Even though the majority of large enterprises believe mobile to be the greatest factor in organisational competitiveness, most still lack a formal mobile strategy.
This is according to a global survey commissioned by Citrix across Europe and the BRICS countries, which shows that 80% of enterprises believe mobile will boost their competitiveness, while 41% do not have a formal mobile strategy.
Commissioned to produce a snapshot of mobility across the globe, the Citrix "Mobility in Business" report polled 1 700 senior IT decision-makers across 17 countries. Respondents were asked about the advantages and challenges of implementing mobile initiatives, their current policies towards mobile devices, and the impact consumerisation of IT is having on their businesses.
Ad hoc implementations
Analysing the findings, Michael Church, enterprise manager at Citrix SA, says, in most cases, the shift towards a mobile enterprise emerges in a gradual, ad hoc manner through limited initiatives such as mobile e-mail and remote access.
He explains that, often, organisations are unable to support multiple mobile applications and devices; they have unfit legacy systems; and they don't have the knowledge on how to implement a formal enterprise mobility policy.
"However, recent Citrix research shows that although 41% of organisations in the BRICS countries admit to being without a formal mobile strategy, 12.5% expect to have one in place within a year," says Church.
He believes it is critical for enterprises to have a mobile strategy in place, as compliance, data protection and privacy concerns are the top considerations for any organisation using enterprise mobility.
"In previous decades, IT had the luxury of end-to-end control of endpoints, networks, servers, applications and data. Not so much anymore. Security architectures haven't been updated to reflect this reality. The practice of 'secure everything equally and hope for the best' just doesn't cut it," says Church.
He adds that IT needs to ensure it can retain overall governance as an influx of consumer devices enters the workplace - by centralising data and, ultimately, focusing on data and applications rather than devices.
Remaining compliant
Church also notes that with a strategic enterprise mobility policy, organisations can easily ensure business information is available when and where it is needed, while remaining compliant. With organisations constantly requiring access to business apps and services, mobility enables people to access the service of their choice from any operating system and any device, he points out.
With the ability to cut costs and realise full productivity, organisations can now achieve maximum profitability, he stresses.
"For many CIOs, mobility is about technology and process, but it is much more than that. Mobility can contribute to greater work-life harmony and, ultimately, better living. It is as much about reassessing the workforce culture as it is about technology," Church says.
"For businesses, mobility is a tremendous opportunity to empower more people in places that aren't their regular workplace. Implemented effectively, a mobility solution can have a profound impact on people's working lives, allowing them to deal with the disruptions they face every day, from caring for a sick child, to more significant issues such as the impact of global politics on businesses."
Across the BRICS countries, organisations reported an average of three main barriers preventing formal support for mobile initiatives: a lack of ability to support multiple mobile applications (40%), unfit legacy systems (36.25%), and a lack of strategy on how employees should best implement mobility (35.5%).
Unidentified computing devices
According to the report, 55% of BRICS organisations are concerned about the number of unidentified computing devices accessing their business networks. This includes desktops, laptops, notebooks, netbooks, ultrabooks, smartphones and tablets that are not provisioned by an IT department and are, therefore, unknown. Worldwide, organisations report an average of 425 such connections every day, with the highest figures from businesses in Brazil (994), Canada (649) and Japan (618).
The research also reveals that an increasing number of enterprises around the world are embracing open source platforms. Android was by far the most popular mobile platform, according to respondents in the BRICS countries, with 80% saying they supported or were planning to support it.
The second and third most popular were Windows 8 (65%) and Apple iOS (45%). The BlackBerry platform received support from 26% of respondents. Looking at the adoption of such platforms, 81% of respondents reported an increase in the use of Android within their organisations, followed by Windows 8 (57%), Apple iOS (51%), Windows Mobile (37%) and BlackBerry (19%).
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