Welcome to the inaugural edition of Inside Looking Out. As I mentioned yesterday, this will be a weekly feature of Enterprise Mobility Matters. My first guest is Dean Alms, founder and VP of Strategy at Visage Mobile.
I aksed Dean to be my first guest because I think his product provides end user organizations a great first step in terms of better understanding what they are doing with their mobility deployments.
Shameless plug alert. Know anyone who I should be interviewing here? Drop me a line!
Dean is responsible for the overall strategy and product management for Visage’s mobility management solutions, including its flagship offering, MobilityCentral. Dean was the former vice president of corporate strategy for PeopleSoft and has a strong history of leading entrepreneurial initiatives, including creating the Electronic Commerce/EDI practice at KPMG (now BearingPoint), launching PeopleSoft's web-based self-service applications and introducing its Enterprise Portal. As a founder and executive officer of Groundswell, Dean rapidly created an industry leadership position in the strategy and implementation of a variety of internet-based commerce solutions for consumer and business markets.
Enterprise Mobility Matters: Dean, Enterprise Mobility has changed a lot in the last few years. What would you say is the greatest recent advancement?
Dean Alms: While email remains the killer application for mobile devices, I think the iPhone and the App Store have been the greatest sparks for advancement for mobile solutions across all vendors. Whether you allow iPhones or forbid them in your enterprise, Apple is shaping the future of mobility. And we are just seeing the beginning of this revolution. Apple really made the internet and web much more accessible and introduce a usable form factor for the small mobile devices. This will continue to drive innovation into mobility making them more and more indispensible to the modern workforce.
EMM: Are companies looking at mobility differently today as compared to a few years ago?
DA: Companies are looking at mobility differently in three big ways:
- Managing mobility has become the responsibility of the CIO. When cell phones defined mobility, IT wanted nothing to do with it. Now that the cell phone (a voice device) has grown up to become smart phones (a data driven tool) with sophisticated operating systems that need upgrading and the need for secure access to enterprise data and email, they have become the domain of IT.
- Costs have escalated on multiple fronts creating overspend and waste as complexity and continuous change make it difficult for enterprises to manage these expensive assets. Companies that aggressively manage your fleet of wireless devices and services can produce huge cost savings.
- Everyone is a mobile worker. A few years ago, BlackBerry’s were reserved for executives and sales people, now everyone wants and often gets 24-hour access to email and the enterprise.
EMM: How do you see the economy impacting mobility in the enterprise?
DA: Mobility Management has several dimensions to it: Policy Management, Procurement & Provisioning, Security and Control, Application Enablement, Wireless Expense Management, Inventory Management, End-User Support, Device Management and more. The economy has made cost savings through expense management and process efficiency the top priority for enterprises. Defining then reducing the total cost of ownership is top of mind. The economy has not done much to slow down the explosive growth of mobility deployment, but companies want to be smarter about it.
EMM: What do you think is the greatest current opportunity for enterprise mobility?
DA: The irony is that while we are spending more than ever on connecting employees to the enterprise with wireless technology and mobile applications, the number of employees “actively disengaged” from the companies they work for remains at historical highs. This is costing enterprises billions annually in productivity. I think the combination of social networking technology and mobile technology is a great opportunity to “actively engage” employees like never before. (Google: “Gallop Research actively disengaged” for more on this topic)
EMM: What do you think is the greatest risk for organizations right now?
DA: The greatest risk for organizations right now is not taking more control over their fleet of wireless devices and services. Weak management of mobile devices and services can lead to monthly overspend and waste in the millions. Lack of policy and over permissive provisioning standards can make enterprise application deployment and support very expensive if not impossible. A lost or stolen device with sensitive data can create big liabilities. Get control over your inventory – both hard inventory (devices) and soft inventory (wireless plans, features and applications).
EMM: One last question Dean. What steps should executives take to ensure the success of their mobility implementations?
DA: Now there are two mission critical environments that IT must manage: The Data Center and Enterprise Mobility. The Data Center is a mature environment with decades of tools and technology to optimize for success. The Enterprise Mobility environment is immature and evolving quickly, but equally important to your future success. I would encourage executives to explicitly define their Mobility Strategy and Policy, define your success metrics with periodic reports on progress, and establish a mobility management platform that can consolidate the many disperate management tools. Your mobility management platform must also be able to evolve with your strategy and with the constant innovation in devices, plans and applications. And finally, don't’ just connect your workforce, engage them.
So there you have it. The first (of hopefully many) chapters of Inside Looking Out. Let me know what you think of it. Do you know anyone who should be a guest here on Inside Looking Out? Drop me a line.
