Mobile Application and Cloud Strategies

Enterprises still have not formulated workable mobility strategies for the most part, with the advent of consumerization and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) in the workplace bringing a new set of complex challenges. That’s according to attendees of this week’s 2012 Enterprise Mobility Exchange held in Rotterdam.

 

Nearly half (46 percent) of the 60 companies surveyed by Enterprise Mobility Exchange at the outset of the conference said that simply understanding how to create, plan and manage a mobility strategy was their top challenge, followed by 23 percent challenged by evaluating mobile devices, 15 percent by evaluating mobile apps and enabling platforms, 11 percent challenged by network and connectivity issues and 6 percent by difficulties with instability with their mobile platform.

 

Yankee Group Senior Analyst Chris Marsh comments

 

“The survey covered a good cross-section of companies, although the conference is weighted more toward big utilities, service companies and logistics firms.  Overall, it shows enterprises are still trying to figure out a strategic approach to mobility and to devising mobility management policies, along with basic trouble-shooting issues over connectivity and platform stability. In other words, not a whole lot of actual business mobility practice is currently strategic in nature, with most companies realizing they need to move beyond this stage. In many ways, however, such a move is made difficult by vendor solutions that still provide core operational challenges around solution instability and lack of interoperability, along with standard network connectivity issues. While there are exceptions—a presentation by Coca-Cola on how IT can take ownership to drive mobilization was a highlight at the conference—there is more work to be done in vision and execution by both vendors and enterprise IT.”