Mobility: the next steps

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Mobility is well established in Ireland, and in some industries has become the de facto standard for collecting and distributing information.

Handheld devices have become common in most major warehousing and stock control facilities, while the retail sector in particular has adopted barcode scanners and hand held devices with enthusiasm. At the enterprise level, travelling executives were among the first to embrace laptops and mobile phones with enthusiasm.

From the outset, the business benefits of being able to get real time access to stock levels, product orders, client and billing information whilst in the field have been obvious. However, there are still many industries were mobility hasn’t made many inroads, either because there is no apparent advantage or because of a culture of resistance from senior management.

This could be set to change, according to Chuck Dietrich, general manager and vice president with Salesforce Mobile. “We’re seeing not just new companies coming to us for mobile solutions, but new kinds of companies, and part of the reason is the growth in popularity of mobile e-mail,” he said.

Mail in the hand
“Once you get a mobile device into someone’s hand and they get used to having their e-mail there when they need it, then they start to wonder why they can’t move other aspects of their IT function to a mobile platform.”

“Also, as smart phones become more popular and people start to use other kinds of consumer applications on their devices, they also start to think ‘why can’t I access my enterprise application this way?’ That’s something we’re seeing as a catalyst for adoption of our mobile applications, and we’re seeing companies of all levels of sophistication going this way.”

In the US, users of Salesforce Mobile’s technology include the nationwide pizza chain Papa Murphys, which uses a franchise management system to interact with its 900 outlets using Blackberry smart phones.

“Likewise the Karl Strauss Brewing Company manages all its sales and distribution of its beer to stores and bars using Blackberrys. Those aren’t industries you would typically associate with a high technology solution, but in some cases they were early adopters of mobile devices and in others they had a forward thinking chief information officer (CIO),” said Dietrich.

“In some cases, especially outside the US and in emerging markets around the world, the price point for purchasing a laptop is also a factor. It’s much more affordable for companies to equip their staff with mobile devices than it is to buy and maintain a fleet of laptops.”

“As long as they can do everything they need to do from the device, it becomes an ideal replacement — the Blackberrys and iPhones of today are just as powerful as laptops were three or four years ago, and they’re evolving quickly.”

At the same time that handheld and other mobile devices are become more powerful, the cost of them is falling, and as a result it’s becoming more common to see people privately purchasing and using such technology for entertainment. The result is that mobility is going mainstream.

Netbook domain
“The price of mobile devices is coming down, whether it be laptops, netbooks or smart phones, and more people are taking them on board for that reason,” said Paddy Collins of Vodafone Ireland. “However, businesses are deciding whether they have a real business need before choosing to rush out and buy devices.”

“Many companies are dipping their toes in the water with netbooks, as the price point is relatively low and you can get them with broadband connectivity built in. The killer mobile application is still e-mail however, and the vast majority of companies embarking on a mobile strategy are starting there.”

“We’ve done some research that shows that within the Irish business community, people now expect their e-mails to be replied to within 30 minutes. That implies a change in how we think about e-mail and in how people are using mobile devices – most people are away from their desks for various reasons during the day, but we now expect that they’ll pick up their mail anyway.”

“While e-mail makes up the bulk of mobile data users, we’re also seeing that even small to medium companies are getting more sophisticated in terms of accessing office applications remotely. This is allowing people to access thin client versions of full customer relationship management (CRM) systems and amongst companies that already have those systems this is a big draw.”

According to Salesforce Mobile’s Dietrich, growth in the mobility sector is also being driven by the popularity of mobile applicationss based around thin client software developed specifically to work regardless of whether the user has connectivity, as opposed to browser-based technology that displays data remotely.

“For example, Facebook has a client application that can be installed on a mobile device and you can do certain things on it regardless of connectivity. As a result, its performance is consistent even though you may be bouncing between signals and losing coverage. That’s quite different to a browser based application, which is totally dependent for performance on coverage,” he said.

IT burden
Going mobile involves changing the way the company administers its IT function and potentially opens the company up to a world of security issues, not to mention productivity concerns. Understandably, the risk of having employees lose a smart phone, netbook or laptop loaded with commercially sensitive information can make senior management sweat.

“Although mobility offers access to data and increases the throughput of the business, it also increases the security risks of that data being exposed,” said Sean O’Connell, security consultant with Computer Associates.

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