The enterprise, like any individual, has to decide what it wants out of mobility in general and a device in particular before making a series of decisions.
What are the needed applications? Should deployment be managed in-house or out-sourced? Should the enterprise buy devices in bulk, with across-the-board device-management measures? Or should a company whose workers need only voice and e-mail provide a short list of devices and policies and wing it?
“Any company that looks at mobility from a long-term, strategic perspective-as opposed to the ad-hoc, ‘Wild West’ thing that it’s been-is looking at corporate-liable devices and plans, as well as what data is being accessed, when and by whom,” said Kitty Weldon, an enterprise analyst with Current Analysis. “Even the network-access technology is examined, if you’re dealing with Wi-Fi.”
Who’s in control here?
Then there’s the question of who should pay-corporation or individual-and why. (More on the vagaries of that decision, below. Hint: the wrong choice may be costing businesses up to $2 billion annually.)
“It’s not just a question of cost, it’s a question of control,” Weldon added. “Corporate-liable programs tend to restrict device choice and service plans. The shift to device management services is taking place, slowly. But it’s ironic how little has been done on the security side by enterprise.”
Device-management software is increasingly useful in giving information technology managers the means to restrict access to corporate databases, turn on-or-off device functions such as the camera, connectivity via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or simply “brick” a lost device that might hold proprietary information, according to the analyst.
“The I.T. manager’s job becomes a nightmare if they have to support too many models of handsets,” Weldon said. “If the majority of employees are only given the choice of two mobile [operating systems], the need to deal with disparate, e-mail middleware and device-and-security management platforms is somewhat simplified.”
There are exceptions to this general rule of thumb. Decisions, as anyone in corporate America knows, don’t always follow a rational course, nor do they necessarily come from the I.T. manager.
Will the CEO’s fascination with, say, a new, shiny gadget short-circuit any attempt at a coherent policy? One would think such a scenario would be exposed as a variant of the “urban myth” in a presumably results-oriented business, but Weldon’s colleague, Avi Greengart, insisted it happens.
“You’d think that doesn’t happen anymore, but the CEO wields a lot of influence,” Greengart said.
Who pays the bills?
There’s a trend toward “corporate-liable”-meaning the company pays-devices and plans these days, Weldon said. I.T. may be willing to support individual-liable devices if rules are followed. For example, employees may be given the option of one or two carriers and two or three handsets depending on whether the objective is heavy text/e-mail use (implying the need for a QWERTY keypad) or is mostly voice. Companies, if careful, require uniform security measures and policies. When companies install device-management software, the possibility for human error or carelessness-often cited as the most frequent cause of security breaches-declines, the analyst said.
The fundamental question of whether corporations pay and, thus, maintain ultimate control over enterprise devices and services, may be shifting toward the corporation, for security reasons. Yet in a recent study by In-Stat, a slow shift in that direction is costing enterprises in the U.S. up to $2 billion annually.
Relying on mobile employees to pay their own bill or submit expense accounts to address the cost poses a threat to security and wastes time and, therefore, money, according to In-Stat analyst Bill Hughes. When a business pays, mobile employees spend nearly triple the number of minutes per month on business calls than if the employee personally pays the bill.
“The message to businesses of all sizes is that the only effective method to pay for mobile services is to pay for company-driven use and accept incidental personal calls,” Hughes said.
This scenario improves productivity and security, saves money, and increases overall airtime for carriers, according to the analyst.
According to the In-Stat study, only 44% of U.S. companies cover their employees’ wireless bills with no expense reports needed. Fully 25% expect the employee to pay for all service. Another 30% includes various scenarios in which the two parties split the bill-but that wastes valuable employee time in filling out expense reports, Hughes said.
Expertise required
The sought-after application(s), the choice of operating system and device and, possibly, the carrier, may dictate which particular devices are chosen. The U.S. market currently is oriented toward Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry OS or Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile, Weldon said.
“There’s a whole slew of interesting ‘characters’ doing mobile business apps,” Weldon said. “You can do it yourself or go with a hosting provider.”
The answer may depend on how large an I.T. staff resides in-house or how resource-intensive or time-consuming the project.
According to Greengart, RIM has taken the lead on smartphone sales in the U.S. because the vendor is constantly updating its device offerings to meet both enterprise and hybrid needs. The smartphone segment of the industry-not always synonymous with “enterprise” device because some smartphones allow only “sandbox” applications that don’t access the fundamental operating system-is growing due to these hybrid offerings that combine productivity features with entertainment features, Greengart said. The so-called “prosumer,” the self-employed and small-and-medium-sized businesses all have bolstered the market for the dual, productivity-and-entertainment devices.
