New Wave of Enterprise Application Deployments – Secure Android and iOS Apps
April 13, 2011
We recently met with a leading global retailer around their need to build a public and private enterprise mobile application strategy. Beyond the need to securely manage multi-OS application rollouts, policies and updates what struck me as interesting was the sheer diversity. To work within their supply chain they need a warehousing tablet app for matching manufacturer samples. To have the latest catalog at the store counters, they will develop a web-based catalog again using a tablet at the point of sale to replace paper copies. And, to manage their growing online shopper base, a new customer relationship (CRM) database application is underway including buying habit customization to meet the needs of clients with personal shoppers.
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.
100 years later, Unified Computing is here again …
February 14, 2011
100 years ago a small computing outfit named Computing Tabulation Recording Company operated in a small town near New York City. 13 years later the firm rebranded itself to International Business Machines and later named IBM – now with 400,000+ employees. Like many large enterprises, IBM not only develops the next generation of computing but its employees use powerful mobile computers of their very own – Smart Devices. Moore’s Law changed IBM’s computing paradigm and put powerful smart devices into 100’s of millions of business user’s hands. These modern computing smart devices now outpace traditional computer deployments in many large enterprises and deliver 1,000% or more application and data processing horsepower than computers produced only 10 years ago.
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.
A New Mobile Operating System for IT
August 7, 2010
Had a very interesting conversation this week with a forward-thinking IT department. They are trying to address the mobile client fragmentation and consumerization problem head on. They know the demand they are seeing from users will only increase and they know unnatural restrictions on that demand will only inhibit innovation and the growth of the business.
Their strategy is to have a single central management platform that operates across client OS and apps, and then push the decisions and responsibilities for the applications themselves to the lines of business. In other words, set the standards, enforce the policies, but get out of the way of the applications. So an agnostic core that supports a diverse and evolving set of user experiences.
It struck me that the central management platform actually becomes IT’s mobile “operating system”. If we assume that user devices will continue to be spread across multiple client operating systems (e.g. BlackBerry, iOS, Android, Windows variants, Symbian), the only way for IT to truly scale is to reduce the complexity IT itself faces at the core. Users get to use what they need, lines of business get to deploy what they want, and IT doesn’t get fragmented beyond repair.
95% of the IT teams I talk to these days believe multi-OS is the future. So the notion that multi-OS management is required is broadly accepted. However, some look to it as a band-aid to solve the immediate problem of the CEO buying a cool new unsupported device. What it needs to be, however, is a strategic foundation to ensure IT efficiency and responsiveness in the smartphone era.
(Thank you to Sven for triggering this discussion)
