Milja's Mobile Musings

This week, the first ‘Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise’ conference (also known as CITE) was held in San Francisco. The event brought together hundreds of IT execs and companies who share an interest in exploring how consumer technology is relevant in the enterprise. The week was earth shattering in a few ways, not the least of which was experiencing my first earthquake. Perhaps the 4.0 magnitude quake that jolted me awake Monday morning and made my hotel room sway back and forth was an indication of things to come. It certainly gave me an interesting analogy to share in my speaking session at the event – specifically how mobile and social are driving how the news of the quake was shared throughout the city. While the quake was an interesting start to the event, the CITE conference itself provided an impressive lineup of fantastic sessions and speakers. Here, I’ll share a few key takeaways on how personal technology is changing and infusing the workplace.

1. We are at the beginning of an incredible journey. The pace of change is this market is truly incredible and the adoption by enterprises is set to take off. In his session, Rick Bauer of CompTia stated that “The CIO and the organization face not only the consumerization of IT (CoIT), but also the increasing velocity of technology diffusion into the enterprise.” While we have to be sure not to get too caught up in every technology wave, we need to embrace the technology that users want, and don’t let it get away from us. This journey is one that no leading company can afford to miss.
2. Today’s technology is causing relationships to change. The connections that exist between IT and other lines of business including sales and marketing are morphing in a positive way. For example, one conference session featured both the CIO and CMO of a major insurance company, discussing how their departments work together in today’s CoIT-inspired environment. The CIO had a fantastic observation that “IT has to have enough insight to make a difference – and the relevance & credibility with the business to make a difference”. His observation as a CIO was that as he is approached for a technology request, “there are fewer times that a gap is a chasm when we are talking to LOBs about their technology needs.” Consumerization has driven users and lines of business to be better educated on what is possible and has made them more willing to work in concert with IT to meet their needs.
3. Apps are a significant priority. I’ve been talking about the importance of mobile applications in almost every blog I write, and the conference focus was right in line with this core belief. Just before the show opened I heard that Apple announced that the 25 billionth app was sold over the weekend. The economics of that are staggering! When was the last time anyone had sold 25 billion of anything? At the CITE conference, the apps discussion was around building great apps. I really enjoyed sessions by Brian Katz of Sanofi. His buzzword is that we need to avoid building “Crapplications.” Our focus should be on building apps that meet the needs of users and take a ‘bottoms up’ approach when defining use cases. To do this, go for a ride-along with your technicians, sit for a day with your users and observe how they interact with data before you decide what to build into the app. Design is key – but overdesigning and putting too many features into an app can be a major downfall.
4. Data is independent of devices. We’ve come a long way in the mobile world; if you look at the number of vendors who claim to manage some aspect of your mobile world (I’ve heard that today there are anywhere from 40-70 vendors) they will all tell you a slightly different story of how to do it. Soon, we will live in a world where information moves based on what device or system you are using. Consumerization has changed the model: BYOD (bring your own device) and COPE (corporate owned, personally enabled) combined represent what CoIT means. This forces us to rethink how we manage mobility. We can’t simply manage a mobile device; rather we have to think about management from a more holistic point of view – connectivity, security, application management and MDM are parts of a bigger, comprehensive EMM (enterprise mobility management) requirement.
5. Adoption is the new ROI. If you are trying to figure out how to quantifiably measure ROI in this new mobile world I think you’re going to have a pretty tough time. Can you quantify the value of mobile email? In fact, can you even remember a time when you didn’t have mobile email to compare to? Smartphones and tablets are significantly impacting how we do business – but exactly how significant is it? Forecasts are now stating there will be 100 million iPads sold by the end of this year. With numbers like that, perhaps we simply need to consider mobile as the new standard business tool and look at a new way to track success: adoption. If your employees and customers are engaging with you through mobile apps then perhaps you are already achieving the ROI you are looking for.
6. Think mobile first. Whether you are deploying apps to your internal employees, partners or customers, the crystal ball of the future predicts that taking a ‘Mobile First’ mentality would be a good strategy. I talked about how this concept in in use at SAP for both internal and external apps in this short video recorded at CITE. Mobile is a mindset that we are embracing wholeheartedly at SAP – it is driving how IT works internally and how we go to market with our product offerings. At CITE this topic came up several times as vendors and enterprises alike look to the future.

