Cover Story | Mobile Apps Enterprise Mobility, estimates the overall market for enterprise mobility software and applications like instant messaging (IM), business applications, and conferencing will grow at a compounded annual rate of 34 percent from 2008 to 2012. In India, it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 41 percent from 2008 to 2012 — the highest in the region. On the infrastructure side, India is witnessing significant investments in its telecom network and technologies such as 3G and WiMAX. Recently, telecom operators battled each other for 34 days (in 183 rounds of bidding) to corner a piece of 3G spectrum. It netted the Indian government Rs 67,718.95 crore, which Investigating the Hype is indicative of the kind of investment Will the mobile really be the next interface telecom players are willing to pour into of choice? Research certainly seems to be achieving high-speed networks that will pointing in that direction. A recent report enable data intensive applications. from Springboard Research titled Staying Once consumers get a taste of that Connected: The Next Wave in Asia Pacific speed, they’re likely to ask for seconds. “We’ve realized clearly Mobility: It’s a Best ‘Cell’er that nothing is bigger And given current trend, it’s going to stay that way. than the mobile,” 700 says Manish Amin, co-founder and CTO, 600 Yatra Online. “We 500 believe that there is going to be an entire 400 generation of young adults who are going 300 to skip the PC and laptops and use 200 Mobile Subscribers in India (in millions) the mobile as their 100 preferred endpoint.” This will have a 0 snowball effect on the June2008 July 2009 May 2010 growing demand for mobility solutions — 60 that will have to be backed (but hopefully, 50 driven) by enterprise IT. “With the increase 40 in literacy and earning levels, the majority of 30 Indian consumers are purchasing online and 20 are using the Internet Smartphone Sale Worldwide (in millions) and mobile devices. 10 In such a scenario mobile applications 0 Apple’s App Store currently houses over 2,000 applications that fall under a business category from companies including Cisco, Salesforce.com and QuickOffice. These apps range from simple flight schedule applications to AT&T’s Workbench, an application that enables secure access to enterprise Web apps from their phones. Even the SAPs of the world are offering their business applications on mobile devices, including the iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Symbian and Palm devices. Employees are spoilt for choice — a fact that IT departments are not ignorant of.
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may differentiate organizations from their competitors and create competitive advantage,” says Deloitte’s Joshi.
Challenges to Enterprise Mobility There are challenges, however, in terms of a cumbersome QWERTY keypads and displays that are not suited for prolonged use. Then there is the multiplicity of platforms and a lack of standardization that will result interoperability issues. “Data security, privacy, the additional cost of changing over to this new technology, and drafting or revising appropriate IT policies to ensure compliance are some of the challenges CIOs will have to face,” says Joshi. Even with the coming of newer technology and powerful 3G networks, smartphones can’t match the bandwidth of devices connected to fiber lines. Mobile versions of enterprise applications will need to be created with these constraints in mind. Then there are device management and mobility management offerings that CIOs will have to come to terms with quickly. (IDC predicts that the mobile device management enterprise market will grow by a CAGR of 9.2 percent over the next five years.) Initial device configuration, policy updates, overthe-air software updates, and backup as well as functionality management, and remote wipes or locks are subjects IT team will need to be conversant with.
Whereto from Here? It is true that smartphones will remain complementary to laptops for now. But that should change within five years as functionality improves, processors get faster, and more apps (including support for Open-source software) become available. Already in some job functions like field-force support, the mobile phone is replacing the laptop. “Many concerns surrounding data security will get resolved over time resulting in greater CIO comfort levels and a mobile IT strategy and mobile-based applications may become the main component of IT strategy in the coming years,” says Joshi. For some that day is today. Here are five IT leaders who are getting ahead of the curve and implementing a mobile strategy.
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