So I am finally back home after a two-week stint of living out of a suitcase. Wow, I can't think of anything more fun than taking a couple of red eyes, as well as losing luggage. Oh wait, watching paint dry would be more fun. Actually, the travels were very productive and interesting. When I was at Interop, participating at the Mobile Business Expo, I had among other things, the pleasure to moderate a panel on REAL WORLD trends in enterprise mobility.
As an analyst, it's always (relatively) easy to talk about where *I* think the market is going, or where *I* think the key opportunities are in the market, but the reality is, no matter how much I study the market, or how well I understand the needs, there's a difference between "talking the talk" and "walking the walk."
That's why I put together a panel of people who are living enterprise mobility every single day...whether it's developing new solution strategies or planning out new deployments or managing existing ones. That's how and why I called a few friends to put together one heck of a panel:
-
David Goldschlag, Chief Technology Officer, Trust Digital
- Doug Brackbill, Executive Vice President, Good Technology
- Julie Palen, Senior Vice President, Mobile Device Management Solutions, Tangoe, Inc.
- Rick Cahoon, Enterprise Support Manager, Wilbur-Ellis
For an hour, we talked about the how and why organizations were deploying mobility solutions. The net of it was that there are still HUGE opportunities for improvement within the world of enterprise mobility. Organizations *get* push email....the current "killer application." But what comes next? What about mobility management? That's where Rick SHINED! He talked about how through the use of a mobility management solution, his company was able to start getting visability into who was using what and how much. This is the FIRST step as far as I am concerned in terms of what companies need to do....gain visibility into what you are doing right now.
After that, take what David, Doug and Julie were talking about. Device management and security as core underpinnings of being able to take mobility to the next level within an organization. I've said it before and I will say it again. End user organizations can not reap the greatest benefits from mobility solutions without the use of mobile device management AND security solutions. This is the same as any traditional tech delpoyment. Would an IT department deploy a new laptop without a security solution? Of course not! So why not mobile devices????
So I am now back from Vegas....no travel plans for the forseeable future (thank goodness) and am ready to enjoy a summer filled with exciting enterprise mobility news!
