We just celebrated July 4th - a day commemorating freedom and independence. To celebrate I attended the San Francisco Symphony special at Shoreline Amphitheater. The show was exhilarating and the fireworks started early when Makoto Ozone joined the orchestra for a scintillating performance on the Piano. It was mind-blowing and followed by the real fireworks. A great night was upended by a frustrating 1 hour wait stuck in a parking lot. Luckily I got a few work things done on my smartphone while also writing some choice words on social networks about the dismal traffic management at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Most 1star ratings were due to the parking. I guess there is no one at the management reading it.
Loathe about being stuck but happy that I was able to do work, I felt it was apt that we talk about the emancipating effect of a movement heard across the enterprise world - enterprise mobility.
When you talk about enterprise mobility, it is not an application but a tectonic shift in how an enterprise reengineers itself around a mobile worker. Most enterprises adopted prior enterprise software shifts such as Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Business Analytics on a promise and for most, it took about 3 to 4 years before they were able to retrain the workforce and get some semblance of productivity and ROI.
Enterprise Mobility on the other hand is not something that you can roll and wait for adoption. The need for mobility is there, but nascent. There is a level of evangelization and buy-in that has to be done at different levels of an enterprise. When I talk to employees, I find a mix of interest laced with caution and fear. Some of the fear hinges on privacy, while others may worry about smashing any barriers left between personal and professional life or ensuing financial implications - shades of this was predicted by Mark Plakias, my ex-colleague and the chief strategist at Orange Silicon Valley in his treatise - the porous enterprise. As in the past, more mobile a worker, the more eager they are to see what mobility has to offer. Sales and Field service as usual lead the way in clamoring and seeking new mobile technology. I remember the late 90s, when it was not uncommon for a sales person to be seen lugging a heavy laptop or using an unwieldy car phone to be connected to customers and enterprise.
But unlike in the past, where enterprise upgrade meant capital investment and some training, enterprise mobility touches every part from software or service, delivery, control to manageability. There-in lies the world of choices and determining what is right choice for the company. Should we first try to get the security and manageability infrastructure up and then develop the applications or first develop applications that enable new and low risk mobile usages before we bring in high powered applications that require security and manageability. When developing enterprise applications, do we focus on form over function? Can an enterprise application be designed to have the appeal of consumer apps? What good is use an app, when I have to sometimes use a laptop to get the full experience? How can an employee get IT to look at their device logs without having to surrender their smartphone? Are my vendors thinking mobile first or mobile as-well. How can we be proactive by instrumenting analytics? Who among the vendor ecosystem will be a good supplier of technology. How will this will work with cloud applications? Should we wait for the shift to cloud before delivering mobile applications?
These questions have been plenty as I have been helping a multi-billion dollar silicon valley company get its bearings on enterprise mobility. In many ways it has been akin to moving an enterprise. It has been an exciting journey with a few frustrations. If you are at MobileBeat organized by my good friend Matt Marshall, you will hear me talk about my experiences during the afternoon breakout session - Mobile done right: Why choosing a development tool is not enough . Drop me a comment below or contact me via email or text in case you want to meet.
Look forward to hearing from you
Look forward to hearing from you
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