Yes, mobile applications are everywhere!   I use them for business travel, sporting events, retailer coupons, managing my 401k, overseas Internet telephony, prospect web conferencing, customer CRM and even departmental applications like marketing automation.  The average smartphone owner spends more than 650 minutes a month using apps – no wonder my kids tell me to put down the ^*!@$ on weekends.  That is more time spent with apps than spent talking on a device or using it to browse the Web.

Mobility is no longer about OS preferences, what matters most going forward are secure public and private Mobile Applications.  Millions of business professionals use smart devices because always-on application connectivity is a huge productivity boost.  And the OS vendors are quickly catching on.  For example, late last year relative new-comer Windows Phone 7 quietly reached 5,000 apps and will quickly double in 2011.  Impressive but still trailing Android and iOS.  The average Android and iOS user depends on 15 applications each month, BlackBerry users about 8 applications each month.

Third-party developers are also publishing enterprise applications for more than one platform.  And there is no right (write?) or wrong way to enable these applications.  Analyst firm Gartner went on record lately advising customers that “no organization should standardize wholly on either native or Web applications.”  The analyst outfit also encourages IT groups to establish guidelines to assist mobile architects and business users in choosing the most appropriate architecture.

Organizations will always want to manage public and private mobile applications — with the same level of control, security, and compliance monitoring they enjoyed in previous generations of computing.  What’s changed is that many leading organizations are taking a “trust and verify” model that gives IT control while opening up new application and device “greenfields” to the users.  MobileIron’s CEO Bob Tinker highlighted the latest user trend of allowing employees to “Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD)” with Bloomberg last week.  Since these devices are now dual-purpose personal/business computers users should not be  forced to work with locked-down applications and essentially useless smartphones and tablets on the job.  And, using an intelligent MDM solution ensures business IT will not simply have to open the flood gates and accept an application free-for-all.

Everyone wins.

And, a funny thing happened on the road to this next generation of computing.  Businesses are eager again to centrally and securely manage this wave of employee computing mobility, applications and data.  IBM addressed this need for generations of computing with a secure and centralized computing approach. But, computing had far fewer IT and user variables vs. today’s mobile computers.  The mounting cascade of user’s mobile application and data consumption through today’s generation of smart device, phone and tablet computers presents a very tangible cost and added complexity for IT.  Many of our customers ask us “How do I manage this wide range of Android, iOS, Windows and BlackBerry smart devices?”  And, taking a cue from what Enterprises want across nearly every industry, the solution has businesses delivering a centralized management security model that meets staffer’s needs for managing these computers.

IBM changed the computing game years ago through client/application integration with a centralized computing back end.  Mobile device management is embracing the same model but with a twist.  Departmental level applications and a growing variety of device OS, device model, operator, data plans and end user self governance make a new intelligent mobile management paradigm essential.  Just as IBM led the market for computing innovation, customers today are learning that competitors trying to repurpose existing architectures or reposition adjacent products will rarely be successful e.g. repurposing wireless LAN controller management.  Instead, a new architecture is required to leverage the smart device’s native advanced computing capabilities and provide IT management and visibility.

The multivendor computing ecosystem IBM built was impressive but perhaps too soon for its time.  Today, smart device mobile computing is ready for unified management and already quickly moving down the highway IBM first built 100 years ago.

It’s true that many view the iPad as a much bigger version of the iPhone and iPod Touch.  However, its capabilities extend beyond what one might think of with the iPad’s smaller cousins.  For instance, a colleague of mine, who travels at least a week out of every month, has begun an experiment to see if he can use his iPad as his primary device instead of his laptop.  I’m not sure if I’m personally ready to cut the cord completely from my own laptop, but there are definitely cases where my iPad can fill some business critical roles:

