The Australian newspaper’s IT section ran a piece on October 25, 2011 a radical year of digital revolution. It started with two bold, short paragraphs:
“Many observers have described this year as the most radical period of change in the history of digital technology.
“It has been the year cloud computing came of age, smash-hit consumer devices such as Apple's iPad invaded the corporate computing arena and the market for mobile apps exploded.”
People over-use the adjective ‘disruptive’, but for once that word can be used correctly: when applied to 2011’s new technology and what we can see coming in 2012 alone. It will change the way people live their lives (how many people under 30 still wear a watch, and have you noticed that Starbucks accepts mobile payments – and has been all year) as well as how they work. Some say that mobile payments are “the future of banking” (see hereand here).
It is not just information and analytics that are coming to mobile devices, but the enterprise applications themselves. This month, SAP announced (with partners) the availability of more than 200 new mobile applications! For example, workers can order supplies from their mobile device and route their ‘shopping cart’ to their manager’s smart phone or tablet for approval; directors are asking for their board briefing documents to be delivered to their iPad; and, CFOs (and other executives) have the ability to review real-time balanced scorecards and project status with KPI’s on their tablets, drilling down to see details and attaching the results to emails to their team asking for additional information. Oracle also has a mobile strategy.
The board and management, together with the CRO and CAE, should be concerned with two primary risks:
A balance needs to be struck so that the organization can take advantage of the new technology, but not at the cost of lost confidential information or an IT infrastructure that is unmanageable. How can IT be expected to support five versions of essentially the same application but from different vendors (not all of which may be in business next year), running on every imaginable mobile device and operating system – that everybody wants connected to the corporate network?
The Aberdeen Group is a fine source for research on a variety of topics, and I have blogged about their reports in the past. I am a subscriber and I recommend your looking into them.
Recently, Aberdeen published a report, Enterprise B2E Mobile App Strategies: Design, Build, Deploy, Manage and Support that has some interesting content. While it said that “The global phenomenon of mobile applications has had a major impact on the enterprise; on its market-facing, business-to-business, and employee-facing activities”, the report focuses on the latter: enabling management and employees to be more efficient and effective. Here are a few of the more interesting points:
My advice is that corporate leadership (not just the CIO) with advice from the risk management and internal audit functions ensure:
The internal audit, risk management, and IT security teams should provide advice on the risks. However, care should be taken that excessive concern about risks does not result in being slow, or even late, to seize the opportunities.