2. CIO’s Guide: Enterprise Mobile Deployment Strategy for 2016
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Executive Summary
Over the past couple years, mobile technology has made rapid strides in terms of its visibility, pervasive-
ness and wider reach. This is due to the advancement of the existing infrastructure, technology and above
all the economies of scale. However, the most notable advancement in recent times is the advent of
wireless and mobile technology that has revolutionized the way we communicate and connect with each
other. This incredible growth supported by the growing consumer confidence has ushered a new era of
pervasive wireless – the availability of reliable and high speed wireless connectivity - anywhere, anytime.
As mobile devices tend to become cheaper and efficient, it is not an exaggeration to state that mobility is
redefining our lives like never before – from making conference calls, scheduling appointments, shopping
online to storing and processing huge volumes of data. The demand for mobile solutions across different
lines of businesses (LOB) is exponentially increasing, according to leading industry analysts. This expo-
nential demand is creating a huge challenge for internal Corporate IT to meet these instant needs. Corpo-
rate IT is looking for plug and play mobile solutions to meet this "Instant" demand from their customers.
Some of the key challenges that are grabbing the CIO’s attention in the wake of the mobile application
demand are –
How to meet business demand for mobile solutions with existing IT resources
How to keep mobile devices safe from data breaches and thefts; and
How to keep up with the rapid upgrade cycles and diverse device platforms without extensive
investments.
Companies that intend to move forward with clear cut mobility initiatives must plan for supporting multi-
ple line of business solutions, ongoing upgrades and support, wireless security and mobile device man-
agement - right from the beginning. This CIO’s Guide to mobile deployment explores certain key strate-
gies associated easily deploying mobile solutions, managing day to day support and upgrade cycles,
mobile application management, mobile security and above all helps in strategizing your organization to
gain a competitive advantage with the increasing pervasiveness of enterprise mobility.
Did you know?
According to Gartner, by the end of 2017, market demand for mobile app
development services will grow at least five times faster than internal IT
organizations' capacity to deliver them, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner
forecasts mobile phone sales will reach 2.1 billion units by 2019, which will
fuel demand for apps in the enterprise that meet the high performance and
usability of consumer apps.
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Enterprise Mobility – Current Scenario
Whatever may be the network – PAN, WLAN, MAN and WAN are incredibly becoming faster and more
reliable, leading to a rapid growth and utilization. A larger subscriber base is taking advantage of new
flat-rate data plans resulting in a huge increase in mobile data usage. As mobile operators are deriving
greater revenue per user (ARPU) from data services, in contrast to legacy voice, they are pushed to add
value to existing data networks, as well as prudently manage costs.
The first generation mobile applications were simple in structure and usage, offering basic functionality
such as wireless email, calendar and messaging that were considered safe, logical and cost-effective.
However, when considering the current generation mobile applications that are equivalent to the
processing power and physical storage capacity of laptops, organizations should identify the challenges
and opportunities that exist and evaluate the expected returns and the associated costs. This prudent
analysis can present an excellent business case to define the project’s scope as well as justify appropriate
investments to derive maximum benefits. In fact, a cost-effective mobile solution should be flexible,
secure and scalable enough to meet users’ immediate business needs.
Key Mobility Trends
What To Watch For As You Move Forward
As you embark on your mobile journey, it makes sense to understand few trends that would shape the
future of the enterprise mobility market, particularly in 2016. Consolidation, customization and the cloud
will all have significant consequences for enterprise mobility in 2016 with focus on mobile app and
Forrester notes that 35
percent of large enterprises
will use mobile application
development platforms to
develop and deploy mobile
apps across their organiza-
tions in 2016.
By 2018, 100 percent of line
of business (LOB) apps in
internally facing roles will
be built for mobile first
consumption.
content management. Currently, enterprise mobility is considered
as the extension of IT capabilities and services beyond the realms of
the physical office, enabling the provisioning of efficient IT services
to a broad range of users on myriad devices and networks.
Here's a look at the top trends in enterprise mobility for 2016 by
consolidating the opinion of various industry experts in mobility as
well as some of the key research findings, which are expected to
shape the enterprise mobility market.
Mobile Security
Due to increased data breaches and thefts, organizations would be
placing a greater emphasis on mobile security – enhancing the
architecture in the way it secures information, instead of just secur-
ing the devices.
