The Coming Wave of Enterprise Application Deployments

By MobileIron

We recently met with a leading global retailer around their need to build a public and private enterprise mobile application strategy. Beyond the need to securely manage multi-OS application rollouts, policies and updates what struck me as interesting was the sheer diversity.  To work within their supply chain they need a warehousing tablet app for matching manufacturer samples.  To have the latest catalog at the store counters, they will develop a web-based catalog again using a tablet at the point of sale to replace paper copies. And, to manage their growing online shopper base, a new customer relationship (CRM) database application is underway including buying habit customization to meet the needs of clients with personal shoppers.

Yes, applications are everywhere!   I use them for business travel, sporting events, retailer coupons, managing my 401k, overseas Internet telephony, prospect web conferencing, customer CRM and even departmental applications like marketing automation.  The average smartphone owner spends more than 650 minutes a month using apps – no wonder my kids tell me to put down the ^*!@$ on weekends.  That is more time spent with apps than spent talking on a device or using it to browse the Web.

Mobility is no longer about OS preferences, what matters most going forward are secure public and private Mobile Applications.  Millions of business professionals use smart devices because always-on application connectivity is a huge productivity boost. And the OS vendors are quickly catching on.  For example, late last year relative new-comer Windows Phone 7 quietly reached 5,000 apps and will quickly double in 2011.  Impressive but still trailing Android and iOS.  The average Android and iOS user depends on 15 applications each month, BlackBerry users about 8 applications each month.

Third-party developers are also publishing enterprise applications for more than one platform.  And there is no right (write?) or wrong way to enable these applications.  Analyst firm Gartner went on record lately advising customers that “no organization should standardize wholly on either native or Web applications.”  The analyst outfit also encourages IT groups to establish guidelines to assist mobile architects and business users in choosing the most appropriate architecture.

Organizations will always want to manage applications — with the same level of control, security, and compliance monitoring they enjoyed in previous generations of computing.  What’s changed is that many leading organizations are taking a “trust and verify” model that gives IT control while opening up new application and device “greenfields” to the users.  MobileIron’s CEO Bob Tinker highlighted the latest user trend of allowing employees to “Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD)” with Bloomberg last week.  Since these devices are now dual-purpose personal/business computers users should not be  forced to work with locked-down applications and essentially useless smartphones and tablets on the job.  And, using an intelligent MDM solution ensures business IT will not simply have to open the flood gates and accept an application free-for-all. Everyone wins.

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