How Execs Can Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Enterprise Mobility

Still, many organizations continue to balk at the thought of employing a formal mobile strategy. Whether weary of the associated structural changes or simply unconvinced of its benefits, many executives are dragging their feet when it comes to an enterprise-wide mobile deployment.

In fact, only 20 percent to 25 percent of companies using mobile devices claim to have a formal strategy in place, said Jack Gold, president of analyst firm J. Gold Associates, during a mobility panel session, "Wireless and Mobility: On the Go, in Touch and Connected: The Mobility Challenge," at the COMDEXvirtual event.

Reluctance stems largely from the many organizational and technical hurdles companies must jump over before "going mobile" on a corporate scale, Gold said.

Of these hurdles, security is one of the largest, Gold noted. The growing number of users who leverage personal devices for corporate use -- which is about 50 percent -- further complicates the matter.

"The bring-your-own-device [BYOD] phenomenon causes a lot of issues for IT," Gold said during the session. "They have to deal with handling all these devices, and connecting them to the network safely. They need to worry about security, data loss, and compliance -- particularly if you’re in a regulated industry."

Bill Trout, vice president of mobility at AB&T Telecom, a T-Mobile channel partner, has seen the BYOD dilemma play out in client sites. Not only does the trend heighten security, integration, and collaboration issues, Trout said, but it complicates support issues, as well, due to the varying OS and device platforms it introduces to an organization.

"Mobile device support is challenging enough for organizations that have standardized device platforms and operating systems with server side controls," Trout said. "Introducing iPhone, Android, and others into the mix can push some IT departments to the breaking point."

The BYOD issue does, however, present an opportunity for telecom service providers to offer device management resources to enterprise customers.

"To help clients meet these challenges head-on, mobility consultants would be well-served to have a mobile device management [MDM] solution to position with enterprise clients," said Trout. "Today's MDM applications allow for mobile security and compliance, centralized administration, and mobile app management in order to help IT departments cope with the realities of the BYOD organization."

NEXT: You Don't Have To Reinvent The Wheel

David Uhler, national director for R&D at Slalom Consulting and a co-panelist for Gold’s session, offered another piece of advice for those grappling with the BYOD dilemma: don’t reinvent the wheel. When deploying a mobile security strategy, revisiting traditional corporate use policies is a great place to start. "All too often companies are looking into this [mobility] as something absolutely brand new, and aren’t bringing in things like regular corporate use policies or acceptable terms and conditions for employee access to data that can be really good starting points to revisit," Uhler said. "Certainly these are new devices and new technologies, but mobile in the enterprise isn’t necessarily something that’s completely brand new."

In addition to security, application management is a common deterrent to mobile adoption on a corporate scale. When deploying mobile apps, one size doesn’t necessarily fit all, and taking the time to identify which apps will lend themselves to a mobile device, and which will fall flat, can significantly boost end-user adoption.

In other words, don’t try to force-fit a desktop application onto a mobile device.

You need to ask, "What aspects of the process make sense to put on the mobile device? It’s got to be several clicks to data. This is a different way of interacting with your applications," said Maribel Lopez, president and principal analyst at Lopez Research and a co-panelist with Uhler.

Uhler, who stressed the importance of brevity and keeping your mobile app experience "tight," agreed with Lopez. "Most applications fail because of performance or usability issues, not because of not being able to function or connect to the back-end system," he said. "When you think about apps, you need to think about 'user first.'"

Alongside security and application management, a lack of business-IT collaboration can also derail an enterprise-wide mobile strategy, the panelists noted, as an integrated and flexible business model is key to success.

Amid all these challenges, it’s crucial to remember that mobility is a progression. Whether tackling organizational, security, or app management issues, organizations should take their deployment one step at time.

"As you progress and as you get more and more experience as a company under your belt, certainly you can move to more elaborate use cases," Uhler said. "But there is no shame in starting out simple."