As Microsoft steps up its efforts in the mobility space, more and more mobile devices are making their way -- through the front door -- into the enterprise. The once-sleepy personal digital assistant (PDA) and smartphone markets have been on a collision course for a number of years, and PDAs and cell phones are now packaged as one single device, the smartphone. In addition to functioning as mobile telephones, today's smartphone devices offer data connectivity options that include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and carrier wireless data services.
The merger of computing capabilities with an always-on cellular device presents a number of opportunities and challenges for enterprise IT departments. Smartphone devices provide a flexible range of computing and communications options that merge personal information management with business e-mail and calendaring functions that mobility managers can use as a launching point for mobile enterprise applications such as sales force automation, inventory, ordering, and expense management. At the same time, the range of platforms and the rate at which devices are arriving in corporate environments present a number of challenges for IT departments tasked with supporting smartphones and other user-provisioned mobile devices.
In the coming months and years, IT managers will have to make a series of decisions about mobile computing. The good news is that there are various software platforms available today that handle the functions of mobile device management, applications development, and deployment. The bad news is that IT departments will be unable to make every user happy.
In this article, we look at five high-level decisions that IT managers will need to make concerning mobile device management, and next month we'll go into greater depth on the individual policy questions of device management. Also, the questions addressed here are the same ones that IT managers frequently address as part of a larger company-wide "mobility p
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olicy."
As these decision points demonstrate, there is no single place to start in developing a program for mobile device management. The best thing to do is to put ideas to paper and start sharing them with as many constituencies as possible. It's important for IT management to be perceived as a facilitator for enterprise mobility, and the new range of smartphones and ultraportable personal computers provide a context within which managers can gain trust and involvement from a new generation of empowered end users.
It's almost impossible today to have a discussion about the mobile enterprise that doesn't include the topic of mobile e-mail. BlackBerrys, Treos, and a range of smartphones are the first things that come to mind when thinking of workforce mobility. Meanwhile, the most widely deployed mobile business device isn't a laptop and doesn't even have a QWERTY keyboard – it's the cell phone.
In 2006, businesses are expected to spend well in excess of $150 billion on cellular telephony. Research firm Strategy Analytics predicts that, at the same time, these same businesses will spend approximately $22 billion on wireless data services, the most popular of which is Short Message Service (SMS), otherwise known as text messaging. Second to SMS is mobile e-mail.
To put these numbers into perspective, for every $10 that businesses spend on cellular telephony, they spend an additional dollar for SMS and another 50 cents for mobile e-mail. In most businesses, cellular telephony is -- by an order of magnitude -- the largest mobility expense.
In this context, the opportunity for enterprise IT and telecoms departments is to begin managing cellular devices and services, using the mobile device footprint to launch a range of services that enable mobile workers to be more productive and effective.
At the same time, corporate IT and telecom departments are wary of becoming the "traffic cop," telling users what they can and cannot do. As phones evolve and users continue to demand services for telephony, SMS and mobile e-mail, there are ways that corporate IT and telecom departments can begin managing an integrated set of cellular and wireless data technologies while improving the services that they offer to workers.
In the recommendations that follow, we discuss the ways in which enterprise IT and telecom departments can begin sharing responsibility for a device that has long been considered to be "personal," even in situations where it is used primarily for work.
There are two ways for enterprise IT and telecom departments to think about cellular and the mobile enterprise. In the first approach, IT maintains the status quo of decentralized purchasing for cellular, and telecom managers become the "traffic cop." Users make their own selections, the devices are unmanaged, and costs spiral out of control. In the alternative scenario, IT and telecom managers offer an increasingly feature-rich set of "choices" for mobile workers. Users can select from a range of devices, services and solutions for telephony, messaging and applications; and IT gains a manageable footprint from which to launch new mobile enterprise services.
[TABLE]Daniel Taylor is managing director for the Mobile Enterprise Alliance, Inc. (MEA), and he is responsible for global alliance development, programs, marketing and member relations. He brings over fourteen years of high technology experience and is well known as a subject matter expert on many of the aspects of mobility, including wireless data networking, security, enterprise applications and communications services. Prior to the MEA, Dan held a number of product marketing and development positions in the communications industry.
