Enterprise Mobility

While there might still be some debate about whether the post-PC era has officially begun, Costis Papadimitrakopoulos, CEO at Globo looks at what’s driving demand for mobilising the way of working, the challenges that businesses are facing in transforming their operations into the mobile – and explains why resellers should pay attention.

Since the late 1990s countless IT leaders have prophesised that the post-PC era is coming, and on numerous occasions we have even been told that it has arrived. Most recent was IBM’s CTO for Middle East and Africa, Mark Dean, who marked the 30th anniversary of IBM’s first personal computer in August this year by commenting that desktop PCs are “going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.”

Mobile momentum

So what’s driving business operations in towards mobile and away from traditional PCs? Fundamentally it comes down to the availability of technology that either didn’t exist ten years ago or was unaffordable for most firms, and a greater understanding of how IT can benefit businesses. Technological innovations such as smartphones, tablets and ubiquitous computing and technology convergence are making it far easier for staff to work outside of the office environment.

But a desire to embrace new technology isn’t the only driver. Growing demand for a more flexible way of working is also adding momentum. More companies are exploring technologies that will allow staff to enjoy a greater work / life balance, whilst increasing productivity. As all companies are looking for ways to make cost efficiencies at the moment, to achieve greater return on investment, to turn time out of the office or time on the move into productive time as much as possible, mobility continues to be an attractive proposition.

Most enterprises today understand the value proposition of mobility — that it has enormous potential to accelerate business functions and improve organizational agility in ways that are both cost effective and competitively advantageous. Yet corporate uptake of mobility has been almost entirely spontaneous and unsystematic.

Bumps on the road

As we all know, anything worth having is worth fighting for, and the same is true for enterprise mobility. A recent study by Cisco found that 45 percent of IT professionals are struggling to implement mobile workforce systems. From speaking to our customers we’ve found that one of the key challenges that companies are faced with is managing a wide range of different and constantly changing mobile and tablet devices.

Enterprise mobility landscape is characterised by a highly fragmented environment across mobile devices, mobile networks, mobile security, mobile applications, Software Development Kits (SDKs) for third party development and integration plug-ins.

Enabling businesses to manage enterprise mobility securely from a single point of reference, easily administered in a transparent way regardless of mobile devices, wireless networks and back-end business systems is what will drive a successful enterprise mobility strategy.

The new era opens-up a huge opportunity for resellers, whether be a telecom operator, a software vendor, a system integrator, a service provider, etc. to undertake a solution offering true mobility to their businesses and respectively to their customers.  This means that resellers can capitalise on both businesses that are looking to deploy enterprise mobility across new handsets as well as those that are simply looking to get more out of past investments in mobile technology.