In the recent Kelton Research report, I read stats about people being willing to trade a day of vacation or their daily cup of coffee for the choice to bring their mobile device of their choice to work. But think about this interesting statistic - apparently there are more people in the world today with smartphones than there are people with toothbrushes.
In the attached video, SAP CIO Oliver Bussman used this entertaining data point to talk about the proliferation of mobile devices in the world and how they are impacting the enterprise.
There is really no better way to communicate the benefits of using a technology than by deploying it yourself - and that's exactly what we've done at SAP. SAP uses the Afaria mobile device management solution to centrally manage and secure mobile data, applications, and devices. Employees have fast, consistent access to business data anytime, anywhere. I personally have Afaria deployed on both my iPhone and iPad.
Today, SAP has about 6,000 iPads and 2,200 iPhones deployed, plus a multitude of other devices running other operating systems. Our IT team's goals were probably identical to the top priorities of any IT organization: to enable quick provisioning of security settings and business applications on mobile devices, and to protect sensitive enterprise data from unauthorized access if a mobile device is lost or stolen.
The ROI that we have achieved so far is what is really staggering. Using Afaria to automate iOS device setup has resulting in a 92% reduction in configuration time (from 1 hour to 5 minutes).
Check out this video of Oliver talking about our internal use of mobility solutions - especially the demo of Afaria at the end. And think about what you can do with mobility the next time you brush your teeth.