Overall, the CITE conference provided a broad perspective of the impact of mobile and social from industry CIOs who are embracing the technology. One of the best quotes I heard this week was in a session about what mobile consumer technologies can do for your business. Often we think about mobilizing existing business processes – but the potential new ways that this technology brings about are what is really compelling. One CIO advised “Don’t pave the cow path.” In other words, open your eyes to the potential that consumer technology can bring about to transform your business.

The leaves are falling, the days have chilled and the fall season is now in full swing. The other sign that fall is upon us was an event that happened last week – SAP World Tour. The North American series kicked off in Chicago and continues with stops in San Francisco, New York and Toronto in the coming weeks.

I had the pleasure of attending the Chicago event and wanted to share a few mobility highlights. Overall the event was chock full of mobility content – including 5 mobility breakout sessions and several microforums. I personally enjoy microforums, I find these interactive discussions are an excellent opportunity to talk with you. In the past few weeks, as part of the SAP Mobile Sense series, I’ve talked a lot about Enterprise Mobility Management and understanding BYOD. We again shared this conversation with a packed room in Chicago.

Gary Hamel, world renowned author and speaker, delivered a keynote session at the event, and one statement he made was very relevant to the topic. He said “the battle today is between individuals and institutions.” This is absolutely relevant in this microforum discussion on the BYOD model. In fact, I always find it fascinating when I survey the crowd in these sessions – time and time again, when I ask how many companies support BYOD to some degree, the results are the same. And the individuals are winning this battle. The audience in Chicago was no exception with more than half of the participants in the room allowing BYOD to varying degrees. The great news is that SAP can now raise its hand too. SAP recently initiated its own BYOD policy in several countries (including the US). I can assure you that SAP employees are excited about the fact that our own IT department now allows personal devices at work. Today we have 3300 corporate owned iPhones and 11,000 iPads at SAP – I can assure you with the perfect storm of the iPhone 4S having just been released coupled with this new policy – those numbers are about to skyrocket.

The second microforum I wanted to share was around Mobile Apps. This is a topic that we wlil start to spend more time on in the coming weeks. I have to admit this is the topic that I am most excited about. Mobility isn’t about email anymore, it isn’t about security, and it isn’t even about the devices. Its about how we can transform business via applications. I think its important that we not let mobility become an overwhelming conversation – it doesn’t need to be a massive undertaking to solve all of your company’s mobile needs – in fact getting started with small projects is the best way to start. In the mobile apps microforum, SAP’s Vishy Golapakrishnan shared some interesting points about how software development paradigms have changed with mobliity. It is now truly an interative and fast paced process. I think the way to approach apps is best explained by another quote from Gary Hamel. He stated “the dinosaurs are gone, but the bacteria are still here.” So don’t treat mobility like a dinosaur – take it one step at a time and start with a successful simple application.

Wrapping up on World Tour, there were also a series of breakout sessions that provided a great opportunity dive deeper into SAP’s Mobility strategy. There were several great sessions including an overview of our strategy, a deep dive into our mobility platform, and overview of our new apps, and the services we can offer to help you quickly ramp up. As the ‘Poster Child’ for lost mobile devices, I presented the Enterprise Mobility Management session. While almost everyone has lost a mobile device and one time or another (you have, right?), I seem cursed having lost 4 devices in the past two years. My experience has helped me relay that even those who truly understand the importance of mobile device security can unwillingly put corporate data at risk. Hopefully those in the audience gained a glimpse into the importance of having a comprehensive mobility management strategy in place.

With that quick summary of SAP World Tour Chicago, I hope you can join us at upcoing dates in San Francisco (October 20), New York (October 25) or Toronto (November 10). I encourage you to register for SAP World Tour today. I’m sure you’ll find it a great experience.

This week I had the pleasure of attending the GigaOm Mobilize conference in San Francisco. The BYOD topic has popped up in a number of sessions and is a great segue into our second blog on the BYOD invasion. Last time I talked about what companies and employees really want – and the first session today brought it home. One company speaking at this conference and embracing the BYOD invasion is Cisco. This is a great example of of the fact that BYOD isn’t just about mobile phones and tablets – it’s also about laptops (also referred to as BYOC).

Cisco has about 50,000 users and gives them the option to purchase their own laptops. With this flexibility, 10,000 of these users have Mac laptops. Tom Gillis, VP and GM Security Technology Business Unit stated that this policy has reduced costs by 25% and end user satisfaction is up 200%. So why are we happier to be spending our own money for our work laptops? Tom stated that “They (employees) are happy because they have the freedom of choice.” he recommends “Give the people what they want. Implement the infrastructure to control it. Everybody wins.”

