More than ever, enterprises are dealing with two fundamental pain points - providing secure identity and access to an increasingly mobile workforce, and managing the growing diversity of applications, data and devices.
This is according to VMware, as it outlines its vision for the future of business mobility with new solutions and services to enable organisations to transform business processes.
The company says the strategy aims to free businesses from more than a decade of client-server-focused IT - which enabled mobile access to a limited number of productivity applications - and now deliver a more user- and application-centric experience for the enterprise, says VMware.
To support the strategy, the company unveiled VMware Identity Manager, an identity-as-a-service platform designed to enable secure enterprise management. It is also furthering its commitment to Apple and the iOS platform with the development of application configuration templates and vertical solutions in industries like healthcare, aviation and education.
Sanjay Poonen, executive VP and GM for end-user computing at VMware, says business mobility will be a key driver of economic value for the next decade - truly reorienting businesses around mobile innovation, apps and services.
Africa, in particular, is a geography that can gain immense benefit from business mobility, considering there are more mobile devices than fixed desktop devices in the continent, says Nick Black, business manager, end-user computing for VMware in sub-Saharan Africa.
However, he notes, infrastructure, in particular network performance, needs to catch up to ensure ubiquitous access for all.
He says businesses at this point realise mobility has arrived and help IT to enable users with mobile solutions to become more productive while enforcing security and compliance.
This means IT decision-makers should be looking for a single or common platform that allows for ease of management of both traditional compute devices, but also myriad mobile devices, says Black.
With IT having little to no control over an employee's choice of end-point operating systems, he believes the need to manage employee identity is a foundational element for enabling business mobility.
"Business mobility is fundamentally a mental shift - it means that work is something you do, not somewhere you go. This is perhaps unsettling for management in terms of trust but in reality employees should be able to transact, compute and perform other work-related tasks from anywhere, on any device."
As a result, business will become faster, more agile and potentially gains a competitive advantage, he concludes.
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