Enterprise mobility to top CIO agenda in 2015: Ovum

With mobile consumerisation driving the enterprise mobility market in recent years, mobility promises to be high on the list of priorities for all CIOs, according to Ovum’s 2015 Trends to Watch: Enterprise Mobility report.

Richard Absalom, senior analyst, enterprise mobility, Ovum, said while pressure from end users continues to have an impact on the market, enterprises must become more proactive with their mobility strategies and look for ways that all mobile devices and apps can work in tandem with other endpoints.

“Vendors and service providers in the space need to keep expanding the range of features and services that they offer to meet the growing range of demands, and they will also need to continue to build effective partnerships, especially in support of large, global organisations which expect and demand consistent global service delivery,” Absalom said.

According to Ovum, there are five key trends in the mobile consumerisation market

1. The “mobility mismatch” between employers and employees will persist – for example, the rate of bring your own device (BYOD) behaviour continues to grow, but it is not being embraced by IT at the same rate.
2. Organisations will move beyond BYOD, to make more of a distinction of formal versus informal and managed versus unmanaged services. This will be prompted partly by the introduction of more formal support models for employee-liable connections and devices. In some companies, particularly those with high security/data protection needs, a corporate-liable approach will be sustained, possibly alongside formal managed BYOD.
3. Enterprise mobility management will be framed in a “workspace” strategy, incorporating management of all endpoints and applications, with the aim of giving employees access to the tools and data they need wherever they are and whichever device they are using.
4. Senior line of business executives, particularly in HR, procurement, and operations, will also have an increasing influence on deployments.
5. SMEs and the vendors that sell to them will have a stronger focus on mobility, but this is expected to be a challenge for service providers, which are not generally viewed as trusted partners by SMEs when it comes to delivering IT services.