When a Good Mobility Idea Becomes a Management Nightmare - Part 2

[Former Member]

Yesterday I posted the blog When a Good Mobility Idea Becomes a Management Nightmare - Part 1 and this second blog in the series focuses comparing point solutoins to mobile platforms and scaling mobility with a Mobile Application Development Platform (MADP).

There is a good reason organizations rely on middleware to scale their IT systems. Middleware makes it easier to develop interlinked applications that share data. It also provides a more manageable IT environment.

The same concepts apply when scaling enterprise mobility. The following table shows the key differences between a mobility strategy built on point solutions and a MADP solution.

Point Solutions or App Centric Approaches include the following:

• Large IT support infrastructure for mobile applications and devices
• Limited choices in mobile devices
• Lack of mobile application integration, which means more siloed business workflows
• Multiple tool sets for enforcing corporate security
• Requires maintaining a complex point solution roadmap to guide employees in their choice of devices, applications, and use cases

Mobile Application Development Platform Approaches include the following:

• Lower administrative, maintenance, and support costs
• Large choice of mobile devices, including the latest technology
• Integrated mobile applications allow greater flexibility in information sharing and workflow
• Single console for managing all devices, applications, and
  security
• Greater flexibility in expanding mobility through the organization

Converting Manageability into Cost Savings

Many organizations prefer point solutions because their implementation cost is relatively low, their impact on the overall corporate IT environment is limited, and it does not require a lot of strategic thinking to adopt one. That is why it is so easy for an organization implementing simple point solutions to suddenly find itself mired in a point solution manageability nightmare. Indeed, many companies already support multiple mobile operating systems.

As business process mobility becomes a larger part of workers’ daily lives, organizations need to think strategically about their business mobility in the same way they plan their other IT systems. The long term cost savings can be enormous. How much difference can good manageability make? Find out in the next blog in this series...