withouthaving to worry about every dot-upgrade or new patch that comesthrough on every platform, according to Ryan.

Price says a slew of positive developments have helped hostedservice providers, including advances in security, adoption ofservice-oriented Web architecture standards, and the amazing growthin speed and bandwidth in the network.

A good hosted system will automate key aspects of connectivity,allowing any mobile device to present the proper display whetherthe software is Windows Mobile or BlackBerry or something else.

Other Factors To Consider

Other considerations can cloud the issue. For example, Ryan notesthat companies in health care, pharmaceutical industries, orfinancial enterprises all have their own regulatory requirements tomeet. Again, this is easier if there is more standardization.

“There is no single, clear answer. It varies company tocompany,” Ryan says. In any case, he says IT must have controlover what has access to the network and have the tools at the backend to manage the devices.

“Today, the market is making its first move past the basicfunctionality of mobile devices,” Price says. “IT shouldbe looking at its choices for tomorrow today.”