Enterprise mobility has been on the horizon for a long time. But it’s only now that the concept is being put into real-world applications in a secure way
By Durba Ghosh
How would you like to break a deal while you are on a holiday far away, or give a presentation to investors, while you are stuck in traffic? As a corporate employee, you are most likely doing that already—all thanks to enterprise mobility becoming a reality. Put simply, enterprise mobility is a way of connecting people of an organization through various hand-held devices and enabling them to work even when they are on the move or away from their desks.
In this fast paced life, enterprise mobility has made juggling of personal and professional life easier. It is transforming businesses across the globe, and is changing the way business processes are managed and delivered. The growth of smart mobile devices, better connectivity with 3G and 4G services and exponential growth of IT are fast blurring the lines between business and personal use of mobile devices.
“Enterprise mobility is on fire. BYOD, wireless connectivity and tablets are fueling its growth. It is now seen as a productivity booster. The industry has doubled sales in the last two years,” says Yedunandan S, Principal Consultant, Mobility, Cisco India.
Enterprise mobility, which a few years back was a niche trend, is now taking center stage in every industry. From being used only for on-field jobs, it is turning into a company-wide phenomenon. The thrust for the whole of last year was majorly to understand and manage the initial push toward mobility elements like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Mobile Device Management (MDM). Companies, however, are still wary of providing access to core applications over hand held devices, and employees are primarily limited to basic mobile access like e-mails and corporate calendars.
The year 2013 is believed to give that much needed push to corporates to actually mobilize their workforce, where a core official task can be taken care of on-the go. Industry players say Platform as a Service (PaaS) technologies will become more common, that will help employees interact with enterprise applications in real-time, on a handheld device. A cloud-based technology, PaaS will also provide companies with high level of scalability. It also offers employees the customization required in accordance with the role or job.
Benefits of enterprise mobility span the business-to-employee, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) segments. Enterprise mobility can improve an organization’s productivity, optimize logistics operations, enhance customer relationships and streamline supply chain management. New mobile applications provide sales staff with updated information about their customers and new ways for field forces to work more effectively.
“Mobility has enabled us to unlock location-based working. We are no longer attached to the desktop. Interaction between devices are being developed such that companies can hire talent from places far away, without re-locating them,” says Anand Sinha, Chief Architect – Technology and Innovation platform, SAP Labs.
The challenges
Mobility offers endless possibilities to enterprises, but it is also marred with significant challenges. The first is to develop an enterprise mobility strategy, followed by management, implementation and securing technologies across a broad spectrum of devices and carriers. There is a need for companies to decide which mobile devices are most appropriate for which employees or groups of employees. The challenge is to provide employees with the mobile devices they need to do their jobs, without overspending on communications products.
“Enterprise mobility cuts across the organization. At CEO and high management level, it has more to do with analytics or finishing a task on the go. But, there is a need for application development and data management at different levels. Data on employee’s device or company’s device needs to be managed through MDM solutions. We are still in a place where things are maturing,” says Sinha.
Deploying enterprise mobility applications across the spectrum of devices and carriers requires its own management infrastructure. Companies are now seeing rapid growth in the number and types of devices and applications that must be provisioned and managed. While companies can invest in MDM tools from a variety of vendors, system managers typically find these tools awkward and complex to implement, even for a single group of users.
Scaling out management tools for many users with many different device types and usage profiles can become incredibly labor intensive and costly. Mobile phones increasingly exhibit the security vulnerabilities of full-sized computers. Most of the PC and Web-related security issues now in existence will impact the mobile platform as well. The move toward application openness—in which any application can be used on any device on any network—escalates this problem as more and more mobile malware is being deployed.
“It is not a choice anymore, it has become a norm. Companies are now accepting to open up, but they are still dealing with concerns about how to make it secure. They are dealing with the unknown: they do not know when a device enters the premises and when it leaves. They do not know what personal applications are installed in the device that can play hindrance to corporate applications,” says Jagdish Mahapatra, Managing Director, McAfee India & SAARC.
Security of mobile devices has been the primary concern for companies when it comes to mobility. With the explosion of smartphones and tablets, it is even more crucial that business-critical data is protected.
Companies are now aligning their security policies with business objectives to maximize benefits. They are also formulating safeguards and security frameworks for different levels of employee structure, since requirement of each job is distinct. While higher level managers require access to sensitive data, others can be connected only by corporate mails.
Mahapatra reckons that security solutions will need about 2 years more of development to be near-foolproof. With devices and operating systems set to double in next 2 years, he also highlighted the need for solutions that are agnostic to both. Currently, different applications are developed for different operating systems. According to McAfee, 90% of malware are on Android platform, which is popular particularly in India and China.
To address the security requirements of the enterprises, McAfee offers virtual containers, which segregates official and personal information that can be retrieved remotely from a network in case of device loss or theft.
Citrix also offers a data protection solution to enterprises, wherein the data transfer happens only in the form of an image over the network, while encrypted data is kept safe behind a firewall.
“There should be security from the application point of view, wherein, instead of securing the data, applications are securely provided to the end-point devices to ensure a device and network agnostic solution,” says Seemant Chaudhry, Desktop Transformation Evangelist, Citrix India.
Device Management
Mobile Device Management (MDM) and application management at the device network level are also compelling options for an enterprise. MDM services typically manage aspects such as what applications employees can install on their devices, enforce compliance with company policy and ensure the secure deployment of enterprise applications onto mobile devices.
In the event of an employee losing a device or it being stolen, MDM also allows the IT department to remotely lock and wipe company-sensitive data. Visibility into mobile device usage patterns forms the first step in effective Mobile Device Management. Real-time visibility makes it possible to identify and flag devices that do not meet a company’s security parameters or those that need to be updated. MDM also has the capability to automate history logs for users and groups, which in turn helps companies analyze and forecast expenses.
BlackBerry, one of the pioneers in the enterprise mobility space, is taking its data encryption capabilities to other operating systems also. The company is offering end-to-end data security and management solutions to the enterprises across Android, Apple and BlackBerry operating systems.
“We believe there is a need to separate official data from personal data. We make sure that while official data is wiped clean, personal data is not touched, even with cross breed social network applications, which are nowadays used for corporate as well personal use,” says Sunil Lalvani – Director, Enterprise Sales, BlackBerry India. A lifecycle-based MDM solution also lets IT set limits for usage, tailor the security parameters and apply granular control rather than a blanket ban on applications.
Businesses can also use secure content distribution tools to distribute sensitive corporate information without exposing the rest of the corporate network. Whilst IT administrators can use MDM tools to monitor corporate data on mobile devices, personal data can be put beyond the view and reach of the company, so that employees do not have to worry about their personal information being exposed.
Businesses today also need the ability to track and correlate employee, device and service plan status. The introduction of a full-featured device management solution inevitably uncovers service plan payments being made for devices that are no longer in use or reimbursements coming out of a department’s budget for employees who have left the company or changed jobs. An effective MDM solution can also help a company forecast its infrastructure capacity planning more accurately through the analysis of device usage.
The best policies are those that can be flexible. With enterprise mobility constantly evolving, innovative new devices and tools will need to be integrated into future policies. MDM provides the means to take on new operating systems and devices without halting or undermining existing security measures.
Enterprise mobility has empowered companies beyond office space, and has enabled round-the-clock window to finish tasks. However, mobility solutions today are used to demand work output from employees anytime, rather than actually increasing the productivity. While mobility is blurring the gaps between official and personal life, it should not merge completely. A solution that separates both, and, at the same time, allows an employee to juggle both on the same device is imperative.
