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October 20, 2015
The Arrogance of Tech
October 13, 2015
The Tech World Moves to AND, Away from OR
October 6, 2015
Reimagining Personal Computers
September 29, 2015
The Rebirth of Virtual Clients
September 23, 2015
What's Next for Consumer Tech?
September 15, 2015
The Key to IOT Security
September 9, 2015
Home Gateways: Extinction or Evolution?
September 1, 2015
The Real Software Revolution? It’s in the Data Center
August 25, 2015
Is The Tech Market Hitting Middle Age?
August 18, 2015
Building Vertical Platforms for IOT
August 4, 2015
The IOT Monetization Problem
July 28, 2015
The Windows 10 Hardware Argument
July 21, 2015
The Complexity Challenge Drives Shadow IT
July 14, 2015
The Hidden Opportunity of Corporate Smartphones
July 7, 2015
The Analytics of IOT
June 30, 2015
IOT Momentum Starting to Build
June 23, 2015
Breaking the IOT Connection
June 16, 2015
Software is a Service
June 9, 2015
The Challenge of Rising Expectations
June 4, 2015
Insider Extra: Rethinking the Conference Room
June 2, 2015
Win10 + Intel Skylake + Thunderbolt 3 = Interesting PC
May 26, 2015
The IOT Opportunity is Wide Open
May 21, 2015
Insider Extra: The Carrier Challenge for Consumer IOT
May 19, 2015
Maker Movement Drives the Future
May 14, 2015
Insider Extra: The Next Step for Wearables: Health Care
May 12, 2015
Making Sense of IOT
May 5, 2015
A Fresh Look at Wearables
April 30, 2015
Insider Extra: The Amazing HoloLens Leap
April 28, 2015
The Device Dream Team: Large Smartphones and Thin Notebooks
April 23, 2015
Insider Extra: Mobile Sites Should Be Dead
April 21, 2015
Wearables + Connected Cars = IOT Heaven
April 14, 2015
The Future of Wearable Power Is Energy Harvesting
April 7, 2015
Twinning Is Key to Connected Devices
April 2, 2015
Insider Extra: Competing Standard Co-Existence For Wireless Charging and IOT
March 31, 2015
Riding the High-Res Tidal Wave
March 24, 2015
Smart Cars Accelerating Slowly
March 19, 2015
Insider Extra: The Future of Computing is Invisible
March 17, 2015
Smart Home Decade Dilemma
March 10, 2015
Apple Event Surprises
March 3, 2015
Flat Slab Finale?
February 26, 2015
Insider Extra: "Phablet" Impact Continues to Grow
February 24, 2015
Paying for Digital Privacy
February 19, 2015
Insider Extra: The Wire-Free PC
February 17, 2015
Whither Apple?
February 12, 2015
Insider Extra: The Real IOT Opportunity? Industry
February 10, 2015
Business Models For The Internet of Things (IOT)
February 5, 2015
Insider Extra: Is "Mobile Only" The Future?
February 3, 2015
Sexiest New Devices? PCs...
January 29, 2015
Insider Extra: iPhone Next
January 27, 2015
How Will Windows 10 Impact PCs and Tablets?
January 22, 2015
Insider Extra: Hands-On (or Heads-on) With HoloLens
January 20, 2015
Whither Windows 10?
January 15, 2015
Insider Extra: Mobile Security: The Key to a Successful BYOD Implementation
January 13, 2015
Smart Home Situation Likely To Get Worse Before It Gets Better
January 6, 2015
More Tech Predictions for 2015
December 30, 2014
Top 5 Tech Predictions for 2015
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October 26, 2015
By Bob O'Donnell
Ready or not, here it comes.
That’s essentially the position that businesses find themselves in with regard to mobile technology and its influence on not just IT, but all aspects of their organizations. The confluence of smartphones, tablets and cloud-based computing services, along with a growing percentage of millennial and Gen Y employees, is leading to a fundamental shift in how businesses are contemplating all things mobile.
In fact, there’s a growing sense of inevitability about this mobility trend. Everyone knows it’s going to happen. However, on the map to a mobile-optimized organization, not only is the route unclear, it’s also not at all obvious what the final destination is. This makes navigating the path from the present to an ill-defined future a particularly challenging task.
Thankfully, there are some relatively obvious—though still challenging—goals along the way. Workplace and work device flexibility, for example, are waypoints along the road to a mobile-savvy enterprise toward which many organizations are now striving. Employees, particularly younger ones, are looking for the freedom to be able to do their work on any device in any location. As simple as that sounds, however, implementing the infrastructure to enable this kind of device- and location- independence can be difficult, expensive, and often requires some fundamental changes to core IT policies, structure, capabilities and more.
As a result, many IT organizations take more of a Henry Ford approach to device independence: employees can use whatever device they want, as long as it’s a company-purchased Windows PC that’s actively managed by IT, and uses company-purchased or approved connectivity options. Okay, well, maybe not that bad, but it’s probably a lot closer to reality than many IT leaders are willing to admit.
Even if companies are actively embracing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and/or other device choice policies, that doesn’t mean they’ve really embraced mobility. In fact, device choice is just the first step.
The real impact of mobility only begins to take hold when companies start rethinking processes, procedures, services, activities, expectations, measurement methods, and many other functions that are at the very core of how businesses operate. To do that, IT needs to start reworking existing applications or, even better, building new custom mobile applications, which take into account a broader mobility mentality.
Despite a few high-profile efforts to do just that (think Apple/IBM), the reality is that only a small percentage of companies have done anything more than a few experiments in the area of custom mobile applications. Plus, many of those efforts are actually only being done on behalf of senior management. According to a survey of IT professionals conducted by TECHnalysis Research, while most custom PC applications are deployed to all employees (over 70%), custom tablet or smartphone applications are designed more for senior executives (50%) with only 40% of these mobile apps being deployed to the full range of employees.
However, even the availability of mobile devices and mobile applications does not mean that a company has completely embraced mobility. At its core, the move to mobility requires a change in the way companies think about data and how they access it, use it, and secure it. Mobile devices are forcing companies to deal with these key issues.
Some companies have run into issues with mobility because they haven’t thought through these implications. Instead, they’ve discovered that dipping their toes into the tepid waters of the mobile pool can actually cause more harm than good. Security breaches, lost data, frustrated workers, IT ill-will, and lots of other bad results can befall organizations that don’t fully embrace the mobile mindset and all that it entails.
At the same time, it’s easy to fall into the nearly opposite trap of thinking that mobility supplants everything. Despite its importance, mobility doesn’t and shouldn’t come at the expense of other non-mobile devices and application. In other words, while mobility changes everything, it doesn’t replace everything. Traditional PCs and custom enterprise apps aren’t going away just because you add mobility. Instead, organizations need to think about their mobile devices and mobile applications as “companions” to their existing devices, by using the devices and applications that are best suited to each task and figuring out ways to make them work together.
It’s not an easy process, to be sure. But, if companies really want to innovate, they also need to think creatively about how they integrate mobility into their business mindset.
(If you’d like to learn more, you can also check out the webinar I did on the same topic: Harvard Business Review Webinar: Mobility In the Enterprise, Proactive or Reactive?)
Here's a link to the original column: https://techpinions.com/mobility-isnt-just-a-technology-its-a-mindset/42171
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