Reality Check: A proven track for mobilizing the enterprise

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, iPhone, Android. What’s next? The public’s taste in smartphones seems to change much like the flavor of the week at the local coffee house. Yesterday’s Double-Espresso Delight can be easily replaced by next week’s Macchiato Meltdown.
While Apple’s iPhone has dominated headlines since it was introduced in 2007, Google’s Android, according to some market research, is already forecast to quickly become a serious contender in the smartphone race. In an October 2009 Computerworld report, Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney, wrote that Android will be the second most popular smartphone operating system, behind Symbian and ahead of iPhone, worldwide by 2012. Yet only nine months ago CEOs everywhere walked into their IT chief’s office wielding their iPhones and asked — not so gently — for IT to support this new mobile habit. I expect they may come knocking again with a MyTouch or Droid and a whole new list of requirements.
The mobility landscape is so astoundingly dynamic that you may be hesitant to rollout a mobile enterprise strategy. But at the same time, with a mobile world in a state of flux, waiting for a standard platform, operating system, or even browser before you mobilize your enterprise could easily put you behind the competition and at risk of losing customers. A 2008 IDC survey found that 70% of organizations were deploying at least one mobile application, and a third of those companies were deploying multiple mobile applications. These companies realize they need a secure, reliable mobile enterprise strategy as the industry seems to be standardizing on multiple platforms.
Impatient businesses have been burned trying to be first to market in similar situations. Cautious companies have lost customer mindshare and leadership roles. You can avoid both scenarios (and guarantee your current IT investments) by centralizing your mobility strategy on a single mobile enterprise platform.
According to IDC, “As mobile technology and customer adoption of such technology continue to move forward, it is critical today for businesses to recognize the importance of mobility as a strategic investment and a mobile enterprise platform as the core of their strategy to deploy applications to a growing set of users.”
The Ever-Changing Heterogeneous Enterprise
A mobile enterprise platform addresses the overwhelming complexity that is inherent in an enterprise. No matter how simple and clean the initial design, the minimalist concepts are now uprooted. Single contracts with one service provider have grown to multiple contracts for WAN, wireless, Wi-Fi and Internet services. The LAN and WAN rely on devices from multiple networking providers. A host of applications created in different development environments run on a variety of back-end systems (some developed pre-Internet) and on a variety of servers. Users connect to the network over a mix of desktops, laptops, and smartphones with different operating systems. Even the users run the gamut and need different access and application usage rights, as well as levels of security.
When enterprises faced a similar transition from wired to wireless LANs, they relied on virtual private networks and access control lists in the network infrastructure with the applications and business platforms remaining virtually intact. To take the next step in mobility, you need a robust mobility platform that has a comprehensive understanding of back-end systems, applications, and mobile devices. And it almost goes without saying that the mobility platform must impose iron-clad security plus pain-free management.
Gartner is already seeing this trend toward a mobile enterprise platform occurring. By 2010, Gartner predicts 50% of enterprises will have migrated away from tactical mobile application silos to strategic platforms capable of supporting multiple applications, managing devices and securing data and transport.
What are the key features of a mobile enterprise platform? These are what we see as the essentials and what our customers our demanding:
–Broad device, operating system and application support;
–Simplified development capabilities;
–Easy integration with a variety of enterprise applications and databases;
–Proven, remote device management functionality;
–On-device and in-transit data security;
–Feature-rich, embeddable, and zero-maintenance database management and data movement technologies;
–Ease of use for IT administrators and end users.
All these features are necessary to manage a complex, heterogeneous environment, and having these features in the mobile platform ensure that organizations don’t go down the path of expensive, one-off mobile deployments that could put them at a disadvantage in the future.
Examples of those risky, ad hoc projects are easy to find. The most common scenario is the result of a manager who got the funding to have his or her group gain mobile access to a critical business application. Look at the example of home health nurses, who need secure access to update or view patient records while they are out in the field. IT rolled out a mobile program that let the nurses update patient notes and log hours and activities. For the nurses, the program was a huge success, but IT was unable to leverage the investment in the project by replicating it across other business units.
A mobile enterprise platform provides IT with the tools it needs to mobilize the entire workforce. In a healthcare environment, IT could mobilize home health nurses, therapists, doctors, and everyone else on staff—giving them secure, reliable access to the applications they need whether they are with patients, on the road, or at home.
Mobile enterprise platforms are showing real ROI. The City of Ottawa’s Transit Service Division expects to yield an ROI of $11.2 million after 10 years from its mobility initiative. Mobile data terminals on more than 1,000 city buses provide real-time transit information to dispatchers and traffic controllers at the central office. By deploying a transit-specific, computer-aided dispatch and automatic vehicle location system that relies on global positioning technology to track vehicle location and provide real-time views of the entire transit fleet, the City of Ottawa will reduce both operational and capital expenses (more than $1 million each year). They are seeing real cost savings now, and they will be able to build additional mobile applications or adapt the transit application for other mobile devices, if they choose. Having the foresight to adopt a single mobile enterprise platform gives the City of Ottawa to easily modify and enhance their mobile strategy as needed.
A mobile platform has other advantages that make it extremely relevant for today’s changing workplace. It helps you prepare for an unknown future. Here are a few of the unknowns currently in the marketplace. Besides the skirmishes over smartphones, the application development world is also debating the pros and cons of Web-based and client-based applications, and software companies are struggling over cloud computing vs. Web-client models. Even within your own organization, a merger or acquisition will introduce a whole new set of back-end systems and applications. And new product rollouts and adjustments to the business strategy are sure to be a part of every competitive business. It’s that old axiom of “The only constant is change.”
A Future-Proof Mobility Strategy
In today’s economic environment, companies have embraced doing more with less. Adopting a single, robust, secure mobile platform will help your business accomplish the critical task of mobilizing the enterprise so you will be able to:
–Speed deployment times;
–E
nsure standardization across different devices;
–Promo
te security across different devices and applications;
–Allow for centralized management of mobile devices, data and applications;
–Enable mobile information workers to work where they want, when they want;
–Unleash multiple business applications for the mobile information worker;
–Future-proof current IT investments.
A mobile enterprise platform is part of a strategic enterprise plan that gives you the strength to adapt your business as necessary and move forward with a highly mobilized, more competitive workplace.
As President of Sybase iAnywhere, Terry Stepien plays an integral role in establishing the company as the premier provider of mobile enterprise solutions. During his tenure at the company Stepien has held many positions including Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Mobile and Embedded Computing division. He also served as Vice President of Product Marketing responsible for Sybase’s key initiatives in Enterprise Data Management, Data Warehouse, Application Development Tools and Occasionally Connected Computing. Before coming to Sybase, Stepien was at Powersoft Corp. as Vice President of Marketing for Powersoft’s Watcom subsidiary.
Stepien is an active member of industry consortiums, and is founder and co-chair of the ITAA m-Commerce Committee. Stepien began his career at the University of Waterloo where he was engaged in software research and development at the University’s Computer Systems Group, and where he held an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of Computer Science. He is a recipient of the 2001 J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation from the University of Waterloo.Stepien holds a Master of Mathematics degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.