Mobility at InterOp New York
Mobility at InterOp New York by Michael F. Finneran
Once again this year I got to participate in the mobility track at InterOp New York, which provided the opportunity to talk with a lot of the opinion shapers on the mobile front. I’m pleased to say that unified communications was actually mentioned once or twice though companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, and IBM were generally not part of the conversation. The big topics were apps, tablets, and bring your own device (BYOD).
The mobility track is organized by my long-time friend and associate Craig Mathias, Principal at the Farpoint Group; Craig also got to showcase his legendary dry wit along with Lisa Phifer of Core Competence and Philippe Winthrop, Managing Director of the Enterprise Mobility Foundation in the Deep Dive session on “Best Practices for Wireless and Mobile Management, Operations, and Security.”
I actually got to kick off the week with a full-day workshop titled “Mastering Enterprise Mobility.” The thing that really struck me was that enterprises now seem to be dedicating some top-notch resources to mobility. There were a few of the traditional “cellular buyers” whose core focus is expense management, but there were way more people whose roles involved mobile device management, app development, and enhanced security.
With regard to BYOD, it was clear that many of the organizations represented have already taken the plunge, so the discussion centered on how to best manage, secure and support a BYOD environment. Better than half the organizations represented had implemented some form of mobile device management (MDM) system to support their non-BlackBerry devices, but most did not have all of their employee-owned devices on the system.
Another portion were depending on Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) to do basic device management as it can support strong password requirements and remote wipe. However, as Philippe Winthrop pointed out, with EAS remote wipe means “wipe it clean” (i.e. “there go the baby pictures”) so it’s pretty much a “blunt instrument” in the management category.
While it didn’t come up much in the discussion, I was thinking in terms of the challenges BYOD presents for unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) suppliers. UC&C has developed as an integrated set of capabilities to be sold to and implemented by IT departments – prior to implementation, direct end user exposure has been close to zero. If the choice of which tools to use to improve productivity is being put into the hands of end users, will they be opting for what IT is pitching or something else entirely? Further, if we have tools to monitor application usage and IT departments see that users aren’t opening that app, they aren’t going to be buying it.
The other big topics on the table were tablets and applications; some of the organizations represented had already deployed several thousand tablets. What became clearer for me was the difference between tablet and smartphone applications. While the application sets do overlap to some degree (e.g. email, web access, media consumption), there are certain application sets that favor the tablet (e.g. web meetings, extended web surfing/media consumption and desktop virtualization) while others favor the smartphone (e.g. voice, text, and any “on-the-go” tasks).
One subject I’ve been watching with great interest is the potential for desktop virtualization (DV) on tablets. DV capabilities from the likes of Citrix and VMware don’t pay well on a 4-inch screen, but the tablet’s 7- or 10-inch display can give the user a close-to desktop experience. One big feature arguing for DV on tablets is security. Apple has done a bang-up job at bringing the security capabilities of iOS up to enterprise standards, but the most widely used versions of Android (i.e. V 2.2 and 2.3) do not support onboard encryption. As a general rule, security aware organizations only sanction the practice of storing corporate data on those devices with a “containerized’ solution like Good Technologies.
With desktop virtualization, the connection from the tablet to the server is encrypted, and when the connection is terminated, all of the data on the tablet is erased. As a result, regardless of what operating system the tablet is using, the data is secure. I had a chance to speak to a few IT managers who had tried DV on tablets, and the experience did not live up to expectations with regard to either performance or user interface. The game isn’t over, but it appears the virtualization vendors still have some work to do.
With regard to apps, it was generally agreed that the apps you find on iTunes are useful but not “strategic.” For tasks that will really impact the business, you need apps that link to back-end and line-of-business systems. Several of the organizations represented had developed their own in-house apps for everything from managing sales materials, to organizing corporate directories, and identifying enemy vehicles for the military. However, most companies seemed to be looking to their independent software vendors like SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com, or medical systems providers like Cerner and McKesson for mobile extensions to their core applications.
The most challenging comment on apps came from Nathan Cleavenger, Mobility Practice Leader for app developer ITR Group, who told a room full of enterprise mobility managers, “Your company’s marketing department is putting better technology in your customers’ hands than what IT is providing to your internal users!”
Besides developing applications, the other big topics were distributing and maintaining them in a heterogeneous device environment. There was a lot of talk about the need for “internal” app stores rather than depending on options like iTunes. That case was made by Cimarron Buser, VP of Product Marketing of app distribution vendor Apperian, though many MDM solutions now include app distribution, white-list/black-list enforcement, jailbreak/rooting detection, and automatic upgrade capabilities.
One surprising mini-trend I saw was large organizations taking back corporate liable smartphones from thousands of their “knowledge workers.” A couple of different mobility managers told me that IT and corporate management in their firms had rethought their smartphone policies and decided that task workers who truly “required” mobile connectivity for their jobs should continue to get corporate-provided devices, but if knowledge workers had them merely for “convenience,” there was no reason for the company to be paying for them. In each case the users could use their personal smartphones for accessing corporate email, and the mobility policy spelled out the list of “supported” personal devices and the basic requirements they must meet. I wonder where that will leave mobile UC in those organizations.
There was clearly a core group at the show that was focusing on mobility; most of those people were in my session and I ran into them at virtually every other mobility session throughout the week. This is a very positive development as it is evidence that companies (at least some companies) are taking mobility seriously and putting resources behind it.
However, I found that in many organizations, “mobility” still organized around specific technologies like cellular, Wi-Fi, or push-to-talk. This is unfortunate because any wireless technology will allow you to be mobile, and you don’t want decisions made on the basis of “parochial” interests. If an application is strictly “local,” it will hopefully involve the WLAN group (at least someone should be able to figure out that a WLAN will likely be the cheapest way to get the job done). Wide area applications generally point to cellular, but with mobile operators moving to tiered pricing for their 4G services, there is now a real incentive to get as much of that traffic as possible onto a WLAN if there’s one available – and that includes voice, too.
With organizations starting to take mobility management seriously, hopefully they will take the next step and realize that the task is to manage “mobility” and not “mobile technologies.” We don’t need specific groups who are charged with promoting specific technologies. Finding the “best” mobile solution calls for people who can assess all of the available technologies and make an informed and open-minded decision. The old adage still holds, “To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail!”