Orchestrating Enterprise Mobility - The Next IT-Business Opportunity

The Next IT-Business Opportunity

As a result of the global business slowdown, the IT organization is now in a prime position to create efficiencies that will position companies to grow when the economy improves. IT can, in many cases, gain approval for the adoption of technology solutions because of their positive effect on the bottom line—an effect that earns the support of corporate and line-of-business managers.

“A larger IT role in mobility means improved security and reduced costs overall,” says Barrera of Sears Canada. Boeing’s Humphrey backs that up: “IT’s involvement lowered our costs and made our customers much happier.”

For most technologies, IT is an eager driver of adoption: For example, virtualization is barely understood outside the data center, but finance does understand the benefits of a smaller HVAC bill. Information lifecycle management and business process improvement may be esoteric and Web 2.0 faddish, but IT promotes them to meet increasingly evident business needs.

But what about mobility? This technology’s clear cost benefits and wide familiarity should make it low-hanging fruit in the IT pipeline. Clearly, then, it’s time for technology management to join business management to orchestrate a mobile enterprise that is agile, responsive, secure and profitable.

Stats on the Study

The Baseline Mobile Enterprise study, fielded in March 2009 by Ziff Davis Enterprise Research in conjunction with Keane, surveyed 245 managers who are driving enterprisewide mobility strategies in organizations with at least 500 employees. An additional 347 managers with lesser scope or in smaller firms were surveyed for comparison’s sake. However, unless otherwise indicated, the results presented here are for organizations, public and private, with at least 500 total employees worldwide.