I think these are great words to guide us in this BYOD discussion. After all, we want out employees to be happy, don’t we?The new white paper we are talking about, written by Aberdeen’s Andrew Borg, is chock full of great new statistics to support the BYOD invasion in today’s world.

The research from Aberdeen goes way back go 2008, when they started to track the use of ‘employee liable’ devices. Their early research findings showed a fundamental shift in how mobile devices were being procured, paid for, managed, and supported. Since 2008 the trend that was pretty North America dominated has only been speeding up – and globalizing.

In their July 2011 study, Aberdeen found that 75% of organizations, like Cisco, were permitting the use of employee-liable devices for business purposes. That’s a huge number, and when you break it down there are 51% of companies who stated that they were permitting any employee device to gain access to corporate network and email, and 24% indicated that they require all employee-liable devices to comply with company policy before permitting them corporate access.

The recommendation from Cisco was that you have to control BYOD. I firmly believe that in order to be successful, you can’t take this concept lightly. The 51% is a pretty scary number and a bit of a worry in my mind. I am curious if this group of companies allows access to email only or if they have strategies for deploying enterprise mobile applications as well. And if they don’t have a company policy in place then are they controlling and securing these devices.

While BYOD is compelling, we should think about it long term and be sure to look at your entire mobility strategy – not just letting devices in. We’ll be asking Andrew a lot of these questions and diving more into this research during the webcast on this topic on October 4th (it’s free, but registration is required).

In my next blog I’ll look more into the behavior of three classes of companies – Aberdeen groups them as ‘Best in Class’, ‘Industry Average’ and ‘Laggards’. Cisco is a great example of a company that is taking the BYOD invasion seriously and achieving significant benefits. I think you’ll find the statistics pretty interesting.

I am pleased to have been collaborating with Andrew Borg, research Analyst from Aberdeen Group on a new topic for the SAP Mobile Sense series. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be diving into the Bring Your Own Device phenomenon and how it can impact your mobility strategy. I’ll soon be publishing a whitepaper written by Andrew on this topic and will be hosting a live webinar on October 4th.

Over the past few years, organizations have been permitting, and even encouraging employees to bring their own mobile devices into the workplace to be used for work purposes. While it came on pretty slowly, it has been picking up steam over the last 12-18 months. And it is shifting the way in which devices are procured, paid for, managed and supported.

At first glance, the concept may appear to radically lower the cost of enterprise mobility. Two years ago the discussion was about who got a mobile device – today that is a moot point. Everyone has a mobile device. And companies can extend productivity and communications advantages to a much broader group of employees by letting them being their own devices to work. However, the BYOD concept also introduces new risks and may actually significantly increase costs of the organization if not properly managed.

Let’s start from the beginning – by look at why companies and individual are even considering BYOD. In the whitepaper written by Aberdeen for SAP, Andrew Borg states that the BYOD phenomenon has momentum because it meets the needs of both the organization and the employee.

What do organizations want? When you are asked ‘Why BYOD?’ what is the first thing that comes to mind from the POV of IT? Probably “to cut costs.” After all, you won’t have to pay for the actual piece of hardware, right? By transferring the cost of the equipment purchase to the employee, IT can certainly decrease capital expenditures. However, on the other hand it can increase the complexity of the mobile infrastructure needed to manage a network of both personally and corporate owned devices. Andrew argues that if it is done well and managed properly, success can be accomplished without a significant increase in operational budget. If it’s not done properly it could end up costing you much more.

What to employees want? We’re pretty much all employed by someone so we all have a point of view on this. What do employees really want when it comes to working on a mobile device? From my own point of view, with mobility a huge part of my life, I need to have the device I want. I hate to put a stake in the ground, but when it comes to this topic I just have to. If I am not allowed to use the device that I want I will not be a happy worker. This is just the way the world is going. Some may argue that mobility has a tendency to extend the work day and cut into personal time (I won’t deny that), but others argue that it actually gives the employee control to decide where and when they work. Andrew states that supporting a BYOD model enables the interleaving of personal and social life into the workplace as appropriate, offering a potential for a healthier work/life balance. I think we could all use a bit of that.

Where we can be successful is when we meet both the needs of the company and the needs of the employee. One company I recently met with at SAP’s TechEd user conference told me that they support the BYOD model because their employees simply demand it. They even use it in their employment recruiting efforts. “Come work for us and we’ll let you use your own device.”

I can give you lots of anecdotal facts on what companies are doing in this area, but instead, I’ll next share statistics from Aberdeen’s research on the topic. Stay tuned for the next posting where we’ll talk more.

