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SA enterprises need mobile sense of urgency

Enterprises' 'wait and see' approach must change to an active strategic approach.

By Tracy Burrows, ITWeb contributor.
Johannesburg, 26 Apr 2016
Paulo Ferreira, director of Enterprise Mobility at Samsung South Africa
Paulo Ferreira, director of Enterprise Mobility at Samsung South Africa

The Internet of things (IOT) is a concept that has developed from a vision of an always-on connected world. With this as motivation, Samsung Electronics is striving to enrich people's lives by providing intuitive mobile devices and appliances that enable truly connected living for everyone, everywhere.

According to Paulo Ferreira, director of Enterprise Mobility at Samsung South Africa, South African enterprises have taken a 'wait and see' approach on mobile enterprise strategies for far too long and need to take urgent steps to put strategies in place.

This was underlined by a recent Mobility Strategy survey conducted by Samsung South Africa, adds Ferreira. Among the survey findings, over 45% of respondents said their respective companies had a 'minimally developed' or no mobile strategy, while 36% had a moderately developed mobile strategy, and only 17% of organisations had an extensively developed mobile strategy in place to address their top mobile priorities.

"This supports our own experience in South Africa, where we've seen many organisations hesitating to finalise their mobile enterprise strategies. Many have opted to wait and see whether a dominant mobile operating system would emerge in the enterprise space; others delayed in determining what devices would take the lead. However, experience shows us that mobile devices and operating systems are constantly evolving and improving. Tablets made strong inroads some years ago and now we see wearables and virtual reality entering the enterprise arena. Even IOT ecosystems are impacting on the mobile enterprise space, as mobile devices become the presentation layer for the IOT ecosystem," says Ferreira.

Delaying a mobile enterprise strategy is no longer an option, Ferreira points out. "If IT departments don't refine and start implementing comprehensive mobile strategies now, other business units like sales and marketing will simply start implementing mobile strategies and solutions themselves and IT will be caught unprepared. For effective management and security, it would be far better for them to start with an all-encompassing strategy covering best-of-breed approaches and solutions to meet all line of business requirements."

Ferreira continues: "In the foreseeable future, Android, iOS, and to some extent, Windows, will be the main mobile operating systems for enterprise. Ideally, enterprises should support the three key platforms, as well as making provision for future disruptive technologies that may emerge.

"There is no point in waiting for a single dominant player to surface before embarking on a mobile enterprise strategy, because the mobile industry is dynamic and changes faster than other infrastructure elements of corporate IT," says Ferreira.

While they may have little in the way of formal enterprise mobility strategies or solutions in place, local initiatives appear to be very willing to implement a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, with over 84% of survey respondents saying their enterprises offer some or full support for employees to use their own devices for work functions, while only 15% say their organisations offered no support for this. Android use is approved within 84% of organisations, followed by iOS at 70%, Windows at 71% and BlackBerry at 33%. Regarding the types of devices that organisations state they support, 93% said smartphones, 88% said tablets, 11% said wearables and 15% said IOT/M2M or other connected devices.

This highlights the way in which mobile will proliferate in the enterprise space, with or without a strategy. "A comprehensive strategy is crucial for controlling the environment, particularly when it comes to security. Security is of paramount importance in the mobile enterprise space," Ferreira notes. Without an effective mobile strategy, controlling access to corporate data and company networks becomes difficult, if not impossible.

"Companies without a formal mobile strategy need to start putting one in place now. From a hardware manufacturers' perspective, we think the first step should be to segment users, determine the roles within the organisation and then decide which users the company will supply with devices and which ones will have BYOD support. They must also decide which devices to purchase and support, as well as laying the foundation for the management and security of the various devices, platforms and applications," concludes Ferreira.

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Editorial contacts

Tracy Burrows
ITWeb
Phathu Nepfumbada
Samsung
011 549 7969
p.nepfumbada@samsung.com