Jonathan Brasnett, head of global mobility of BT Global Services, predicts a surge in mobile solutions in the enterprise space in 2011
“2010 was a breakthrough year for enterprise mobility. Even though recessionary pressure held back non-urgent investments, the flood of tablets, smartphones and mobile apps into organisations gave CIOs a new set of challenges to address and an even bigger set of opportunities to exploit.
“This is the year enterprise mobility becomes mainstream. 2011 is shaping up for unprecedented growth in mobile as large commercial organisations and the public sector seriously exploit mobile apps to improve customer satisfaction, increase employee productivity and make business more efficient.
“We’re already seeing surging demand for solutions that address specific business process and sector pain points, especially in finance, manufacturing, supply chain, CPG, retail, healthcare and local government. This trend favours vendors that have strong vertical sector expertise.
“We also see CIOs addressing mounting security concerns around employee-owned devices entering the workplace; many organisations are putting strong controls in place (many for the first time) and investing in services to manage the risk.
“We will end 2011 with more operating systems and form factors than we started with, higher employee usage and higher costs, especially as operators introduce higher tariffs for data and video. This is focusing CIOs and CFOs on services that help them control spiralling bills from operators.
“Cost pressure and legislation will drive mobile and flexible working, not just in home-working and desk-sharing, but in property portfolio rationalisation, cultural change and new styles of working. 2011 will also be the year many industries start to transform materials handling, asset and inventory management with the use of M2M and RFID solutions.”
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