Welcome to the second edition of Inside Looking Out. This past week, I had the pleasure of speaking with my good friend and colleague Julie Palen. Julie is the Senior Vice President, Mobile Device Management Solutions at Tangoe.
Tangoe is, in my mind, one of the organizations that "gets it" in terms of the need for holistic mobility management solutions by providing its customers a broad range of services around the life cycle of a mobility deployment.
Prior to its merger with Tangoe in December 2008, Julie was president and CEO of InterNoded, Inc. Prior to founding InterNoded in 1993, Julie was a business systems analyst at Lotus Development Corporation, where she served on the team that deployed the first seats of Lotus Notes to the sales organization. A frequent speaker at women entrepreneur events, Julie has been honored as one of the leading women entrepreneurs in the world and was recognized as having one of the top 100 women-led businesses in Massachusetts.
Enterprise Mobility Matters: Enterprise Mobility has changed a lot in the last few years. What would you say is the greatest recent advancement?
Julie Palen: The greatest advancement is really on the device side. The quality of the devices has advanced dramatically - truly becoming high powered computers rather than just phones that you can get you e-mail on. With that advancement and the increased speed of the networks, the devices are ready to replace the notebook computer. With these advancements it becomes critical to manage the devices and the data on them. This is a real shift from the carrier owning the footprint of the device to the enterprise needing to own and control the footprint. As the enterprise owns the footprint more business applications will be deployed. We see customers looking at this – thinking about this – and justifying more devices as PC replacements. The shift is definitely towards the smartphone becoming the primary communication device between employee and corporation.
Are companies looking at mobility differently today as compared to a few years ago?
JP: Companies are finally talking about mass deployment of smartphones. This is a big change from only a subset – their executives, sales or field service people carrying devices. This moves the management from telecom to IT. We are hearing more and more often that this is becoming overwhelming. It has moved from the cool thing to have to mission critical with all the concerns that go a long with that. The telecom spend is going up, the complexity is going up and the need for tools is becoming increasingly critical. As we continue to move beyond PIM and E-Mail these devices will become even more mission critical. Backup and Restore, Monitoring and Management become just as important as it is for a PC on a corporate network.
EMM: How do you see the economy impacting mobility in the enterprise?
JP: One would think the pace in which devices are being roled out would be declining. This is not what we are seeing. RIM, for example, has experienced massive growth in the past 12 months. What the economy has done is slowed the process for rolling out applications onto devices. It has also made companies take a much harder look at what they are spending and the needs to get a handle on that spend. I believe as the economy improves there will be an enormous push to rollout more devices. Companies will start to look at eliminating desktop phones and even PCs – this may take time, but will be done as those items need to be upgraded.
EMM: What do you think is the greatest current opportunity for enterprise mobility?
JP: Real-time Cost Management/Avoidance. It is critical to have the ability to know what is going on with the device in real-time and impact user behavior to reduce cost as well as making feature/function changes to the device based on its physical location - whether or not it is roaming. The greatest opportunity becomes giving users devices of choice, IT organization the tools to manage them and management the ability to control cost.
EMM: What do you think is the greatest risk for organizations right now?
JP: The risk is in not taking action. Costs will be out of control without systematic controls. To use your own words – organizations need to be smart about – Solution Selection, IT Service Management and Mobility Management. [editor's note: I love it when people use my own words ;-)] If they don't get all 3 things right, they are going to fail...and failure will be a lot of wasted dollars. From a business perspective, the risks that organizations face is being passed by the competition if they don’t innovate.
EMM: What steps should executives take to ensure the success of their mobility implementations?
JP: PLAN PLAN PLAN!! You and I agree on this – executives need to take a holistic approach to mobility. Point solutions aren’t the answer – you need to know what you have, you need to be able to monitor and manage it – that includes – Procurement, Wireless E-Mail Deployment, Device Management, SLA Management, Policy Management, Cost Management, Application Management, Device Disposal and Help Desk. You need be thinking about all of them. Mobility requires the same kind of strategic planning that ERP, E-Mail and all other IT projects require.
Well there you have it. Thanks Julie for taking the time to chat with me about your views on Enterprise Mobility. Do you know anyone who should be a guest here on Inside Looking Out? Drop me a line.