Easy to develop and quick to deploy apps
Traditionally, a good mobile app development can take up to 6 to
12 months with multiple iterations, which in turn might be a costly
proposition. This trend is going to change. Now companies would
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be refocussing on apps that are easy to develop, quick and inexpensive to deploy, offering a win-win
situation to both the organization and its customers, given the limited resources.
Rise of companion apps
A new trend that is likely to emerge is the rise of companion apps that don’t try and replicate everything,
what a desktop app does. In fact, mobile is just one option to execute your tasks and is not everything.
Keeping this aspect in mind, organizations would be building apps that can serve across multiple devices
and platforms, making a lot of business sense.
Keeping up with devices
Since employees are no more satisfied with just smartphones and also want to use a laptop, a tablet or a
multimedia player, companies may device strategies from a multi-device, multi-platform scenarios. In fact,
with the emergence of latest technologies like sensor fusion and the Apple Watch, companies need to
keep abreast with this dynamic landscape.
Increasing magnitude of cyber crimes
Cybercrime is not a new concept and has been prevalent, since the age of desktops and laptops. However,
with the proliferation of smart phones and mobile deployment – it has become more rampant on both fixed
and mobile internet-connected things. This trend might increase the size and uniformity of the attack
surface, particularly in devices that are not quite IT-visible or manageable. When flaws emerge in IoT devic-
es, it becomes a herculean task to rectify them. And the measure of taking large number of vulnerable
devices offline as a stop-gap arrangement may not be feasible in the long run and may become a costly
proposition.
Notion of work-life integration
The notion of work-life integration denotes the obscurity of devices (fading into the background) and
mobility becoming the primary computing platform.
Cloud and virtualization
The new technology that is catching up is cloud computing, wherein more number of companies are
turning to cloud-based mobile apps and virtualized apps to store data more securely. Companies like SAP
has taken a lead in this regard with the advent of PaaS (PlatformSAP HANA Cloud Platform Mobile Services
(HCPms), wherein most of the vendors, who are into mobile app development are migrating their apps to
this new cloud based platform. This new migration provides added benefits like accessibility of data from
multiple devices, huge cost savings, improved performance and secured data access.
Toolkit to Calculate your Savings
from your Inventory Management
Processes through Mobility
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Strategic Readiness : How to get your Mobile
Deployment right?
Deployment is not just a plug and play game – a lot of time and effort is expended to ensure that mobile
devices and applications are usable. Mobile deployment involves lot of stages – configuring and securing
a device for corporate use, installing relevant apps and managing timely updates, which requires lot of
technical know-how that most IT organizations lack.
Earlier trend was to just deploy solutions first and think later, which was fraught with severe challenges
including reducing an organization’s ROI and running into other operational difficulties. Hence, a smart
and a sustainable mobile strategy is the order of the day that is aimed to transform and grow your busi-
ness, providing your employees the needed flexibility to excel in what they do – boosting employee
morale and productivity.
In fact a phased deployment approach is always advisable, despite the pressure one might encounter
from both management and employees to hasten the deployment process. A right and a healthy mobile
deployment strategy should always be in place. In this context, measured rollouts provide you a greater
sense of adoption, use and the impact of enhanced mobility on your help desk. You need to just focus on
where you need to increase productivity and gain that business edge to be able to stay ahead of your
competitors. In other words, perfectly securing and configuring devices is the mantra of successful
deployment.
To help you started, we have summarized 10 key steps involved in developing a winning mobile strategy
to put you ahead of your competitors.
1. Evaluate your current parameters and expectations
Before you embark to park your money in mobile, you need to understand your current organization’s
standing in terms of requirements, business goals, employees and applications’ architecture. Just evalu-
ate your current processes, existing infrastructure and ponder how you can leverage them in the mobile
world. After you get satisfactory answers, then assess and arrive at a decision to embark on the right
applications or devices to take this initiative forward.
2. Pool up a cross-functional team to merge IT considerations with
corporate requirements
Industry research and experience shows that the success of a sound strategy is directly proportional to
the right inputs that you get from all major stakeholders. Let your enterprise mobility solutions provider
evaluate your business goals from various perspectives – scalability, adaptability and manageability. At
the same time, conduct brain storming sessions to discuss with your key functional heads or pool up
cross-functional teams to discuss the potential benefits, which your employees and customers gain by
leveraging mobility. This exercise should be executed in a most judicious way with unbiased approach, as
getting the right inputs and setting the expectations in the very beginning would go a long way in estab-
lishing the right strategic approach, saving you lot of time and resources.
