– Sudhir Narasimhan, Consulting Editor, Trivone Digital Services
Enterprise mobility as a concept has been discussed for a long time now and with the advent of smartphones pundits predicted how application access would eventually move from desktops and laptops to mobile phones. The potential of mobility as a great opportunity for system integrators has also been talked about a great deal. However, the uptake of mobility by corporates in the Indian context has not been great so far.
Even today, the mobile device usage by most enterprises is limited to only two applications—mail and messaging. Bulk of the 44 million smart phones sold in India last year was mostly lapped up by individual users. We have of course, seen some cases where enterprises have integrated more applications, like CRM for instance, on mobile.
But these are mostly the exceptions. However, this is not to say corporates will deploy mobility in a limited way in the days to come. Many CIOs I spoke to, see value in deploying mobility in their organizations and they tell me they are considering moving more applications to the mobile platform. But only after they address issues like mobile device security and internal processes of their organizations, which need to be tweaked to allow mobile deployment.
This also implies that mobility will offer many opportunities for enterprise resellers and system integrators in the years to come. Unlike laptops and desktops, which enterprises upgrade once in three years, mobile devices will require faster upgrades. Mobile device management is also an area that requires considerable support and an opportunity for system integrators.
Every mobile operating system upgrade will come with their own support challenges and this is where enterprises will look to their integration partners. One more area is that of application modernization. As enterprises continue to upgrade hardware and OS, applications need to be tweaked to run on new versions. This is one more area for channel partners to cash in on.
There are also a whole bunch of products, which were originally not meant to address mobility, but today have elements of mobility in them. These also provide integration opportunities. Mobile security is also yet another area VARs and system integrators could focus upon.
There is also a software development opportunity that will unfold once enterprises embrace mobility on a larger scale. In the next phase in mobility, as enterprises will start creating more and more mobile apps, their development is also a major opportunity for channels. This, however, will require you to invest on people with expertise in various mobile platforms, particularly Android and iOS.
Are you geared up to address enterprise mobility? What’s your own view of how the channel can strategize for mobility? Do share with us. We would love to hear from you.