Until fairly recently, mobility was a niche use case for a small subset of users. Solutions tailored for these users were tactical - a sticking plaster to resolve a problem. As smartphone and tablet penetration becomes more of the norm than the exception, this balance has tipped.
Mobility devices are now being managed within the larger IT management strategy. Forrester published a report back in February 2012, which showed 52% of information workers are using three or more devices at work - this roughly equates to most information workers using a smartphone and a tablet in addition to their laptop.
Now, while this should be contextualised as a US-based report - I am, however, seeing similar trends in SA. In a recent conversation with a financial sector client, said client cited numbers that showed its number of mobility devices had doubled in the last seven months! This step change in user behaviour means IT must respond to the changing requirements and security risks.
Wild West of mobility
If people were to be completely honest, they would have to agree that iPads took everyone by surprise. No one expected them to be quite as successful as they have become. They have spawned a whole new tablet market sector. In parallel with this, there is the burgeoning smartphone market. Both sectors are 'feeding off and into' each other - even overlapping in the form of phablets.
The global Internet consumption figures tell an interesting story - more Internet traffic is now being consumed by these new platforms than the old, traditional PC - smartphones and tablets have outstripped PCs in terms of Internet usage. And not only are they using more, they are selling more. Tablets are now outselling PCs - the mobile phone guys have taken over the 'end-user compute' space.
In SA, Vodacom figures show traffic over these new devices has increased by 75% in the last year. This, to me, means these devices are being used differently - and apps are playing a more important role in how people work, play and socialise.
Apple and Samsung are the undisputed gorillas of this growing mobility space. Over 92% of smartphones shipped globally in the first quarter of 2013 were either Android or Apple. Both recognise the benefits that can be brought by integrating with business. Samsung has announced SAFE - Samsung for Enterprise - which lists e-mail, encryption, VPN and mobile device management (MDM) as its four pillars. Samsung hopes to change the prevalent mindset - that the Android OS is not a business platform - by adding its proprietary security mechanisms to the Android OS. Samsung exposes these security extensions, which enable the enterprise MDM system to manage and secure its devices.
iPads took everyone by surprise.
Apple, for its part - when it recently announced iOS 7 - also announced enterprise-friendly features, headlined as "iOS and Business". These announcements centred on the extended support for third-party MDM. Apple recognises that MDM is a useful mechanism to pull its devices into the enterprise fold, layering down the enterprise configurations, security and management, while collecting inventory and business analytics.
Mobility drives business agility, and a recent McKinsey report cites almost all CIOs plan to deliver more than 25 mobile applications in the next two years - my discussions with South African IT managers and CIOs certainly bear this out. What most CIOs haven't done is to bed down how they deploy, secure and manage the life cycle of these apps.
Legging it
Users, for their part, are "walking" devices into the workplace. The first to enter have been the executives - they have opened the door to the network for these new user devices. "Here's my new iPhone/Samsung tablet, I need my e-mail on it, and I need access to the wireless set-up." The network administrators are feeling the squeeze from their loss of control.
The CIO's approach to mobility can be roughly categorised in four phases of adoption: denial, panic, control and driving productivity.
Until recently, the CIO could safely assume most of the company's users were accessing company data and systems through a conventional PC - but recent research by Forrester shows more than half of the business users are utilising three or more devices. The average CIO only has to wander the floor of the workplace to see how users are not just taking notes on their tablets, but are sending e-mails and delivering presentations from their latest smart device. In the last six months or so, there's been a move from: "It's something we will have to deal with", to "we need to get this under control".
The first step on this roadmap is the endpoint - MDM - this is on everyone's hit list. Once the endpoints have been inventoried, secured and managed, then companies can move on to extracting value from these mobility devices.
Once control of the devices is regained, the next logical steps address mobile apps and content. Companies stand to gain tremendous business agility from these devices. Consider salespeople with business tools at their fingertips, or a nurse in a remote area with diagnostic resources quite literally in his or her pocket.
Mobility is indeed a game-changer.
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