Category: Mobilize

Mobilize covers the range of issues facing IT leaders and team members in their efforts to support the business activities of an increasingly mobile workforce.

Hello Microsoft Office for iPad, Bye Bye Desktop?

by , posted in Mobilize
B. Shimmin
B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

  • Corporate e-mail, calendaring, social media and Web-based solutions, all work on mobile devices just as they do on the desktop. But mobile document editing is just beginning to show its true value on the road.
  • Regardless of how vendors like Microsoft decide to mobilize corporate documents, all enterprise IT managers will need to realign current mobile device management efforts with an emphasis on document access control, offline availability, synchronization and version control.

For quite a while now, documents have been the single biggest bugaboo in my quest to use my Apple iPad as a desktop replacement while on the road. Corporate e-mail, calendaring, social media, and any Web-based solution such as Salesforce.com, all work the way they do on the desktop. Actually, in many ways, they’re better – where usability and simplicity are concerned, the iPad simply offers a user experience that is far superior to the desktop. Sadly, however, when it comes to writing and editing, especially jointly editing corporate documents, those merits just don’t apply. The best word to describe it in the overall experience is unusable. There are workarounds and third-party editing and synchronization solutions available to ease the pain, but even those fail to offer anything approaching the same level of functionality available with full-fledged desktop productivity suites like Microsoft Office. Continue reading “Hello Microsoft Office for iPad, Bye Bye Desktop?” →

Q&A from MDM/BYOD Webinar Provides New Insights

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize
K. Weldon
K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • Operators are concerned with getting their word out more effectively to enterprise buyers.
  • Technology providers are looking for validation on BYOD trends, segmentation strategies, and future platform requirements.

Current Analysis held a webinar on February 1st and 2nd focused on global trends in enterprise mobility, providing insights derived from a survey we conducted among 600 businesses last fall.  Attendees included a large and diverse number of technology providers, including operators, networking equipment vendors, security vendors, consultants, and application developers.  The questions posed to us during the Q&A session revealed some of the underlying concerns of these vendors as they seek to develop solutions for their business customers.  Most of these vendors are helping businesses deal with the huge surge in mobile usage among their employees (as well as their partners and customers), which increasingly includes at least some personal mobile devices used to conduct business. Continue reading “Q&A from MDM/BYOD Webinar Provides New Insights” →

Preparing for Dual Use (Corporate and Personal) Mobile Devices

by , posted in Mobilize
A. Braunberg
A. Braunberg

Summary Bullets:

  • No silver bullets for mobile application controls
  • No single metric for success

Galen Gruman had an interesting article in InfoWorld last week, “Virtualization No Silver Bullet for Macs or Mobile” that got me thinking. While the article is actually chiefly about virtualization on non-Windows PCs/laptops it does make some important points about what is needed (and not needed) on mobile devices. To cut to the chase, what is needed is data/application partitioning. That is not news, of course, but the more interesting question that Gruman tackled is whether virtualization is the way to achieve partitioning of personal and corporate data and applications on mobile devices. He sees partitioning as one of the more compelling use cases for virtualization on mobile devices and I agree with that. But it is important to keep in mind that virtualization is just one of numerous techniques that are currently being developed to handle privacy, compliance and security concerns associated with dual-use devices. Continue reading “Preparing for Dual Use (Corporate and Personal) Mobile Devices” →

Mobile Apps Rule in 2012 as Service Providers Enhance Offerings

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize
K. Weldon
K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • Recent announcements confirm our predictions that mobile apps for the enterprise will continue as a big theme this year.
  • New offerings from IBM and AT&T focus on mobile application development and application delivery through enterprise app stores.

We predicted in our January 5th blog entry (“Enterprise Mobility 2012: What Can Businesses Expect in the New Year?”) that the heated debates in 2011 about the best way to develop and manage applications and the rise of the enterprise app store would continue in earnest in 2012.  In early February, we are already seeing new products and services available from some of the leaders in the enterprise mobility ecosystem. Continue reading “Mobile Apps Rule in 2012 as Service Providers Enhance Offerings” →

2011 Was a Great Year for MDM

by , posted in Mobilize
A. Braunberg
A. Braunberg

Summary Bullets:

  • The MDM market is not just growing, it’s expanding
  • Leading vendors had a very good year in 2011

Before talking about market growth, I should make it clear that Current Analysis does not do market sizing. (We aren’t a quant house.) That being said, we look at market numbers just like anyone else, and sometimes with a bit of amusement. A serious difficulty in trying to size the MDM market is that it is a moving target. The question is not so much what is MDM today, but rather what will it be in two or three years? If you don’t scope the market correctly then sizing it is impossible. One of the quantitative analyst firms this summer upwardly revised their MDM forecasts for 2015 from $3.9 billion to $6.6 billion. That is a huge resizing, but it makes sense in light of the expanded scope of the MDM market that the firm now anticipates. Continue reading “2011 Was a Great Year for MDM” →

Public WiFi Is Cool Again; What Can It Bring to the Enterprise?

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize
K. Weldon
K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • Use of WiFi is on the rise among both operators facing congested networks and enterprises looking for cost-savings, especially for international roaming.
  • Budding efforts are on the way to streamline the user experience; allow seamless, secure roaming; and make WiFi usage less of a hassle for travelers.

