How to solve the enterprise mobility puzzle

Virtualization, SOA, security, management and network access must be part of a comprehensive mobility strategy

By Ann Bednarz, Network World
March 16, 2009 12:08 AM ET

IT budgets are tight and some projects are in limbo, but there's one area Dave Rudzinsky isn't cutting back: mobility.

Read a story of five tips for an effective mobility strategy.

"Our mobility project is one that hasn't skipped a beat," says Rudzinsky, senior vice president and CIO at Hologic, a $1.6 billion medical devices company specializing in women's healthcare. "We've got to do more mobility because we want our guys to be able to work wherever they are, and keep our systems going."

Hologic has nearly 4,000 employees, and 1,500 of them require mobile access at least part of the time. Field service and sales teams in particular require tools to work on the road, so Hologic outfitted them with BlackBerry devices running Oracle CRM applications. (Read a story that asks if your mobile device is enterprise-ready?)

The CRM deployments are one aspect of Hologic's master mobile plan. The Bedford, Mass., company has in place a mobility strategy that covers everything from device options and service plans to usage policies and mobile application development. But most companies fall short of having a mobility master plan.

"Most companies are approaching mobility in a very tactical way, unfortunately," says Paul DeBeasi, senior analyst at Burton Group. "Mobile technology is changing so fast, and the expectations of new workers are changing so fast, but enterprises have not organized themselves to really be able to deal with any of this. There's no strategic view on how to integrate mobility in the enterprise."

That lack of strong policies leaves the door open to a mix of smartphones and handheld devices with different capabilities, operating systems and network technologies. As these devices pop up unannounced in corporate environments, IT's efforts to secure and manage corporate resources get more tricky.

Today's handheld devices are becoming almost as powerful as laptops, but "people are much more rigorous about managing their laptops than they currently are with their handheld devices," DeBeasi says. Two-factor authentication, encryption and VPNs are common on laptops, for instance, yet many handheld devices don't require any authentication to access the device or network, and local encryption on a handheld is possible, but not often implemented. "Where we are with mitigating against data leakage on handhelds has a long way to go to catch up to laptops," DeBeasi says.
"That's one of the big risks here."

The way some see it, not having a mobility strategy is not only risky, but also a lost opportunity to refine existing security, application and management infrastructures. "If you, the enterprise, come up with a mobility strategy for IT, you're basically addressing all of your IT needs going forward, including in the office. Because even in the office, people are mobile now," says Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group. "If you solve your mobility strategy, you're solving your overall IT strategy."

Beyond e-mail; deploying business apps

Road warriors these days are looking to do more with their smartphones, and enterprises are beginning to assess which applications make sense to enable on handheld devices. Most companies start with e-mail and calendar-related tools, and more than 50% of organizations have already fully deployed these commodity applications, says Chris Silva, an analyst with Forrester Research.