Mobility's Burden On IT

By Susan Nunziata
There are two types of mobile/remote workers in your enterprise, says Gartner's Nick Jones: The ones you know about, and the ones you don't know about.

Like it or not, workers are bringing mobility into your enterprise. They want to connect wirelessly to corporate messaging, calendaring and other applications.

At the same time, enterprises are seeing enhanced productivity from mobilizing their core "remote" workers, whether they're field service techs, roving sales teams or mobile workers on campus.

Gartner predicts that the number of mobile application tools and platforms in use by enterprises will increase 30% by 2011.

The key for any organization lies in finding the right balance of technology and policy while keeping a lid on costs.

This issue of Mobile Enterprise, and its accompany Field Service Central supplement, is chock-a-block with examples of how enterprises are doing just that. In the macro sense, it requires a re-imagining of strategic mobility goals.

As Shawn Crossley of California utility PG&E tells us, "The new mobile world for us is really about designing a common solution, a common platform for all of our applications to ride upon."

PG&E and Coca-Cola Enterprises are among the enterprises taking a platform-based approach that will eventually enable them to scale mobility solutions across multiple divisions while maintaining common interfaces, security measures and other features to ease the burden on IT.

Indeed, the burden mobility places on IT is a major focus in this issue, whether it's how to handle the demands for mobile messaging from a wide range of workers, or how to strike the right balance between meeting the needs of the IT- and business-sides of your organization.

We welcome your comments on these topics. Share your thoughts -- or vent your pain points -- by emailing Editor@MobileEnterpriseMag.com