To learn more about this topic and get the whitepaper (coming soon), visit the Mobile Sense website. Register now for the Webcast on October 4th with Andrew Borg of Aberdeen.

I think we all agree that mobility for the enterprise is evolving and expanding rapidly. Recently, we’ve had a few discussions on Enterprise Mobility Management (Looking beyond mobile device management) and (A deeper dive into Enterprise Mobility Management). These postings were based on a whitepaper (link below) written by Philippe Winthrop of the Enterprise Mobility Foundation. We all know and have discussed the significant possibilities that come from deploying mobile solutions in the workplace. But, we need to recognize that it can be difficult to navigate this very complex ecosystem. And of course that’s where EMM comes in.

Whether you are a mobile device user or you are in IT, you know that personally owned (or individually liable) devices are proliferating in the workplace. From the user’s point of view, you just want access to work data from your own device – so you go to IT to ask for it. But what does IT do to address this need? In the whitepaper, Philippe comments that this proliferation “is also causing a knee-jerk reaction from IT departments that feel compelled to deploy mobile device management solutions as a means to ‘secure’ those devices.” I’ve seen it over and over again that IT departments are comping up with MDM RFPs daily. The unfortunate thing is that often they are thinking about MDM in a silo instead of taking the broader perspective of comprehensive Enterpirse Mobility Management. In my last few posts, and in the whitepaper, we’ve talked about how mobile device management isn’t the only thing you need to consider any more. so what are Philippe’s parting words on the topic?

The Enterprise Mobility Foundation strongly recommends that “organizations take a step back to look beyond just mobile device management, to mobile application management and most importantly their holistic enterprise mobility strategy to develop a 360 degree view on the opportunities and challenges that mobility can bring to the workplace.”

I couldn’t agree more. I encourage you to read the full “Looking Beyond Device Management to Enterprise Mobility Managment” whitepaper on this topic and share your perspective. To hear more on this topic directly from Philippe and SAP, please join us Wednesday September 7th at 1:00pm for a live webcast and Q&A.

Date: Wednesday, September 7th @ 1:00pm EDT

The webcast is free, but you do need to register in advance.

In my recent EMM posting, I introduced this as topic that will be part of the new Mobile Sense thought leadership series. The ‘Looking beyond Mobile Device Management’ whitepaper, published by Philippe Winthrop of the Enterprise Mobility Foundation is the basis for this discussion. We started talking about Enterprise Mobility Management. Now, let’s take a deeper look at some of the key aspects of EMM.

Mobile Inventory/Asset Management: Understanding what devices are accessing corporate information is a core capability that every company needs in order to wrap their heads around their mobile users. Insight into the most basic information on all mobile devices, including which devices are connecting into corporate systems, is critical.

Mobile Security: When I talk to IT teams from our customers and partners, I consistently hear that security is the #1 driver for a mobility management solution. This aspect of an overall EMM solution addresses anti-virus, anti-malware, authentication, encryption, etc. to ensure information loss prevention.

Mobile Application Management: As apps increasingly become a critical aspect of many companies’ mobility strategies, managing those applications also increases in importance. The ability to add, remove or update custom or third party applications in a centralized fashion (such as a corporate app store) will smooth mobile rollouts and ease the user experience. Additionally, organizations will want to ensure that there are security measures in place at the application level.

Wireless Expense Management: As we talk about adopting a BYOD model, the ability to track and manage telecom/wireless expense management (TEM/WEM) data is becoming increasingly important. It is important to be pro-active in management of wireless carrier expenses, as well as the inter-departmental chargebacks for both individually and corporate liable devices.

And finally, Philippe also includes mobile operations management and mobile help desk as important aspects to address the ongoing health of a mobile network and support infrastructure.

You’ll notice that the above categories of EMM don’t include the traditional Mobile Device Management. So what is MDM?

According to Philippe, “Mobile device management should be considered – in its purest form – to be specifically managing the physical mobile device as a means for IT departments to ensure that the hardware is performing in line with its expected specifications and configurations.” Philippe goes on to describe that this is separate from ensuring the proper and expected performance of any single application or the network the devices may be connected to.

Specifically, mobile device management is part of mobile lifecycle management, which includes (like most other IT hardware lifecycles) the procurement, operations, retirement and replacement of mobile devices. Mobile device management should hence be considered the operations component of the mobile hardware lifecycle.

So now I’ve explained the difference between MDM and EMM. In the final installment of this Mobile Sense series, I’ll share some of Philippe’s recommendations to you on this topic.