• E-mail:  I’ve got my iPad hooked up to Exchange and have found it to be the ultimate tool for catching up on e-mail while on the road.   The larger screen real estate makes it easier to scan through long e-mails and, when in landscape mode, I find that I can type responses almost as quickly as on my laptop.   Would I want to write a 30 page essay?   Probably not without a real keyboard.  But, e-mails aren’t the place for long diatribes anyway.
• Content Consumption:  The mobility world is consistently changing, so it’s important to keep up with the latest events.  The iPad is tremendous for reading everything from Requests for Proposal (RFPs) and other corporate docs to articles from the web.   And while this point is often made, I find the form factor of the iPad to be one of its most powerful features:  While I can read on my laptop, the iPad is easier as I can lie down with it on a couch and actually read in portrait mode like I’m viewing a magazine.  
• Apps:  The last time I checked on my iPad, there were over 700 apps available in the “Business” category of the App Store.  Many of these apps are great; I routinely use the WebEx app while on the road and have found it really powerful to use the iPad as a simple, digital whiteboard to outline a quick concept with customers or peers.  Ultimately, I think the iPad will prove a strong form factor for enterprises to build their own line-of-business apps on as well.  We’ve seen tremendous interest in this from our customers and it’s only a matter of time before the enterprise application floodgate opens for the iPad.

These are just a few of the ways I find the iPad taking a role in my business life.  But, the iPad takes a role in my personal life as well, whether it is for gaming, movies or simply for catching up on a book or magazine. 

So, what does this mean?   Whether you’re using the iPad as your primary computing device or whether it occupies a strong role in your business toolkit, the challenges IT has in managing the iPad will mirror those of the iPhone.   iPads will have a dual-personality and, likely, many will be employee-owned.  Enterprises will have to thus make it easy for users to get connected to the right resources while at the same time segmenting enterprise-owned data from personal-owned data.  

I was putting together a YouTube video on MobileIron as I was thinking about these things.  With iOS 4 for iPad on the horizon, it’s going to be much easier to secure and provision all the iOS devices.  You can check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTrQ-fMfJDs

I have seen very few businesses where the social contract for smartphones, beyond BlackBerry, is clearly laid out and internalized by both employer and employee.  It’s almost always missing.  I hear that policies are in place, but if they are not understood and accepted by the employee, then for all intents and purposes, they don’t exist.

This notion of the ”missing social contract” for mobility was a great turn of phrase I heard from an security guy the other day.  We’ve always said mobile is “different” when talking to IT teams trying to plan their smartphone strategies as an extension to what they did with laptops.  People assume that difference is because of fragmented operating systems, or the move to apps.  However, the most radical departure from the traditional IT mindset has nothing to do with mobile technology, but everything to do with human behavior.

End-users don’t view smartphones as “computing.”  They view them as a core enabler of daily life.  They don’t consider smartphones “hardware” and “software.”  They expect an integrated experience where they switch seamlessly from talking to texting, working to playing.  Form means as much, sometimes more, than function.  If they forget their laptop at work, they’ll pick it up the next day.  If they forget their phone at work, they’ll drive back 20 miles to get it.  It’s a lifeline that plays a much more important role in their daily existence than any other piece of corporate or personal technology.

As a result, they don’t operate under the default assumption that the social contract they have for their laptop applies to their phone.  IT has traditionally dictated form and function, use and policy.  If IT takes the same policy structure and guidelines as those used for laptops and desktops, and then applies them to a platform that the user views so differently, there will inevitably be a breakdown.  

So what should the Mobile Social Contract actually be?  Who should set it?  What should it cover?  What are the responsibilities of IT and of the user?  How should they be communicated?  What are the penalties for breaking the contract?  These are difficult questions to answer but I’m getting convinced that this is the missing link between good intention and user satisfaction in smartphone rollouts.

Today’s AT&T announcement strikes me as more of a pre-emptive than reactive move, though.  If currently 35% of subscribers already use more than 200MB of data per month, that number is only going to skyrocket over the next 24 months as smartphones outsell feature phones in the US and become the most common access point to the internet. 

Clearly i’m now going to pay by volume of usage.  But an unanswered question is what happens to service quality as the network load continues to hockey stick?  Do I end up paying by volume and desired quality?

As the consumer dynamic evolves, two implications emerge for the enterprise as well:

• Real-time visibility into voice, SMS, and data usage becomes essential to prevent serious bill shock from overages
• Service quality monitoring becomes the best pro-active mechanism to protect the user experience, especially if network quality starts to erode

However, one of the major challenges companies will face is that you can’t control something you can’t see.  Most users have no idea how many KB a web page download is or how much traffic answering those 50 emails generates.  Without awareness, behaviors don’t change.

So in the age of variable pricing, visibility becomes paramount at both the individual and the corporate level.  Hold up a mirror and show me what I’m doing so I can make sure it ain’t crazy.

