Leading surveys show that people want to use the same device for both professional and personal activities. Mobile working is now considered a norm, providing increase in productivity and cost-saving benefits. Enterprise mobility aims to strengthen this move by obviating the need for Virtual Private Networks and integrating the database of the organisation to an application that can be managed by smart devices. It refers not only to mobile workers and mobile devices, but also to the mobility of corporate data.The aim is to enable people to be productive across the devices they love.

The Right Strategy

Companies are now putting enterprise mobility at the heart of their IT strategy.While there are plenty of applications that can handle traditional enterprise tasks, such as email and calendars, there are not enough applications for specific job functions that can fundamentally transform the way people work.

Key elements of an enterprise mobility strategy are as follows:

1. Application enablement i.e. what should and should not go on mobile. Not every enterprise tool can be extended to a mobile channel.

2. Mobile provides opportunity for context i.e. location, time of day, motion sensors etc. So build mobile app with context in mind.

3. Backend integration to legacy system of records

4. An effective Mobile Device Management (MDM) system along with lock down security measures is a must.

It is important to have a Balanced Mobility strategy that covers all stakeholders i.e. customers, employees and partners. Enterprise mobility success can only be achieved by its implementation across all areas of the organisation e.g. making developers successful by improving their productivity, improving business engagement in the development process, and finally the data enablement by mobilizing the key enterprise data over a secured integration layer.

Need for Enterprise Mobility Management

We are witnessing a paradigm shift from traditional access methods of using user ID, password and some sort of entitlement. In today’s world of mobility and SaaS, we need to look deeper and also take into account the kind of devices in place, the level of management on these devices and where the connection is originating from.

Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) services can provide a solution for the above by providing secured containers/zones to keep the professional and personal data separate on a device. EMM typically involves some combination of Mobile Device Management (MDM), Mobile Application Management (MAM) and Mobile Information Management (MIM). MDM focuses on locking down mobile devices, while MAM focuses on controlling which users can access which applications and MIM focuses on allowing only approved applications to access corporate data or transmit it. 46 percent enterprises are using MDM and MAM capabilities to manage their mobile assets.

The global enterprise mobility services market has a number of vendors that are competing to provide services to large enterprises, government organizations, and SMEs. While some provide services to manage mobile devices either as a solution deployment life cycle or as a hosted managed service, others combine all the skills and services necessary to deliver mobile enterprise solutions. Most of them focus on Advanced Threat Analytics and detection, encrypted technology to protect data at rest and in motion. The business-driven, API-first approach is being used to keep their organization both flexible and agile and hence better manage a multi-channel engagement strategy.

The Future

Enterprise mobility mandates a new approach to information management and productivity. As part of re-imagining the information and apps in the enterprise, productivity enhancers like Contextual Digital Work-streamsand single-task capabilities will need to be built. Contextual Digital Work-streams will provide employees with a single-screen in which all their work information is aggregated and intelligently filtered to eliminate information overload and help them focus on the task at hand. The Single-task capabilities without the app toggling will help complete operational and collaboration-oriented actions simply and effectively. 

In 2015, we saw enterprises moving beyond Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and basic Mobile Device Management (MDM). We expect to see a rapid enterprise mobility deployment in financial services industry, followed by hospitality and media and entertainment industries. Enterprise technologies to watch out for are contextual computing, workplace application integration, smart agents/Chatbots and adaptive 

cybersecurity.

Conclusion

Enterprise Mobility has arrived. The benefits are being noticed. No one will deny increased productivity, better customer experience and increased overall operational efficiency. A completely mobilized workforce and a thoroughly mobile-enabled business represents our future way of working. The enterprise mobility market is expected to expand to USD 140bn by 2020. Although there are plenty of issues that need to be resolved, enterprises have begun embarking on this brave journey.