4 mobile predictions CIOs should watch for

12 years ago

Consumerization of IT and the bring-your-own-device trend continues to create headaches for many CIOs.

While privacy implications and data loss risks keep many C-level IT execs up at night, according to Chenxi Wang, analyst for Forrester Research, there are signs that emerging technologies will provide administrators with better tools to manage the growing ranks of worker-owned devices in the enterprise.

According to Forrester’s Forrsight Workforce Employee Survey for the fourth quarter of 2012, at much as 70 per cent of organizations have adopted some form of BYOD program. As many as 62 per cent of employees use their own smart phones for work while 58 per cent use their own tablet devices for work purposes.

But new trends, according TO Wang indicate that embedded technologies and new mobile cloud services will also introduce in the near future seamless mobile management capabilities.

Here are four mobile predictions that CIOs can look forward to:

More personal device in the workplace

Today, smart phones and tablets are the face of BYOD, but Wang predicts that employee bought laptops will be joining the party later this year. Currently 39 per cent of laptops used for work are employee-owned and 47 per cent are company owned.

This means IT departments will need to make investments in expanding remote access to corporate content and data. Organizations need to reevaluate their application architecture to include more software-as-a-service and platform agnostic applications. Wang said the days of on-premise client/server deployments are fading fast and being replaced by cloud-hosted, service-driven deployments.

Goodbye MDM, hello seamless on-demand mobile virtualization

Many organizations are currently using mobile device management technologies to control BYOD but MDM is considered by many users and administrators as a heavy-handed approach. IT managers just don’t want to manage employee-owned devices according to Wang.

She sees a rise in the adoption of seamless mobile virtualization approaches. This includes policy-based control over corporate apps, content and data enforced by on-demand and with little interference to user experience.

Samples of this approach can be seen in VMware’s device virtualization technology and other offerings from companies such as MobileSpaces and Enterpoid, Wang said.

HTML 5 enterprise apps

HTML 5 apps will become the preferred way of delivering enterprise applications, according to Wang.

As connectivity becomes cheaper and more reliable, online rather than offline communication models will become the norm and this will pave the way for HTML 5 deliveries, she said.

In turn, that means enterprise apps will increasingly move from the device to the cloud, Wang says.

Identity-based mobile services highlights privacy

As enterprise app portfolios become increasingly SaaS-based and nnovations in mobile browser technology security, control, Wang foresees more pervasive mobile data collections.

This will bring about an increased focus on privacy issues

Wang advices caution as such an environment could breed devices and sensors that monitor use activity 24/7. She foresees possible public backlash over the loss of privacy and possibly some high-profile litigation concerning the subject.

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