Watching the pace at which the mobile industry has developed over the last few years has been fascinating. Beginning with Apple’s introduction of the iPhone in 2007, you could tell the industry was going to change, and change quickly.
Enterprise Embracing Changes
It didn’t take long for that change to impact the enterprise, because as soon as people started buying smartphones, they were using them for work. Just as smartphones started to become ubiquitous, Apple introduced the iPad, and the tablet industry took off again.
Now when I look around at the different phones, tablets, and operating systems on display in offices, I see Apple, Samsung, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Asus, Sony, Android, Amazon Kindle, Windows Phone, Microsoft Surface, and even the occasional BlackBerry. And, of course, the business has to support these devices and ensure that IT can deliver a mobile platform that is simple to support and manage, as well as engaging and easy for users to interact with.
Don’t Think of Mobile Separately
Your mobile platform strategy doesn’t need to be a separate endeavor. It can and should be an extension of your integration strategy. Technologies such as API management, web messaging, file sync and share, and mobile app management should all be included.
All these platforms should already exist within your business, so extending them to create your mobile platform should not prove to be too much of a headache. Exposing APIs is a good place to start; this means an organization’s applications and services are extended to workers and customers.
A solid integration strategy is about getting the right data to the right platform at the right time. Combining real-time contextual data with historic and master data, and delivering it to mobile platforms, will help people do their jobs and assist the business in making better decisions.
Using a ubiquitous tool like HTML5 means you can develop mobile and web applications that work across different platforms. This reduces the time and money in application development.
The ability to sync and share files is key, ensuring that your workers always use the most up-to-date versions of documents. On top of this, any security policies for access to data and applications can be extended to mobile devices, thus ensuring security is maintained for mobile workers.
Ultimately the benefits of a good mobile strategy mean reduced costs and complexity, new and improved revenue streams, faster go-to-market times, and the empowerment of your mobile workers. It’s really a win-win situation and it shouldn’t be too daunting to get the ball rolling.
