Anesu Charamba, programme manager, digital transformation practice at Frost & Sullivan.
This was the word from Anesu Charamba, programme manager, digital transformation practice at Frost & Sullivan.
Unpacking enterprise mobility management (EMM) trends at the ITWeb Enterprise Mobility 2017 event, Charamba explained EMM solutions are designed to help companies leverage mobile technology as a tool for business transformation.
"In today's world, enterprise mobility is not necessarily a new thing; most companies have some strategy or practice in place, aimed at empowering end-users to be more productive wherever they are, on any device, while enabling IT to meet critical security and compliance requirements," Charamba explained.
He highlighted the four trends driving EMM in business: workforce demographics, device security and effective threat management, vendors capitalising on enterprise demand, and CIO strategies.
"Over the last 60 years, we've come a long way in terms of workforce demographics – we've moved from baby boomers (1946-1964) to generation X (1965-1980) to generation Y (1988-1999) to the current app generation (post-1999). We've had to move from working physically to working in the digital realm, adapting to working with e-mail, laptops and smartphones, and we're virtually plugged into the office no matter where we go."
According to research conducted by Frost & Sullivan, the future workers who are entering the workspace now are all predisposed to working with smartphones, tablets and apps, because many of them grew up using these devices.
"The research revealed many of the young workforce don't feel the need to come into the office as they're just as productive working from home, if not more productive. If it does get to the stage where many of the jobs we inhabit now no longer exist, many employees of the app generation are going to work as contractors who work on an ad hoc basis from across the globe."
Discussing security from an enterprise mobility perspective, Charamba pointed out the cyber security space has seen a shift from what corporates have had to deal with traditionally, because there are now three different threat vectors that companies have to account for: the users, mobile devices and company networks.
"Each of these present significant security risks that companies have had to adapt to. Proactivity in this area tends to be diminishing simply because, from an employee perspective, data loss and device tempering occurs all the time. From a device perspective, it's a case of losing your mobile device which may have client data on it. Mobile devices are often hyper-connected, and often access sensitive data over untrusted networks, increasing the risk of data loss through WiFi, sniffing rogue access points and man-in-the-middle attacks," he noted.
Discussing the role of the CIO in EMM, Charamba said they are in a precarious position because they have to fulfil a company's wish list to drive innovation within the realm of possibility.
"CIOs are driving the discussion, which caters for enterprise mobility by implementing strategies that involve catching up with bring-your-own-device and moving towards choose-your-own-device, where the workforce is choosing devices that fit within the architecture of a company's existing security base," he concluded.