Nearly all new smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and laptops have WiFi built-in, and for many of these devices, WiFi is the only network option.  However, the use of public hotspots has suffered from spotty coverage, inconsistent performance, security concerns, and a painful sign-up experience.  There are too many providers for any frequent traveler to track.  However, since carriers stopped offering unlimited 3G plans, and with the cost of international roaming still a big concern, businesses now need WiFi more than ever.  Wireless operators are joining the bandwagon, as high data and video usage on their networks causes congestion problems which are only going to get worse.  A number of different service providers and vendors are addressing how they can improve the WiFi experience and make it a viable complement to 3G/4G cellular. Continue reading “Public WiFi Is Cool Again; What Can It Bring to the Enterprise?” →

The Workday Will Be Televised

by , posted in Mobilize
B. Shimmin
B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

  • The fast-approaching conjunction of social analytics, the YouTube generation, and pervasive mobility will radically alter the workplace as employees begin broadcasting the telemetry of the workday.
  • Companies that head down this road must prepare now for the inevitable ethical, legal, and even technical conundrums that will follow such ubiquitous and pervasive exposure.

When I go out for a bike ride, I never go alone.  That is, anyone who has befriended me on MapMyRIDE can follow my progress in real-time, noting some very specific telemetry data generated by my iPhone and the MapMyRIDE app, including my altitude, speed, direction, and exact location.  Later, my friends and I can review a given ride, analyzing my performance (like average speed over distance) or just going along for a virtual fly-along ride.  With bespoke devices, the gobandit GPS-HD, for instance, I could take this to an entirely new level, recording and later broadcasting my daily sojourns using the same telemetry data tied to a high-definition video feed.  Soon, corporate employees will begin broadcasting their daily work routines in much the same way. Continue reading “The Workday Will Be Televised” →

Enterprise Mobility 2012: What Can Businesses Expect in the New Year?

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize
K. Weldon
K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • Mobility will continue to be a huge priority for enterprises in 2012, with BYOD, mobile apps, mobile security, and tablet adoption as major themes.
  • How is the supplier ecosystem responding to the needs of business customers, and what will we see from them in 2012?

2011 was a busy year for enterprise mobility, as it was the year of the tablet (or at least the iPad) explosion; BYOD support became a priority (even beyond the U.S.); there was a surge in the development of mobile applications; mobile security finally gained precedence; the availability of LTE in the U.S. became widespread enough to matter; M2M deployments grew in the automotive, utility, and health care verticals – we could go on and on.  Suffice it to say that while enterprises are becoming increasingly dependent on mobile devices and applications, the supplier ecosystem (wireless operators, IT service providers, handset/tablet vendors, mobile application developers, enterprise infrastructure equipment vendors, and platform providers for TEM, MDM, mobile security, and mobile application enablement) has stepped up initiatives to generate revenues by satisfying the enterprise’s hunger for mobile solutions.  So, what were some of the key service launches in 2011 among these vendors and service providers, and what do we see as their priorities for 2012? Continue reading “Enterprise Mobility 2012: What Can Businesses Expect in the New Year?” →

Step Two in Mobilizing Your Contact Center: Create a Continuous and Seamless Customer Experience

by , posted in Mobilize
K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  •  The enterprise’s motivation in driving customers to do more via the mobile channel should be to provide a highly differentiated customer experience, enhance the overall lifetime value of the customer to the enterprise, and reduce operational costs.
  • Due to the growing popularity of mobile phones as a channel of access to customer service centers and the customer’s natural aversion to an IVR interface, it will be essential to allow customers to shift from a mobile, self-service mode to live agent assistance as simply as possible.

In my October 13th blog posting, “Step One in Mobilizing Your Contact Center: Send Your Agents Home,” I suggested that an initial step in mobilizing a contact center might be to implement an at-home agent strategy.  In this posting, I would like to broach the issue of planning and preparing for interactions with clients who will be using mobile phones more often in the future.  Preparing for increased mobile traffic will be essential to maintaining and/or improving current customer satisfaction and preparing for the younger generation of customers who will demand easy remote access to your customer service communications infrastructure. Continue reading “Step Two in Mobilizing Your Contact Center: Create a Continuous and Seamless Customer Experience” →

M2M Growth: Reality Check on the Rise of the Machine

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize
K. Weldon
K. Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • Enterprises deploying M2M solutions do not necessarily look to cellular; WiFi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee may be more cost-effective inside buildings, and wireline connections still make sense for many fixed devices.
  • M2M continues to grow, but the ecosystem has a lot of work to do to reach the huge numbers of predicted devices.

The M2M market is growing; there seems to be no doubt about that.  In fact, in comparison with other technology areas, the growth rates seem pretty healthy, with CAGRs of 25% typically reported by carriers and module manufacturers.  However, while M2M is often tied to the cellular industry, the reality is that only about 30% of the connections that make up today’s worldwide installed base of M2M devices are cellular.  Cellular connection numbers are still small, with an installed base of about 80 million mobile connections today.  In addition, M2M bandwidth requirements remain low, and the vast majority of cellular M2M applications today are comfortably served by 2G networks. Continue reading “M2M Growth: Reality Check on the Rise of the Machine” →