I’m not going to even bother telling you what time it is right now, because it’s that early here on the east coast of the United States. It’s pitch black with the sun not set to rise for quite some time, and I am getting ready to fly off again to the West Coast. At least I have ensured myself “status” on my carrier of choice for the coming year. I’m getting ready to go to the M3 Mobility Exchange event in San Diego which should be an interesting discussion on the current and emerging trends in enterprise mobility around healthcare, finance and retail sectors.
That said, we also just celebrated Thanksgiving here in the United States. The holiday season – with all its annoying music, TV commercials and over-crowded malls – is upon us. Yes, I do sound like Ebenezer Scrooge. The long weekend did however give me the opportunity to also do one of my favorite things of this season which is to reflect on the year past. I thought the best way to start was to see what I had wrote last year for the Thanksgiving season.
Last year, I commented on the fact that we are now finally talking about moving beyond email in enterprise mobility. We’re “finally” ready for the apps revolution. I also noted however that we are still trying to work out the subtleties of how to manage and deploy these applications in the context of the ever growing trend of consumer liable or BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trends. Sound familiar? Yup…we’re still trying to get our arms around these issues.
You’d have thought that with another year of experience under our belts that we would have been able to make major strides in addressing this issue…so how come do I feel as if we still haven’t crossed the proverbial Chasm? Have I simply not had enough coffee yet? It’s too early in the day to be this cynical.
I guess perhaps the glass half-full perspective (to reclaim last year’s metaphor) is to suggest that while at face value, BYOD should be in theory a simple “Yes/No” debate, it is anything but that simple in practice. There are scores of reasons to choose a BYOD strategy and an equal number of reasons to shy away from it….all laced with the same issues of security, GRC, the effects/impact of cloud computing and those pesky lawmakers who don’t understand how quickly technology is evolving. Of course, the world of enterprise mobility has also gotten more complex in the sense that BYOD makes sense for certain organizations for their smartphones, but not necessarily for their adoption of tablets in the workplace. Go figure.
And that in a nutshell is what makes enterprise mobility so interesting. At face value, it looks like a no-brainer. Everyone and anyone can/should be able to have access to their work information wherever and whenever they may need it. Too bad that the one size fits all train has left the station many moons ago. The sheer complexity of all the choices we have in platforms, devices, form factors and application/data models (nevermind those pesky lawmakers), still makes enterprise mobility a difficult sea to traverse…and one that we must traverse with caution.
I’m excited to hear some real world experiences in retail, healthcare and finance during this week’s event. Hopefully by then, I won’t sound so much like A Christmas Carol.
A Christmas Carol: The Enterprise Mobility Edition
That said, we also just celebrated Thanksgiving here in the United States. The holiday season – with all its annoying music, TV commercials and over-crowded malls – is upon us. Yes, I do sound like Ebenezer Scrooge. The long weekend did however give me the opportunity to also do one of my favorite things of this season which is to reflect on the year past. I thought the best way to start was to see what I had wrote last year for the Thanksgiving season.
Last year, I commented on the fact that we are now finally talking about moving beyond email in enterprise mobility. We’re “finally” ready for the apps revolution. I also noted however that we are still trying to work out the subtleties of how to manage and deploy these applications in the context of the ever growing trend of consumer liable or BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trends. Sound familiar? Yup…we’re still trying to get our arms around these issues.
You’d have thought that with another year of experience under our belts that we would have been able to make major strides in addressing this issue…so how come do I feel as if we still haven’t crossed the proverbial Chasm? Have I simply not had enough coffee yet? It’s too early in the day to be this cynical.
I guess perhaps the glass half-full perspective (to reclaim last year’s metaphor) is to suggest that while at face value, BYOD should be in theory a simple “Yes/No” debate, it is anything but that simple in practice. There are scores of reasons to choose a BYOD strategy and an equal number of reasons to shy away from it….all laced with the same issues of security, GRC, the effects/impact of cloud computing and those pesky lawmakers who don’t understand how quickly technology is evolving. Of course, the world of enterprise mobility has also gotten more complex in the sense that BYOD makes sense for certain organizations for their smartphones, but not necessarily for their adoption of tablets in the workplace. Go figure.
And that in a nutshell is what makes enterprise mobility so interesting. At face value, it looks like a no-brainer. Everyone and anyone can/should be able to have access to their work information wherever and whenever they may need it. Too bad that the one size fits all train has left the station many moons ago. The sheer complexity of all the choices we have in platforms, devices, form factors and application/data models (nevermind those pesky lawmakers), still makes enterprise mobility a difficult sea to traverse…and one that we must traverse with caution.
I’m excited to hear some real world experiences in retail, healthcare and finance during this week’s event. Hopefully by then, I won’t sound so much like A Christmas Carol.