The 2013 Mobile Enterprise Report, a recent study by security firm MobileIron and commercial WiFi provider iPass, revealed some interesting stats: a quarter of a billion employees worldwide already engage in some form of BYOD, a third of information workers (208 million employees) lust after an iPhone, and an equal number want a Windows tablet.
Forrester found that the latest generation of workers – Millenials between 18 and 29 – are more than happy to work any time and anywhere on their smartphones and tablets, regardless of what normal working hours might be, and that represents nearly double the number from only a year ago.
IT, obviously, has a lot of work to do. Or maybe not.
The Mobile Enterprise Report saw a drop in IT control of mobility budgets – down to 48% last year from 53% the year before. Yet the same report found IT resistance to supporting multiple types of mobile devices. Forrester’s perspective is that technology must be device-agnostic, requiring no adjustment from one OS and form factor to the next, in order for organizations and their employees to both get what they need from BYOD.
Here’s another point-of-view: make enterprise mobility so simple to achieve that IT doesn’t have to handle any of it. Give end-user departments the minimum training they need to create direct connections between enterprise data, reports, real time operational intelligence, and everyday tasks and workflows and whatever mobile device employees want to use. This isn’t suppositional. It’s actual fact.
Any employee can master the step-by-step process required to make those enterprise-to-mobile connections. The process is no more complicated than creating a macro or a link to separate content. IT, of course, can probably do this more easily, since skilled programmers handle far more complex things every day, but the idea is to relieve IT of the increasing demand for enterprise mobility. If they’re losing control of the budget, they won’t be keen to still have the responsibility for meeting every user’s demands for mobile access and interactivity.
For Forrester, the good news is that the approach is universal. Configure a bi-directional enterprise-to-mobile interaction once, and that single setup will work on every Android, Apple, BlackBerry, or Windows smartphone and tablet.
It’s equally good news for the Mobile Enterprise Report respondents concerned about supporting countless devices – the direct connection approach works the same everywhere. The connections themselves rely on existing permission-based security protocols – the same ones that control laptop and desktop access to the enterprise – and access is through a single app that functions as a runtime environment for an infinite number of connections. So IT can remove a user’s permission, and mobile access to the enterprise vanishes instantly.
For mobile users, especially the Millenials who don’t mind working whenever or wherever, those connections can even enable action to be taken right from the smartphone or tablet. If the information about key performance indicators and real-time operational analytics being streamed to devices shows that something’s not normal, the user can click an icon to get the details explaining what caused the change and, then, take corrective action to restore operations to normal.
It’s the first time that mobile technology has tapped into the full computing power of smartphones and tablets, and Webalo created that technology which you can learn more about here.
The post Who Controls Mobility? appeared first on Webalo - Blog.