converged
Despite the increased criticality and visibility of mobile initiatives, IT leaders say their mobility success remains somewhat mixed. Just 8% of organizations classify their mobility initiatives as “extremely successful;” the same percentage say their initiatives are “unsuccessful.”
One challenge lies in how best to define “success” in this time of cost-cutting. IT professionals are under intense pressure to reduce costs, yet deploying mobile devices and services usually represents a net cost increase, at least from an IT perspective. The benefits of mobility generally accrue not to IT, but rather to individual lines of business, which can streamline operations and improve the success of interactions by mobile-enabling their employees. Adding platforms such as mobility device management (MDM) systems to support mixed device deployments adds cost and complexity. For IT shops that focus on “how much will that save me?”, mobility often represents only an additional expense.
The overall impact is that mobile initiatives are less-successful from an IT perspective because they increase expenditures and generate challenges, while failing to meet ongoing user demands (however unrealistic) for a flawless mobile experience on the user’s choice of device.
The major challenges precluding IT professionals from rating their mobility strategies as more successful fall into three main categories:
• Devices
• Applications
• Support structures
When it comes to device support, there are two challenges. Some IT professionals complain about being limited to supporting a single device (usually the Blackberry) when users are clamoring for iPhones, iPads and Android-based devices.
Yet at the same time, IT professionals grouse about the exploding demand for supporting additional devices. “User preferences for mobile devices can’t always be satisfied,” says the director of telecom for a large energy company, who cites the challenge of ensuring applications run across a broad range of devices as a limiting factor.
Application support, in fact, is a key concern. Moving beyond calendar/contact/messaging integration toward supporting critical IT applications across mobile platforms means that IT needs proactive application performance management capabilities across a variety of possible platforms and devices.
But as noted, ensuring application support across a range of devices isn’t easy. “We’re in flux. No one can agree whether to access applications through a browser, or a client. The diversity hurts us,” says the director of IT at a large manufacturing company, who rates the success of his mobile initiative low.
The solution lies in more mobile-aware application architectures, driving the need for mobility into the application development process from the start. Indeed, a growing number of IT executives tell us that mobility is a key consideration both for choosing new applications as well as for developing in-house services.
Finally, ensuring the proper support structure for an increasingly sophisticated set of users is challenging. IT support organizations must educate staff and possess proper tools to support the needs of the mobile worker.
There are a few intriguing indications of what comprises a “successful” mobility deployment. Mobility success correlates directly with iPhone deployment and inversely with BlackBerry deployment; directly with greater number of mobile-enabled users; directly with having a mobility strategy; and directly with having performed a risk assessment for mobile devices in advance. Although correlation doesn’t imply causation, it’s clear that the more thoroughly an organization thinks through the impact and goals of mobility, the more likely it is to experience success.
