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Good thoughts Phillipe and I would agree that we see a much more fractured environment respecting mobility and who “owns” it versus other technologies that more clearly fall in line with traditional roles and responsibilities.
With that said, much of this (IMHO) stems from the fact that unlike traditional IT; mobility and it’s current needs emerged out of tools that were much simpler years ago. Even as recently as five years ago, the predominate device in the enterprise was voice only. With growing impact of superphones, tablet and so on, the conclusion that IT should “own” this feels inevitable.
Enter challenges such as centralization of processes, security, policy, application development, cost control, asset management and the like. Much closer to challenges that IT is facing (and has hopefully started to, or solved) in other areas such as desktops, servers, virtualization and so on… further reinforcing the “inevitable” conclusion.
Opportunities abound for the enterprises and solution providers alike when you have a fast moving and evolving environment.
I anticipate much more need for business process improvement efforts related specifically to mobility and the capabilities enabled by the proliferation of more powerful devices. In that respect, a CMO type role or at least internal drivers focusing on such opportunities certainly warrants consideration.
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Agreed, Josh. What has changed however in the past few years is that 1) users have gotten a LOT more tech savvy and 2) tech is no longer for internal use only. The needs are coming from so many locales that IT simply can’t do it all…even if they wanted to. I’ll make the argument that there is an interesting duality of more centralized IT (i.e. cloud) all the while a more DE-centralized use case/model.
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I would suggest that like many initiatives in the enterprise, different departments bear different responsibilities and must work together to maximize the effectiveness of the effort. Certainly, IT must own the technical performance and security of mobile, but it must be flexible when it comes to content, platform, and cost, which are the purveyance of other departments.
For example, if video is deemed necessary for mobile learning, or multiple mobile platforms are required, or the enterprise chooses to use a third party that is able to offer economies of scale when it comes to mobile contracts, then IT needs to accomodate these needs, given management approvals, of course.
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Agreed Robert. I think your comment is very much in the spirit of my comments. IT helps facilitate this, but in your example, it was driven by the HR/learning team.
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Philippe – I rather disagree. Mobility in the enterprise is surely just a component of business transformation and business process improvement. A ‘Chief Mobility Officer (CMO)’ to my mind implies a rather narrow IT-biased approach to that. It should be the COO who should own it as one of the ingredient of business improvement, and should ensures its implementation is managed within a framework of business change, and other disciplines associated with that.
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Philip – Interesting thought. My one concern though is that today’s COO already has too much on his/her plate and that this person may not have the skill set or acumen to fully appreciate the impact that mobility can/should have on the workplace. So how about having the Chief Mobility Officer reporting to the COO?
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Does the world need a Chief Virtualization Officer? Or a Chief Cloud Officer? How many Chief Web Officers are there really? Truth is that MOST enterprses heading into the mobile world will survive quite well with the CIO/CTO.
Robert Bows is right in how mobility needs to work…CIO needs to ensure that ALL line of business and strategy folks (like CMOs) know the mobile possibilities (both internally for their workforces and externally to the buyers of their services and products) and are thinking along the lines of how to use mobility (from a BUSINESS perspective) to drive new revenue streams (from both existing customers and NEW customers), to enhance brand awareness and loyalty, and how to tap into social mobile networks. Not all mobile apps are never going to be holisitic – some may have large scale enterprise visibliity; some will be targeted at the LOB level.
The CTO owns all of the nitty gritty (from the TECHNOLOGY perspective)- security, app dev, implementation, device support etc.
I’m greatly simplifying of course, but over time (and that time won’t be prolonged but short) mobile stops driving ‘consumerization’ of the enterprise and reverts back to ‘enterprization’ of the enterprise. Mobility simply becomes the next well-understood technology fully incorporated into the enterprise technology toolset. Just as the Web permeates all enterprise goings on today.
CIOs and CTOs (or their teams really) need to talk to each other every day and insure they have solid mobility standards in place. Creating internal mobility standards (I should say, flexible standards, but standards none the less) is key. Plan long term, but beable to execute qickly.
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Tony – I think the difference here is that while the cloud, virtualization and the web have been major tech shifts for companies, how transformative have they truly been for companies and individuals? Of the three examples you provide, only the web can be considered transformative, but for all the connectivity it provides, it’s basically an accelerator. The web became personal and truly transformative IMO with the advent of the MOBILE web. Of all the people in the world, I don’t need to tell YOU how game changing mobility is for both individuals and businesses. I don’t disagree with your other point that the technology will soon be well understood, but the innovations that will come from the technology are still well beyond what we can imagine today.
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“…the innovations that will come from the technology are still well beyond what we can imagine today” – no disagreement what so ever on that point! The Web became personal and transformative many years ago…mobile Web (and Web apps/HTML5, etc.) make it all more convenient. Still, not seeing any need what so ever for a chief mobility officer…
Now a Chief Social Officer, I have been thinking about that a lot.
Mobile drives social networking (mobile Web value rises hugely because of it), which is the truly transformative beast on both enterprise and consumer fronts – mobile is just more technology enterprises get a handle on in short order to deliver on the grand social networking innovations that will be transformative. Among other things.
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So I guess we can start splitting hairs now. I’ll argue that the personalization really started when we could have the web with us wherever we were….and not limited to a PC. Maybe personalization is not the right word? In terms of Chief Social Officer, is that part of marketing or customer advocacy/support?
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Who Should Own Mobility In The Enterprise?
With all things mobility (just like in economics), the answer to any question begins with: Well, it depends. I would tend to agree that the IT department should “control” or “own” mobility if you work in a very small company….say, less than 100 people. However, things become much more subtle and nuanced when you talk about companies with several hundred or thousand employees.
In the enterprise, I don’t think any one group can “own” mobility. It’s just too complex and has too many moving parts. Besides, what does ownership even mean? Is that the device management component? The security? Expenses? The apps? Heck, I would argue that you certainly can’t say that one group “owns” the apps. Are they internal applications or customer/partner facing applications?
I was just talking moments ago to someone literally half way across the world about mobility. Enterprise mobility – or mobility in the workplace – is not just a phenomenon that transcends geographic boarders, but also a phenomenon that transcends all borders in the workplace. Saying that one group should “own” mobility is all about creating silos. Haven’t we spent decades trying to break down those silos in the workplace?
Now, let’s throw into this equation the notion of IT service management – ITSM. ITSM is all about how the IT department provides services to the other lines of business to accelerate their business processes. But who will examine those business processes? Certainly not the IT department….at least not in my opinion. However, they will be involved in the platform/technology choices that will be used to speed up those business processes. It’s just like when I ask vendors: who are you selling to? Big surprise, the answer to that basic question varies greatly. It varies greatly because no one team is “owning” mobility.
The problem of course is that our job includes the need to herd cats…but that can and should change. This is why I am such a strong advocate for the new CMO – the Chief Mobility Officer – that will transcend all these silos and bring the spirit of ITSM to the new mobile workplace.