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3. Device considerations
Once you are done with the rough estimates, the next step is to think about the devices that you want to
include in your mobile strategy. You have two obvious choices – BYOD or a standard-issue device.
Though both the choices have their respective pros and cons, it is again dependent on how your employ-
ees would be using them, what applications you intend to install and how they play a major role in trans-
forming your business processes. When you consider BYOD, you are hands-free when it comes to provid-
ing new devices or issuing company-wide devices, every time your standard-issue technology becomes
archaic. But, the typical challenge that BYOD poses is that of unique security and standardization issues,
as organizations need to take extra care when employees access sensitive corporate data from their
devices. However, with a standard-issue device, installation and support can be simplified, as you need to
work with only one platform.
4. Determine your solution needs
With a proliferation of multitude of apps in the market with varied versions, it becomes difficult for your
organization to select that perfect app that can meet all your corporate requirements. This way, you need
to do a thorough research and understand which apps meet your needs. If you are looking to automate a
typical workflow that is unique to your organization, it is preferred to develop a new solution, rather than
purchasing it out rightly from a third party vendor. Apart from that, you also need to think about the
platforms that you need to deploy your app – PC, tablet, phablet, smartphone, handheld device, etc.
5. Determine your mode of hosting – on-premise or cloud based
You need to decide which mode of deployment is most suitable, as per your organizational requirements.
Though on-premise tends to be the traditional mode of deployment, however, many organizations in the
small and mid-range segment are leveraging good cloud based services to host their apps. The main
advantage being zero infrastructure costs, thus improving their overall RoI. From this angle, decide which
mode best suites your organization and accordingly work towards it.
6. Don’t miss out security
When your employees get freedom to work and communicate wherever they are, it also exposes your
organization to security threats that haven’t been perceived beforehand. With corporate sensitive infor-
mation available at your employees’ finger tips, you need to devise a sustainable strategy that requires an
end to end mobile security. With advancements in technology, you now have more advanced features
that let you accomplish multi-factor authentication, remote wipe and document restrictions, which you
can include as part of the mobile deployment strategy.
7. Make room for adequate support functions
Having a right mobile strategy and successfully implementing is only one side of a coin. The other side
pertains to the strong technical support that you need to provide to your mobile strategies. Few organiza-
tions have the requisite technical skills and expertise to sustain the long term mobile initiatives as well as
to deal with enterprise wide corporate issues on multiple devices and platforms. The best solution is to
approach a right implementation partner to support you in these initiatives.
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8. Take care of updates
This is the most important aspect to consider, since disturbing your devices and apps is just a one part of
the story. Securing regular updates to your apps is quite important, since it helps in optimization of your
app, which in turn has a bearing on the overall productivity of your employees. If you are using either MDM
or MAM or a combination of both, you can easily handle those updates, as they are centrally administered.
Apart from that, you can even block malware apps that pop up after deployment.
9. Support for multiple languages
If you have a multi-linguistic global team, it makes sense to incorporate multi-language support for the
devices to make your employees more comfortable from a usability perspective. From a commercial angle,
you may either buy a solution that can offer such support or embark to develop your own applications,
based on the level of customization or the complexity involved. Either ways, you may need the help of a
reliable partner to guide you in these initiatives including providing the required technical know-how and
resources to make this a value added proposition.
10. Post deployment support
Last but not the least, you need to ensure that mobile devices work properly, since downtime on a mobile
device can be more disgusting than downtime on an office computer. It’s a normal practice that at the time
of deployment, IT staff apply stickers on corporate mobile devices to help employees get the required
support. In fact, knowing what action needs to be taken, in case of device failure particularly for employees
who are on field, can really make a difference.
With mobility re-defining our lives like never before, it is evident that organizations are analyzing, evaluat-
ing and adopting their key mobile strategies to gain a competitive edge in the market, without disrupting
their existing technological landscapes. Needless to say, organizations are embracing mobility on a large
scale with demand for mobile solutions across different LOBs rising exponentially. A strong and an effective
mobile strategy will take care of your organization’s long term needs and capitalize on the opportunities
thrown open by mobile and other innovative technologies.
Apart from holistically addressing the challenges faced by organizations, we hope this guide provides you
with some valuable insights about the key trends that you can look forward in 2016 and how to get started
on your mobile initiatives using a 10 prong mobile deployment strategic approach.
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