Smart Enterprise Exchange: Editor's Notes : Tags : byod

Editor's Notes

2 Posts tagged with the byod tag

Not Just a New Year, A New Era of Disruptive IT in Editor's Notes

Posted by Paula Klein Dec 28, 2011

As a business executive, every year can be viewed as frantic, stressful and demanding. Add to that mix 2011’s global economic uncertainties, persistent unemployment and heightened pricing pressuring in every industrial sector — and the stress mounts.

Yet I believe that IT executives faced greater challenges than most this year, making it possibly the most disruptive one yet. Not only were they dealing with the same external pressures as their peers, but also with unprecedented pressures from within their enterprises. Never before have so many stakeholders, with so many demands, questioned everything they do. Answer correctly and you’re a hero; fall short and you may be out. It clearly wasn’t a year for traditionalists or for holding onto the past. Forget old formulas and fixes; this is a new era of IT — the Era of Now, as Peter Hinssen describes it.

As executive coach Dina Lichtman wrote earlier this year, “... businesses have forever changed ... [and] CIOs face a unique challenge in dealing with these massive disruptions.”

Seen this before, you say? Not really. When PCs came into the enterprise, they didn’t threaten to displace every corporate app and demand access to corporate assets from the far corners of the world. But that’s what consumerization of IT and mobile devices are doing. Customers have as much say in which social media platform a business chooses as the enterprise architect. When in the past have CIOs been told to sanction “bring your own device” (BYOD) technology and to embrace leaderless leadership?

Similarly, when businesses sent back-office processes offshore years ago, it meant job losses and reengineering, but it didn’t cause the upheaval in data centers and among individual business units that cloud computing models seem to be producing. The pent-up demand for services, coupled with resentment against IT’s sluggish responses, are widespread. As former CIO Joe Puglisi acknowledged in his blog, “the breadth and scale of the offerings” are unlike those of the past.

How can CIOs even contemplate innovation in this environment? It’s difficult. Even the giants in health care, such as Kaiser Permanente, are still taking relatively small steps to develop fresh IT solutions to age-old problems.

At Smart Enterprise Exchange and Smart Enterprise magazine this year we have tried to offer strategies, resources and tactics for IT executives facing these real-world challenges every day. Those who are ahead of the pack, such as the CIOs and IT teams at Sprint Nextel, Volvo and JetBlue, aren’t magicians, nor do they have unlimited resources. They do have lots of flexibility, real desire for change, and good relationships with both top management and the business units they serve. They are taking risks and accepting what CA Technologies CIO Greg Valdez calls the IT leadership challenge to change and adapt. We’ve also offered enterprise architects their own forum to exchange ideas, strategies and tactics in the Smart Architect group.

My final suggestion for the year, then, is this: Rest, relax and enjoy the holidays. Recharge and reflect. Then, get ready for more disruption ahead: Consumer driven IT, cloud migration and mobile madness will continue full speed ahead. One tool you’ll have on your side is the Smart Enterprise Exchange community to offer guidance and assistance at the speed of business.

Health, peace and joy to all,

Paula Klein

Editor and Community Manager

Smart Enterprise Exchange

719 Views 2 Comments Permalink Tags: 2012, joe_puglisi, dina, pricing, sprint_nextel, consumer_driven_it, mobile_devices, offshoring, joseph_puglisi, greg_valdez, peter_hinssen, kaiser_permanente, data_centers, economics, customers, byod, cloud, volvo, jetblue, leadershipera_of_now

Who’s Liable for Corporate Mobile Devices? in Editor's Notes

Posted by Paula Klein Oct 24, 2011

Once tablets and smartphones rule the corporate environment, who will be liable for mobile device support — users or the business? More importantly, how many devices can any single user realistically own and use? Will unified communications (UC) become more urgent?

These questions and others were raised and debated at the recent Interop conference in New York. Now that the proliferation of consumer devices is a given, what will the mobile future look like at global enterprises?

I found some interesting answers and insights at an analyst roundtable led by Rohit Mehra, Director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC. He predicted that the BYOD (bring your own device) trend will persist, yet he expects corporate-supplied mobile devices to increase as well. By 2015, IDC forecasts a nearly even split between smartphones supported by the business (45.3%) and those that users will be expected to maintain on their own (54.7%).

As tablets gain legitimacy in the enterprise, the bond between mobile and UC will grow tighter, he said. “Finally, mobile UC will take off,” he said, but while the IEEE 802.11 has become a de facto industry standard for wireless LANs and Wi-Fi, newer standards may emerge making interoperability difficult.

Five Devices per Person?

Then there are the challenges posed by the sheer number of devices. IDC expects that people will use as many as five mobile devices of all types, depending on their situation, location and the workload. It’s a number that illustrates the convergence of business and personal life, said Mark Lowenstein, Managing Director, Mobile Ecosystem. Lowenstein said that the desire of mobile users for constant connectivity and low pricing, however, “doesn’t jibe yet” with current cloud models and architectures. By his estimates, 15 to 20 percent of mobile devices are currently enterprise-liable.

On the app side of the equation, Bob Egan, VP Mobile Strategy and Chief Analyst, Mobiquity, cited a new Egan/Dresner Mobile BI Study that shows “seismic shifts” in how consumers will acquire their mobile business apps in the next few years. Specifically, he suggested that enterprises will increasingly offer apps themselves, as will mobile operators, as opposed to users getting them from third parties and app stores. Longer term, the apps will be available on the cloud.

IT Keeps Some Control

What’s really happening, in Egan’s view, is what he calls the “IT-ization of the workforce.” This means that IT will continue to determine which apps employees are allowed and individual industries will provide governance, lifecycle management and even apps. IT executives may be heartened by his belief that “BYOD won’t take over enterprise,” especially in highly regulated industries where governance and risk play a big role.

Meanwhile, Andrew Borg, Senior Research Analyst, Wireless and Mobility, at Aberdeen Group, noted a widespread confluence taking place among social media, mobile apps and the cloud.

Among other key points discussed were:

Most believe that the future of RIM’s BlackBerry is weak at best (and this was before the recent RIM outages!) Mehra thinks it will be around for a while longer, based on its installed base.

Lowenstein noted that Apple is clearly gaining serious ground at RIM’s expense in the enterprise, and he expects some consolidation of the market to take place in the next year. Borg said that Microsoft should not be discounted in either the smartphone or the tablet market.

Security and authentication will continue to be the biggest challenge for mobile enterprises. That is where users will want to defer to corporate IT, and IT will want to leverage existing systems. Many different pricing and service plans will be tried, including site licensing for corporate apps, and even pushing the cost of regulatory compliance and security back to employees. Overall, mobile spending is rising quickly and is displacing PC-centric devices.

I think there's still a long way to go before the corporate mobile device market shakes out. What are your biggest concerns about corporate liability of mobile devices? How are you addressing unified communication needs?

Also, read more on how corporate IT is shifting in the face of consumer-driven IT. And more from Interop here.

Paula Klein

Editor and Community Manager

Smart Enterprise Exchange

512 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: smartpones, mobile_apps, byod, mobile_ecosystem, mobiquity, bob_egan, mobile, mobility, wireless, wifi, interop, apple, blackberry, tablets, security, idc, unified_communications, andrew_borg, aberdeen