With nearly 50% of future phone purchasing moving towards smartphones, employers need a scalable solution to both manage and secure valuable corporate assets.  AT&T executives also detailed this week that 40% of iPhones are now going into the enterprise.  IT and Telecom are converging in their need for intelligent mobile device management that secures these assets while providing both a user and business view into costly bills.  MIT Technology Review writes about Service providers harnessing mobile usage patterns this month as well.

By the end of 2011, a recent study from Nielsen states Smartphone deployments will be so rapid that there will be “more smartphones in the U.S. market than feature phones.”  Smartphones show higher application usage than feature phones even at the basic built-in application level.  During Nielsen’s Mobile Insights survey respondents noted in the last 30 days that users are taking full advantage of device application capabilities.  Apple iPhone OS (32%) and RIM OS (37%) control more than two-thirds of today’s market while Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian account for the remainder.  All OS and device suppliers are increasingly aware of the need for diverse business applications – apps that need to be securely managed at scale.  The smartphone Tsunami is cresting and businesses are now realizing these mobile applications represent a significant increase in corporate data usage on devices never before managed.  The next step for IT is proactive user, application and device management.

The goal is to limit mobile data “bill shock” for consumers. I think of it as going for a 300-mile road-trip, pulling into the gas station, and realizing that gas is now $100 per gallon. If I’d known, I would have taken the train.

The basic issue is that consumers have no idea how much data is used when they browse a website, or stream a video, or download an email attachment.

We have two market forces crashing into each other:

• User appetite for mobile data grows and grows as smartphones become better and better at browsing and apps
• Operators get more and more concerned about the network infrastructure investments necessary to maintain service quality and keep up with this crazy hockey stick of usage

The “easy” solution is to charge, charge, charge, which constantly shocks the user and inhibits the expansion of the mobile internet.  But to paraphrase the FCC: “You can’t control what you can’t see.”  Real-time visibility into usage is the first step to both rational use and rational pricing.

But what about businesses?  Don’t they face the same issues?  Don’t they also need the same real-time visibility?

The answer is “yes”, their needs are similar.  Each company’s IT or telecom group will need to put its own strategy together on how to rationally manage mobile usage and expense as-it-happens.  

After all, the bill shock of my 300-mile road trip is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of getting it wrong at the corporate level.

The challenge is that enterprises aren’t used to moving at this kind of consumer-speed. It reminds me of that old car commercial (I think it was Lincoln from the 70′s) where a jeweler is sitting in the back seat trying to cut a diamond manually while the car speeds along at 70 mph.

The “jeweler” is the IT department and we (i.e. the folks building tools and platforms to help) are the car suspension. And it’s going to take a heck of a suspension to avoid the potholes!

2010 is shaping up to be the most fascinating and unpredictable year we’ve ever had in enterprise mobility.

On one hand, both have access to a home computer, a laptop, and an iPod Touch, so it’s not that they haven’t experienced a touch interface or lots of apps before. But the special sauce here was simply (and most powerfully) the form factor – small enough to be easily portable and large enough to do the things they care about – games, youtube, surfing, and messaging. Suddenly computing was available in every room and on every surface (couch, bed, floor, desk) of our house.

I watched my two little prognosticators of the future and realized that, in their minds, our home computer was now officially obsolete.

There are a couple of interesting forces at work here.  Gartner published research last December predicting “by 2012, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets.” The hypothesis is that the confluence of cloud computing, business process outsourcing, and the movement of smartphone/laptop ownership to end-users will result in a radically different IT model for a fifth of the business population.  That’s actually staggering in its implications – IT teams get smaller, cap ex shrinks, custom development becomes obsolete, and end-user support models are truly virtual.  It feels like smartphones are going to be at the front end of this shift.

Last year, IT departments spent a lot of time improving efficiency so they could continue to provide quality services in spite of shrinking budgets.  The rapid adoption of smartphones during that time was great for end-users but in some ways the worse possible thing for IT, which now had to deal with a whole new raft of security, cost, and usability issues without any additional resources to throw at it.

That’s why I think the Enterprise Mobile announcement is really interesting.  There is huge variability across enterprises in both capabilities and mindset for managing smartphones.  Some want it on-premise, some want to outsource it.  Some want just email, some want apps. But they all want choice because the smartphone market is moving far too fast to be predictable.