Enterprise Mobility - Application, Trends and Challenges

To begin with, mobility is a trend which started around 2010-11 and while in 2012 it was year when mobility entered the enterprise in the mainstream and today in 2013 there is a fast tracked implementation of mobility across the entire enterprise. Enterprise mobility is nothing but as we know is a trend in which more of the employees are working out of the office using their mobile devices and cloud services. The biggest advantage of this service is, employees can work freely from anywhere without compromising on any accessing issues of the resources or/and providing complete set of services to their customers.

If we talk about more of this advantages and competences then, it can provide –

• Increased productivity since there is flexibility of work even while you are on the move

• Improved service quality since you response to all requests immediately

• Better customer service and delivery

• Better utilization of enterprise resources

• Faster Decision Making

According to survey done by Alinean (alinean.com), there are some desirable impacts of mobility like Increased efficiency for laptop users to 13% higher as per the hourly work output each week over their desktop counterparts. Now more than 50% of wireless employees use their notebooks at home, and nearly 40% also use them at hotspots. 70% of notebook users cite flexibility in work locations and hours.

In this, Trends that will impact this Mobility (according to Gartner) are –

1. Firstly, BYOD is the biggest change that will affect the enterprise mobility.

2. Secondly, since companies and organizations are paying too much attention on the mobility, creating individual apps becomes so obvious for the smooth work and accessing.

3. Next is Identity and access management i.e. IAM this is a trend which gives the authority or access to the appropriate users. The main focus are on – one time sign-on, adaptive access control and privacy.

4. Next trend is security and Risk. This is the major concern while accessing the confidential data. So systems should be such which have all the security controls such as authentication, encryption, device wipe and anti-malware. In this cloud security is again a biggest concern.

5. Collaboration and Content – Dealing with iPads and tablets are different from the traditional desktops. So in this, keeping the apps and synchronization, to have up-to-date files on all their devices plays a greater role.

6. Last is the infrastructure, to have a seamless work LAN and WLAN is the criticality. The main challenges are network design, network management and problem diagnosis etc. So, it’s important to make a smooth layout and check the possibilities where you can make the infrastructure seamless.

Although this whole setup looks quite impactful and astonishing but like every other side of a coin it also faces few challenges.

• The biggest concern is security and compliances. 90% of IT professionals said that they have strong concern when sharing content via mobile devices. In BYOD policy, this risk factor further increases as it may affect the policies of a company. For this, a proper management and connection is vital so that none of the confidential data get leaked at any case.

• Costs and Risk. We are aware of the risk factor and to minimize the risk and to increase the security it definitely affect the cost to the entire system. To keep a system free from all risk and threats it important to install the essentials apps which increase the cost.

• Choosing the right mobility device. Now this is again important. Understand the requirements and your clients or customers. Choose the device which can help or assist the majority of a share. Keep it open and work accordingly.

Although this initiative is taken by mid-sized and large companies but we are sure in coming future it will make an impact on the entire system because of its usability and advantages. It’s just the beginning of a new era and all we can do is look for the best.

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