What Does The Future Hold For Enterprise Mobility in 2010?

Hello from the 48th floor of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. What a truly amazing view of the New York City skyline from this location. Today was an incredibly wonderful, albeit hectic day. While it was filled with both planned and unplanned meetings, I knew it was going to be a great day by the time I met with the participants of the opening keynote panel I was moderating at the Mobile Business Conference at Interop.

So let me start off by extending a sincere and heartfelt “Thank You!” to the four fabulous members of the panel:

Josh Holbrook – Yankee Group
Vishy Gopalakrishnan – AT&T
Susan Nunziata – Mobile Enterprise Magazine
Bob Tinker – MobileIron

The title of the session was “Wireless and Mobile 2010: Positioning the Enterprise for Growth.” The description of the session was:

“The Mobile Business Conference will commence with a lively debate among the thought leaders working in mobility today. This session will cover all the bases - wireless communication, mobile computing, management, security, and strategies for success, with an eye towards renewed economic growth in the coming year. Ample time will be reserved for questions from the audience. This is your opportunity to speak with the key thought leaders who spend their day (and usually much moreoften weekends) working on the most important issues and opportunities in mobile IT."

Here are the specific topics we covered:

Strategic mobility
- Do organizations consider mobility strategically?
- What does that even mean?
- Can mobility be a strategic differentiator?
Mobile devices as a full computing platform What are the fastest growing applications?
- Can we have real (rich) applications on the smartphone or do they need the full OS of a netbook/laptop?
Networks - 3G was supposed to be great.
- What impact will 4G have on enterprise mobility?
- Is it a 2010 reality?
Mobility management Definitions, impact, importance – cost/benefit
The consumerization of enterprise mobility
- Can this be stopped? Should it?
- What about the trend towards individual liable devices?
Final thought: What to consider when thinking about mobility in the enterprise

For those of you who have not seen me moderate a panel, I take a very simple approach. I do as LITTLE talking as I can (I know, shocking), and instead make sure to spend as much time as possible hearing the panelists talk about the issues and their opinions on the subject. This time, all I can say is WOW. This was one of the most engaged and engaging panels I have ever had the privilege of participating on. The conversation was strong, everyone made excellent points from their perspective on the issue, and the audience was very much engaged. Kudos to the panelists!

So what came out of the session? Here are some key takeaways:

Organizations are only now starting to see mobility as a strategic differentiator. However, the biggest barrier to that is a cultural change within those organizations.
4G will have little to no impact on the enterprise in 2010
There is no next killer app – it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish for your business. M2M will be hot, but only in a certain context.
Tablet PCs may be about mobility, as are laptops, but you can’t treat them the same way.
Mobility management is NOT the same as device management.
The consumerization of enterprise mobility is real and will be an issue for years to come. Organizations will need to deal with both individual and corporate liable devices
I also threw in the idea that there is an important difference between mobile outsourcing and mobility managed services. Do NOT confuse the two!

The takeaway from the ENTIRE panel? Manage your mobility. Think less about the type of devices you want to deploy, and instead think more about what your employees are doing with the devices and what they are accessing and how you as an organization must manage that access to sensitive data.

Amen to that!