Mobile Enterprise Adoption News: [MEAN] Summary: Mentions focus of Enterprise Mobility is cost savings and real estate – going mobile for on the go. Weddepohl claims 2012 was a good year for large enterprise mobility. Though mobile is hot, enterprises are still requiring strong ROI models before making any large new investments Having established a leading position in the enterprise mobility space, Dimension Data’s focus in 2013 will be on clients that are building out their enterprise mobility strategies. Dimension Data converged communications general manager, Rob Weddepohl, foresees added opportunities in the space for the ICT solutions and services provider. “Within each client strategy, we already have a strong ability to deliver services across multiple areas such as unified communications and video conferencing, security, contact centre, wired and wireless network and application integration,” he said. Within enterprise mobility, the primary focus will be on reducing operational costs through real estate and carrier cost reductions by mobilising the workforce and telecommunication expense management services respectively. “There is also the centralisation of specialist function groups with the ability to service a larger customer base through unified communication technologies, such as high definition video,” Weddepohl said. To ensure the right amount of adoption is achieved for any unified communications, Weddepohl said a positive user experience is “critical”, so a renewed focus on training and client support models is expected this year. This is due to many businesses looking for help in supporting their end user devices and applications not just from a hardware perspective. “Organisations will look to their partners to help provide these ‘personal and non-technical’ help desk support models,” Weddepohl said. Security is another area of focus for Dimension Data this year, with security national manager, Jason Ha, expecting the securing of applications, such as Web and database specifically, to be a growth area. Then there is data protection in the mobile space and document management systems such as Microsoft Sharepoint. “Organisations will continue to look for more detective capability in their security environments,” he said. “This is fuelled by the need to gain more visibility of threats occurring in the environment.” Ha saidt organisations need some way to “rapidly resolve the issue” and do not “just...

Mobile Enterprise Adoption News: [MEAN] Summary: Start managing mobile enterprise now (at the grass roots), not years later. Government IT planners strategizing security risks now, from first floor up. Companies popping up offering enterprise management solutions Take a page from Federal dept. Asses current system risks and proactively future mobile ones. By Shawn McCarthy Jan 28, 2013 It’s time to stop talking about mobile device management. Instead, let’s start talking about mobile enterprise management. That may seem like a minor wording change, but refocusing an organization’s approach to mobile management can have long-lasting effects on the way it deals with an increasingly mobile workforce. When MDM first came into vogue, it included many of the standard features of PC management solutions (access control, user permissions and so forth) while adding functionality to address the unique needs of mobile devices such as smart phones and media tablets (bandwidth limits, screen real estate and device compatibility). Soon, risk management associated with mobile computing became a chief security concern at government agencies. Each new device added to a government network introduces substantial risks. Smart phones essentially bring their own separate network with them into a facility, and data stored on a device can easily leave the facility. Associated challenges for IT managers include deciding which mobile devices should have access to government internal networks, where device data should be stored and the requisite level of security for devices and connections. IT managers feel torn between protecting security by limiting mobile access and broadening access to meet employee demands and boost productivity. To respond to these new issues, government IT planners have sought out best practices for mobile computing security, including developing a solid risk management framework for the use of mobile devices in government. To meet the needs of such managers, the mobile enterprise management software market has evolved quite rapidly. These solutions help balance the need for both corporate- and employee-owned mobile devices — and the end-users. The convergence of enterprise mobile risk management and mobile enterprise management software has helped nudge agencies into the realm of full mobile enterprise management. Frameworks for mobile risk management can start with the following: Take a cue from the Defense Department and do a needs assessment to...

Mobile Enterprise Adoption News – MEAN Summary: 4 parts to an app. Context, Quality, Performance and Security. 1 and done, apps compared to adopted ones. Shape Up Your Mobile Apps: 4 Steps to Upping Your Enterprise App-titude By Steve Kovsky on Thursday, December 6 Mobile application development is a “touchy” thing – both literally and figuratively. I mean it literally, in the sense that users generally let their fingers do the walking across your mobile app’s interface, which has some very interesting implications for your GUI (graphical user interface), and figuratively, in the sense that there are a lot of ways to go very wrong in the mobile development process. I’ve had some limited experience in trying to design mobile apps, and a great deal of experience in using them. Very few apps that I download – and they must number in the thousands by now—pass the acid test of becoming permanent fixtures of my mobile experience. Most are “one and done” affairs, where I end up regretting the time I spent trying them out in the first place. So here are four things that make a mobile app really stand out, from my perspective: Context is king. No, that’s not a typo. As a career journalist, I naturally owe my allegiance to content as the reigning liege lord, but when it comes to mobile, I think it takes a back seat to context. I don’t just want my apps to know the answers to the questions I ask, I actually want them to know the questions I’m going to ask, and then answer them for me without my having to bother  to submit a query. Brevity is key in mobile transactions, just as it is in mobile communications. Less is much more. Utilizing fast access to Big Data repositories, combined with predictive modeling techniques, it is very possible for an app to be aware of my location and other status related to the task at hand, and therefore, to know what I want without my having to actually ask. Quality is queen. Since I’m using a monarchistic metaphor already, let’s stick with it. So many apps don’t make the grade because the just don’t hold up under pressure. With corporate apps...

Mobile Enterprise Adoption News: MEAN Summary: Enterprise is heading to mobile, but up until now its been mostly consumer facing What to know about internal apps compared to market consumer facing ones Breaking out enterprise mobility apps by platform Publishing private apps for the enterprise in consumer-oriented app stores? Here is what you need to know. We now live in an app-based world, as illustrated by the fact that over half the U.S. population now owns a smartphone. In the workplace, the ubiquity of smartphones combined with the growing popularity of BYOD policies has led to over 30 percent of mobile service revenues coming from the enterprise market – a figure expected to grow at double the rate of consumer-based revenues. Although enterprise is embracing mobile apps, the application ecosystem has largely been a consumer-oriented platform. Consider the Apple App Store. To publish an app to an iPhone or iPad, the usual workflow requires the app author to purchase a developer account, submit the app to Apple for review, and make the app available for the general public through the official App Store. But what if your business builds a custom application for internal use only? Apple, Android, and Windows Mobile are catching up to the needs of enterprise. Publishing private apps used to be awkward and clunky, but support is improving for all three platforms. Whether an enterprise needs to publish just one or two custom apps, or build its own private app store, each mobile platform has its own procedures to navigate. Enterprises that build iOS apps for their own internal use do not want to rely on the App Store for distribution. Publishing to the App Store requires waiting for review approval from Apple, and apps can be installed by anyone visiting the App Store. One solution to this problem is to instead use the Apple iOS Developer Enterprise Program. The program requires a $299 yearly license, and the license must be renewed as long as any apps created under it continue to be used. After developing the app itself, you need two pieces to complete the puzzle: a distribution certificate and a provisioning profile. The enterprise distribution certificate must be signed for the app using Xcode. The enterprise provisioning profile must be...