With the extraordinary growth in the use of devices such as smartphones and computer tablets, mobile workforces and consumers alike have unprecedented ac­cess to information.

With this in mind, we have developed a whitepaper to identify the The Business Impact of Mobility (no registration required).

But if you are pressed for time, here is all you need to know…

It is widely estimated that more than one billion individuals worldwide use mobile devices to connect to the Internet. And industry analysts predict continued and explosive growth in the future. The adop­tion rates of mobile technology among the world’s businesses are also high. For businesses that want to take full advan­tage of this global phenomenon, it can be helpful to understand how mobility has evolved and where the future of the tech­nology is likely headed.

The Business Impact of Mobility

The growth of mobility is indisputable, and company CIOs cannot afford to un­derestimate its impact on their business­es. At SAP, we firmly believe that:

• Mobility adoption will be worldwide. In fact, Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the “BRIC” countries) will lead in both mobility adoption and innovation.
• Consumer-led technologies will drive development and flatten channels between retailers and buyers.
• The application of mobility will be widespread, affecting industries from healthcare to retail and transforming interactions from social networking to machine-to-machine communication.
• Advanced security and device man­agement will be needed to adequately protect company information.

Organizations that can leverage these evolving technologies – by both retooling their internal workforces and redefining their business-to-consumer models – will be in a powerful position to improve employee efficiency and influence con­sumer behavior.

The Challenges Mobility Poses

Challenges exist. While company executives rush ahead to equip their workforces with mobile devices, CIOs must maintain a watchful eye on con­cerns such as security, data latency, and device proliferation. Gartner notes that by 2013, a typical Fortune 1000 company that deploys business-to-employee or business-to-consumer mobile applica­tions will use at least six different combi­nations of mobile platform, architecture, and development tools. Gartner also ob­serves that, even by 2014, 60% of For­tune 1000 companies will have failed to put a comprehensive mobile strategy in place – leading to considerable overspending.

Companies need to develop an end-to-end mobile strategy – one that unwires their en­terprises for today and establishes a sol­id foundation for the future of mobility. Mobility can be effectively managed with the right tools and applications. This paper presents a comprehensive strategy for enterprises that addresses what we call the four “Cs” of mobility: create, connect, control, and consume.

The IT focus includes:

• Create – Empowers you to build com­pelling mobile applications using stan­dard, integrated development environ­ments (Eclipse and Visual Studio)
• Control – Advises businesses to man­age and secure mobile devices with full confidence

The business focus includes:

• Connect – Enabling your users to com­municate and interface with any data source and applications
• Consume – Allowing your users to bring your own device and use the mobile apps of their choice

Interested in reading more? Download the whitepaper “The Business Impact of Mobility.”