Five Mobile Trends You Can't Ignore

Here are five key trends that enterprise IT managers should consider for 2011:

1. Social networking: You may have your entire PC network locked down, from keyboard to firewall, but your employees can still participate in social networks while working. It’s extraordinarily easy for someone to have his or her work PC opened to work-related tasks while also having a portable device open to Facebook’s news feed. From an enterprise IT standpoint, often the first and last question is security, and the ability for people to move their personal status updates to personal devices does have the benefit of isolating problems onto secondary devices. Yet with the proliferation of enterprise-issued smartphones and unified communications, what happens online comes to fall within the purview of enterprise IT. Stray links can have the potential to download malware, and bogus Facebook apps can expose the personal information of employees to people who might wish to target those people for hacking attacks based on social engineering. Enterprise IT should educate users on the risks and protocols of social media, so that they don’t end up in situations that could compromise the integrity of the firm.
   
   
2. File synchronization services: With smartphones connecting to the cloud, there’s no longer a clear boundary between files that exist on a home PC, an enterprise PC, and a mobile device. One such service is Dropbox, which allows people to create folders on their hard drives that automatically sync to other Dropbox folders on separate PCs and on mobile devices. You can put a folder of Microsoft Office documents into your sync folder and read them on the airplane, right from your smartphone. While you don’t have to enable this type of functionality on your enterprise PCs, keep in mind that some people will request it, some will install it without permission, and others will figure out a way to bypass your restrictions to enable synched functionality across multiple devices. Your policies for securing end-user data have to be robust enough to handle this type of functionality.
   
   
3. Multiple OSs and form factors: Consumer devices are making their way into the enterprise, and the wall-to-wall press coverage of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas demonstrated the diversity of devices that your employees will be using. It used to be IT policy to issue one or two standard devices from the same manufacturer, to simplify support costs and to gain economies of scale in purchasing. That’s difficult to do when there are so many great choices, with options that meet the needs of specific individuals for specific jobs. IT departments are going to have to get better at supporting multiple operating systems and form factors.
   
   
4. Business apps: Technology vendors are responding to the rapid adoption of powerful smartphones and tablets with mobile applications that work seamlessly with enterprise databases. Whether it’s mobile ERP to check on the status of individual components of the supply chain (powered by RFID chips), customer service applications that make it easier for front-line employees to provide answers to customers, or customer-facing applications that enable greater self-service… there’s an app for enterprise IT.
   
   
5. Email: The mobile craze in the enterprise started with email, and email will continue to be a vital part of the picture for mobile users in the enterprise. Because of the greater dependence on mobile email, firms have an increased responsibility for making sure that mobile email never goes down. Enterprises also need stronger controls over spam, assurance that business-related correspondence is backed up and monitored for compliance purposes, and archiving policies that prevent the storage capacity of mobile devices from being overwhelmed.

For more information, see:

Crisis Management and Alerting

Nothing Is Too Sensitive for SaaS

Is Mobile Security Worth Worrying About?