If you want to continue the discussion, registration is now available for the webcast on this topic being help on September 7th at 1pm. During this webcast, Philippe Winthrop and I will discuss thoughts on the topic, share a brief discussion on how Afaria addressing EMM and MDM and do a live Q&A session.

Ten years is a pretty long time in the world of modern technology. Today I had reason to think back to what life was like 10 years ago in 2001. I decided to look up what was going on in the tech world and found that in 2001:

• Apple introduced the iPod
• Dell become the largest PC maker
• Hewlett Packard announced plans to buy Compaq
• Wikipedia was founded
• Microsoft released the original Xbox game console
• And most importantly, Sybase Afaria was the market leading mobile device management solution

Back in 2001 enterprise mobility was a bit different too. Even though I worked for Sybase, I didn’t have a cell phone, there were no smartphones or tablets, I didn’t even carry a slim lightweight laptop. For enterprises, mobility was mostly about task workers – and mobility management was about controlling laptops.

A lot has changed over the past ten years. But one thing has remained the same – Sybase Afaria has been the mobile device management (MDM) market leader every year from 2001 through 2011. In fact, today, we announced that leading IT market research advisory firm IDC, in its recent Worldwide Mobile Device Management Enterprise 2011 – 2015 Forecast and 2010 Vendor Shares report, recognized Sybase as the leader in mobile device management (MDM) enterprise software market for the tenth consecutive year.

For well over a decade, Sybase Afaria has transformed enterprises and managed mobility partners around the world by empowering the mobile workforce. Sybase Afaria enables enterprise IT to fully manage and secure a wide range of personal and corporate smartphones and tablets, including Android, iOS, Windows Mobile and more, in both hosted and behind the firewall environments. Additionally, Sybase Afaria’s seamless over-the-air (OTA) delivery of in-house and publicly available apps, combined with on-device enterprise portal technology, ensures that only approved mobile users are granted access to internal applications and data.

I encourage you to check out the press release on the IDC report, where IDC evaluated over 20 MDM vendors. You can also find a link to purchase the full IDC report here.

I have been working in stealth mode over the past few months, collaborating with industry experts to create new content on trends and topics that are important in the mobile industry. I am excited to introduce you to SAP’s new “Mobile Sense” thought leadership series. Mobile Sense will be all about making sense of enterprise mobility topics, trends and issues. We’ll introduce new topics to you on a monthly basis via whitepapers, webcasts, chats, blogs, podcasts and more.

The first whitepaper in this series is about looking beyond mobile device management to ‘Enterprise Mobility Management’ (EMM). I love the term Enterprise Mobility Management because it takes what we commonly have referred to as mobile device management and tells the broader story of what an enterprise really needs to think about when managing and security mobile data and devices. I hope by sharing this with you that you will broaden your perspective on what you really need in your enterprise.

The paper was written by mobility expert and thought leader Philippe Winthrop of the Enterprise Mobility Foundation. In the ‘Looking Beyond Mobile Device Management to Enterprise Mobility Management’ whitepaper (link to be shared soon), Philippe discusses how over the last 18 months we’ve seen an important shift where organizations are now increasingly looking beyond just mobile email to create and deploy a wide variety of applications that connect to the organizations’ back end systems and help mobilize internal business processes. Because of this shift, IT departments also need to shift the way they look at traditional mobile device management.

Today’s highly mobile workforce faces a number of new challenges that they did not face before – most notably the greater need for information loss protection and prevention. Philippe discusses how in order to address these potential risks, IT decision makers are have been turning to “mobile device management” solutions. The problem is that the term Mobile Device Management (MDM) is often misused and misunderstood. It is my mission to share with you how MDM and EMM are different – and why you should think about the broader requirements of EMM when considering your strategy.

I agree with Philippe that it seems that over the last year or so “Mobile Device Management is being used as an umbrella term for all things related to mobility management”. I think we have lost focus on the important issues at hand. When talking about “mobile device management,” we have forgotten about the broader story of enterprise mobility management. Philippe outlines that EMM is all about:

• Mobile Inventory/Asset Management
• Mobile Application Management
• Mobile Security
• Wireless Expense Management
• Mobile Operations Management
• Mobile Help Desk

This is a big topic, so I’ll pause and stop here for now. In my next post I’ll talk a bit more about each of the areas of EMM, and I’ll share the link to the full whitepaper. Stay tuned for a webcast on this topic in early September where Philippe Winthrop will share his thoughts. Registration will be coming soon and I’ll share the link here.