Free article: It's time for mobile operators to grasp the opportunities in enterprise mobility

It’s time for mobile operators to grasp the opportunities in enterprise mobility, according to our new report, Seizing the Opportunities from Enterprise Mobility. Despite a great deal of hype, and the involvement of a wide range of organisations, there are many aspects of enterprise mobility that are still at an early stage of development. Particular areas that have received attention include voice, mobile email and data card services, but the adoption of these is still relatively narrow. With the growth opportunities in the consumer market becoming increasingly limited, mobile operators urgently need to understand, and pursue, the opportunities from enterprise mobility. Mobile services and applications can bring major benefits to enterprises, including cost savings, productivity gains and strategic benefits from business transformation. However, enterprise mobility is a broad and complex area, as illustrated by Figure 1, and in many cases enterprises have more demanding requirements than consumers.

Figure 1: The scope of enterprise mobility

Enterprises vary widely in their size and characteristics, which have a strong bearing on the mobility solutions that may be applicable to them, the amount of money that they are likely to spend, the channels to address them, and many other factors. The take-up of mobility solutions is still relatively narrow in enterprises, for example by senior executives and mobile workers that are critically dependent on mobile communication. However, in the future, mobility is likely to play an increasingly important role for many job functions across many industries, with a broader range of applications and devices. Enterprise mobility can involve the provision of services to a wide range of possible locations, ranging from offices and campuses to wide area availability, and it encompasses a variety of applications, such as:

• mobile voice telephony (and conferencing)
• Mobile Centrex
• mobile email (and attachments) and other mobile messaging
• access to enterprise directories
• reading and editing of Microsoft Office documents mobile access to the Internet or an enterprise intranet mobile-enabled core business applications, for example Customer Relationship Management, Sales Force Automation and Enterprise Resource Planning mobile video telephony (and conferencing).

Enterprises will increasingly expect that a diverse range of mobile devices will be supported, using different operating systems, including mobile handsets (ranging from unsophisticated voice-centric handsets to advanced smart phones), PDAs, notebook PCs, customised wireless handsets and machine devices. Given the challenging requirements, mobile operators need to be highly focused to make progress in the complex world of enterprise mobility. They need to segment the market to identify their most appropriate target customers and develop the propositions and channel to market needed to address them. SMEs with a significant proportion of mobile workers may be the best place to start for many mobile operators, although they should not neglect the value in large enterprise customers, where there is a risk that they could be marginalised by WLAN solutions. Mobile operators will need partners that can help them develop their enterprise mobility solutions and provide channels to market. IT distributors, resellers and systems integrators could all have a role to play in this, and need to work with mobile operators to develop compelling end-to-end service propositions.