* Three more categories of enterprise mobility services
In our newsletter earlier this week, we introduced the topic of enterprise mobility and started with two categories of enterprise mobility services: simple data connectivity and individual mobility services. This time, we’d like to discuss three more future-looking categories and touch on how fixed/mobile network convergence is enabling all five service categories.
* Business process mobility. This category of services uses standard mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs or even mobile phones. The devices offer a graphical user interface or telephony interface to business applications such as field and sales force automation and customer relationship management.
* Business devices. Business device mobility includes mobile devices that are purpose-built for a specific application or business process. One example might include a mobile phone that has a built-in barcode scanner offering connectivity to a back-office accounting application via a mobile network.
* Machine-to-machine. The most futuristic of our five categories, this would allow for communications among machines. For example, a Coke machine might have a mobile connection that either asks the driver-dispatch management system to provide service or indicates no service is required. This category also includes operator-specific approaches and hosted or third-party applications.
While mobile worker connectivity to a data VPN is commonplace, service provider and enterprise network managers are constructing their networks to better accommodate the mobile worker at the applications level. Managed security has always been a consideration for enterprise mobility, and operators are now looking at how multi-purpose or purpose-built mobile devices can be better linked to applications the mobile workers need.
As both fixed and mobile operators move to offer more applications services from within the network, we believe the opportunity for cooperation between network providers and applications providers becomes increasingly important to the success of both suppliers.
