Across the world, business users are lowering their usage of PCs
in favor of smart mobile devices to access mails and business
applications. Some like Deloitte CTO Jerome Oglesby believe that
business executives will soon abandon their PCs, laptops and even
the more portable and lightweight netbooks in favor of more
personal mobile devices. Oglesby is of course talking from his
experience at Deloitte where more than 5,000 employees no longer
access e-mail on their notebooks, but only on their
smartphones.
While we are still years away from Deloitte-type mobile
environments at workplaces in India, mobile device and application
usage is nevertheless growing dramatically here as well.
Smartphones are more affordable and mobile operators are offering
attractive data plans, including flat rate Internet access.
Moreover, mobile operators have also begun offering business
applications like CRM and ERP for mobile devices in India. Several
companies provide smartphones to their employees—especially
mobile workers—for business use, and many employees use their
personal devices for company work. Overall, smartphones have
emerged as a critical business and productivity tool.
Smartphones pose new
challenges
This growing usage of smartphones in business environments is
throwing up new management challenges for both enterprises and
users. While many of the new challenges surround security of
applications and data residing in mobile devices, the bigger
challenge for businesses lies is ensuring an effective device
management.
While some organizations have a mobile device management policy
and system in place, which is similar to their IT asset management
system, most organizations lack such a system. However, subjecting
all devices used by employees to corporate management could be
challenging especially in environments where not many devices are
company assets—many employees use their own personal devices
for business use. Subjecting employee-owned devices to corporate
management will always be resisted as mobile devices are personal
in nature.
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