Inside Looking Out: An Executive View on Enterprise Mobility With Raymond Nunn

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Inside Looking Out on The Enterprise Mobility Forum.  A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to chat with Raymond Nunn. Raymond is the President of Toronto based Versult, a mobile workforce management company.

I first spoke with Raymond at the beginning of the year and took the opportunity to sit down with him when I was in Toronto a couple of weeks ago.

Enterprise Mobility Foundation:  Hi Raymond.  Thanks for taking the time to cha with me today.  We all know that enterprise mobility can be a daunting task for an IT department, but we often overlook the impact that it will have on the actual staff using the solutions.  What would you say are some of those key challenges?

Raymond Nunn: Hi Philippe…before I answer your question, I wanted to first congratulate you on the launch of EMF! 

Obviously, security is a significant challenge, both from a hardware and network topology perspective. Common hardware security concerns include device loss, remote device hacking through bluetooth or other means, general information protection, etc; while network topology security concerns focus on the accessibility of mobile devices (both corporate and individually owned) to the enterprise systems and data.

Another challenge is managing the costs associated with rolling out mobile solutions, particularly in countries where unlimited voice and data plans are not (yet) common. Organizations need to establish controls to manage these costs and ensure that front-line managers are aware and managing the costs associated with these devices, including the creation of policies with regards to the use of the device.

Basic training on the device itself poses another challenge. For example, a trucking company rolling out Android based smartphones to drivers in their fleet may need to train those drivers on the operation and usage of the basic device over and above the need to train them on the usage of any corporate specific applications on the device.

Managing the connectivity of the device to corporate systems is another challenge. Corporate systems are often behind firewalls which can present challenges to mobile devices connected to the public internet. For example, with laptops a company would typically use a VPN to enable employees to access resources, including e-mail in some places, while accessing a VPN on a mobile device is challenging. 

EMF: Much is being made these days around Cloud Computing and its impact on enterprise mobility.  To me, it seems analogous to the old days of terminals and mainframes.  How do you see Mobile Cloud Computing?  Is it viable?

RN: Yes, cloud computing is viable, and in fact, a critical component of today’s enterprise infrastructure.  Mobile devices by their nature are resource constrained and cloud resources allow these devices to greatly expand their capabilities, one only has to look at things like Google Maps, Latitude.

Having said that, one also has to recognize that mobile devices do not live in an “always connected” world and a model that tends to work well with mobile devices is a local application on the device that stores some information locally and provides some critical capabilities when disconnected, and then syncing this information when connected to remote servers where greater computing resources can be brought to bear to analyze, process, or calculate the information.

EMF: One of my favorite topics these days is the area of individually liable vs. corporate liable devices.  I guess we have the iPhone to thank for that.  What’s your take?  Are individually liable devices OK in a corporate setting?  Is this just a passing fad?

RN: The proliferation of smartphones in the consumer market, along with the business benefits of increasing employee performance, has led to proliferation of individually liable device being connected to the enterprise infrastructure.  More companies are enjoying the benefits of corporate mobility, without the costs associated with purchasing, managing, or maintaining the hardware itself.  I do not believe this is a fad.  In fact, I think we will see it accelerate, especially in specific industries like retail and entertainment.  In today’s corporate environment, companies are continuing to extend their employee portals and enterprise software for employee and manager self service functionality, which by nature, is extending into to mobility, especially for time sensitive items.

EMF: Speaking of the iPhone, it’s just one of six major mobile device platforms.  Can the enterprise support all these platforms and devices efficiently, or are they going to have to select 1, 2 or 3 “official” platforms?

RN: I would expect organizations to typically have one or two preferred platforms, and then support other platforms to varying degrees.  For example, a company could choose to make the Blackberry a tier 1 device and any custom corporate native mobile applications would be targeted at that platform. Other devices could be in tier 2 where push e-mail and calendar is supported along with corporate web applications. Tier 3 could be remaining devices where support is best effort, for example e-mail access through standard protocols (IMAP, SMTP) and nothing else.

EMF: One of the more popular arguments against individually liable devices is security enforcement.  How important is security for the mobile device in your mind?  Should it just be limited to corporate data or be a complete lock down?

RN: The overall importance of security with respect to individually liable devices, just as it is with current desktop computing, really depends on the organization, the role of the employee in the company, and the data accessibility.  Security for the mobile device, with respect to the enterprise data, is critical to mobility, as enterprise CIOs want to sleep well at night knowing their data is secure, but there is no doubt that a “one size fits all” security policy doesn’t fit today’s corporate landscape.

EMF: Let’s shift gears a little and talk about apps.  Certainly mobile apps are hot in the consumer space, but what about for the enterprise?  Should organizations be looking at mobile middleware solutions, the cloud and HTML 5 or custom application solutions?

RN: Organizations should definitely be looking at mobile applications with strong value propositions. Where a native application is available or can be justified, mobile applications leverage inherent advantages of a mobile device such as reducing the data transfer, being able to operate disconnected from the corporate network or storing critical business data.  For applications that are internal facing, it can be difficult to justify the cost of building a “one off” native application versus modifying or building a web application that specifically supports mobile requirements (small screen size, lower bandwidth, etc).

EMF: One last question.  Microsoft has made a lot of noise since Mobile World Congress and their MIX event with Windows Phone 7 Series.  Are they “back”?  What is it going to take for this new platform to be successful against 5 other incumbent platforms AND itself (i.e., Windows Mobile 6.x)?

RN: Windows Phone 7 is an interesting product with Microsoft following the iPhone model of a locked down device and eco-system.  It goes against everything Microsoft has done in the past, really. Android goes the opposite tack with a completely open model and it’s interesting to see how fragmentation within the Android space is already starting to happen just as it did for previous versions of Windows Mobile.

Applications are the key to being successful, and with the development model for 7 being .Net based and using C# instead of C++ like earlier versions of Windows Mobile, the future looks bright for Microsoft. This will open the device to a large number of existing corporate developers who will not require significant training to be able to build applications for the device. This is quite similar to how Google uses Java for Android, a good Java programmer has no trouble picking up the Android framework in relatively little time.

Well there we go.  Inside Looking Out is back. Thank you Raymond for taking the time to chat with me today. If interested, you can connect with Raymond on LinkedIn here.

Do you know anyone who should be a guest here on Inside Looking Out? Drop us a line.