Hopefully you got to enjoy some good champagne with family and friends yesterday. 2008 was another great year for enteprise mobility, as organizations over the last 12 months continued to make investments in mobile devices, applications and solutions. What better time than January 2, the first business day of 2009, to make some predictions for what 2009 holds for enterprise mobility. Here are my five....along with some companies I think we should all keep our eyes on.
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The Economy Will Force Companies To Rethink Their Mobility Strategies. This is not necessarily a bad thing per se, but the challenge will be for organizations to not react in a knee-jerk fashion and slash mobility expenditures. This would be an unwise move, in my opinion. Mobility solutions should in fact be looked at as strategic enablers for enhancing current business processes and workflows. They also help ensure that organizations can maintain their customer base. The challenge for mobility solution vendors will be that longer sales cycles will force them to do a better job of demonstrating their value to end-users. This alone, will spur continued innovation in the marketplace.
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Mobility Management Becomes Business Critical. Does your company know how many devices it has? Do you know how much your company is spending on mobility per year? Per user? Do you know what devices are touching your corporate back end? Do you know if your employees are complying with business and IT policies that relate to enterprise mobility? I didn't think so. Mobility management, which includes device management, service management, application management and expense management are vital to mobility deployments - especially when you look back at Point #1.
Companies to watch: Internoded, Perlego, Trust Digital, Visage Mobile, Zenprise
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The Line Between Consumer and Enterprise Mobility Gets Even Thinner. This is not the greatest revelation in and of itself. The point is the extent to which this happens becomes really important. People want cool devices that work for them both in their personal lives as well as their professional lives. They don't want to have to carry around two devices (if they can truly get away with it). This also ties in to one of my predictions from last year, regarding the importance of Fixed Mobile Convergence, where a device can take on multiple personas. Big surprise, this consumerization makes Point #2 even more relevant.
Companies to watch: Apple, HTC, RIM
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The Cloud Goes Mobile. Sure we've all heard of the cloud, SaaS, etc. I think there's a HUGE untapped potential here for organizations to leverage cloud computing as part of a mobility strategy. No need to write apps that work only on certain devices anymore...and it syncs up perfectly when you are back at your desk. You just need a browser. Oh yeah, I guess you need a good browser like the one on the iPhone.
Companies to watch: Cemaphore, Microsoft (Windows Azure), Mozilla, Opera
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The 2009 Comeback Kid: Palm. Yup, you heard it here first people. I'm guessing Palm will be the new New Kid on The Block with its new "Nova" platform. TBD what the devices are like but I think they are going to kick some major ***. The great thing is that consumers have the attention span and brand devotion of a 3 month old...meaning that if Palm can create an awesome platform with some cool devices, they should be able to quickly hear that "KA-CHING" sound. Now Palm, please make sure you execute well so I can be right on this one! ;-)
Companies to watch: Palm (duh!)
So these are just some of my ideas around what's in store in 2009 for enterprise mobility. Agree? Disagree? Think I'm on crack? That's what the comments are for...Happy New Year!
