Mobility Evolution

The mobile revolution, heralded by introduction of the iconic iPhone in 2007, is nearly a decade old. Yet the expectation of adoption mobility by enterprises has far exceeded the reality of what has actually taken place since. We are increasingly confronted with a posture toward mobility adoption within enterprises that has created less than desired results. Namely, mobility projects are treated like any other one-off IT project with a specific budget and set of deliverables and sent on their merry way often to fail. So what is the formula for creating success in mobility? #1: The first order of business in succeeding in mobility is to make it an all-encompassing strategic initiative. First and foremost, the approach to mobility must take on a sense of urgency. The laggards in adopting mobility throughout the enterprise space risk losing it all. This sense of urgency is sorely lacking and is often grossly overlooked. Many times, enterprises have c...

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Nowadays, crafting and implementing a successful mobile strategy is an imperative for enterprises that are attempting to leverage the rapidly emerging mobile technologies to gain operational efficiencies and retain their competitive edge.  The operative word here is ‘successful’. Fact is that today, the mobility landscape is littered with failure.  Consumers delete more than 70% of the apps they install within 30 days . That is a staggering failure rate. Success in mobility is based on a simple criterion that is not easily achieved. The key metrics for measuring success in mobility is the user adoption rate. If an app is not achieving the anticipated adoption rate within a reasonable period of time after its release then it is failing. An ineffective strategy to revive a failing app is to continue tweaking it in an attempt to ‘fix’ it while the users are busy deleting the app from their mobile devices. It is often more cost-effective to start over and incorporate th...

Enterprise mobility is a tsunami that is about to take over IT in the not too distance future if not already arriving at the shore as we speak. In fact, 2014 has been predicted to be the year of great changes in enterprise mobility . Nothing underscores this assertion more than the recent  Apple-IBM pact to initiate joint efforts and bring about fundamental changes in the way of enterprises approach mobility. So what can IT do to better prepare for this sea change? Here are a few tips: Don't Look at enterprise mobility in isolation:  Many mobility endeavors today focus on delivering device-centric apps. This misses the bigger picture of the interconnectedness mobility and building integrated solutions that involve large-scale technology initiatives of cloud, big data analytics and social networks. Mobility is a strategic initiative: Mobile initiatives spans all lines of business and potentially impact every aspect of the business operation. An overall enterprise mobil...

In mobility, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) presents a pressing challenge for enterprises today. Employees want to use corporate and personal apps within the same mobile device regardless of whether the device belongs to them or is issued by their employers. Having the corporate and personal apps cohabitate within the same smartphone or tablet presents significant security issues as personal apps downloaded from the app store may be malicious and sensitive work-related information may be breached as a result. A prime example of this are the emails with file attachments that contain confidential company information. Once you synchronize your mobile device with the company's email server, another app that you may have unwittingly downloaded from the app store may attempt to hijack your sensitive data and upload it to another nondescript server. As you can imagine, enterprises do not look lightly on this threat which may result in violation of their intellectual property. The key ...

Formulating a consistent approach to mobile app development is the key to achieving success and attaining desired results. In mobility, success more often than not is equated with a high level of user adoption. To achieve a high rate of user adoption, the following three principles/steps can be closely adhered to: Deliver a Minimum Viable Product: Once again, this idea harks back to the motto of this blog site: In mobile, there’s a big premium on creating single-purpose, first-class experiences. (Mark Zuckerberg)  The emphasis is on 'single-purpose' which narrows down the app's focus and makes 'first-class experience' a reality that is within the grasp of the deliverable.  Use Analytics Metrics to Measure Adoption Results:  Using a Mobile Back-end as a Service (MBaaS) vendor to gather analytics data, granular tracking of the user adoption metrics is imperative to finding out what is and is not working when the app is engaged in the field. The analytics data is to...

More than 85% of respondents in a recent Gigaom Research survey are either working with a third-party MMS vendor or are actively considering or are willing to work with one in the future. Only 13.6% said they would never consider outsourcing their MMS services. The remarkable propensity of enterprises to want to outsource MMS is astonishing in and by itself. Cormac Foster of Gigaom Research offers a plausible explanation: How can you outsource a competitive advantage? I made a few phone calls, and the answer is, “because everyone else is doing it wrong.” Enterprise mobility is an absolute mess, so mere competence can put you ahead of the pack. Foster also states: Outsourcing mobility is getting easier as vendors move security off the table. This is because of enhanced security within the newer releases of Android & iOS and commonly used enterprise apps such as MS Office downplays the need to MMS to get involved in mobile security. Here is the link to the Gigaom Rese...