How is mobility transforming the enterprise? What is the fizzle that drives success? What are the key tools and trends to keep in mind for 2015? Every year we advise our customers and partners on the top trends in mobile and what it means for them. This year we've expanded this by ‎looking specifically at enterprise mobility trends based on insights from customers, research and more.

1. Top 8
Enterprise
Mobility
Trends 2015

2. 1. Mobility is Transforming The Enterprise
The Internet transformed the way we communicate, acquire and
engage with customers and how we buy and sell products and
services. Mobility services are having an even bigger impact
giving employees and customers the freedom to spend more time
performing their work and less time on administration at their desk.
This has the potential of changing every organisation and so
far we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible. Sales,
customer service, production, inspections, security, sensors,
transportation, and operations - every area is changing and
some changes are truly disruptive.
“Enterprise mobility is the
manifestation of a much
broader shift to new systems
of engagement.”
Forrester, 2015

3. What this means for you
Start by understanding the needs, opportunities and current status:
Identify the roles / personas that could leverage mobility services
Interview these roles / key stakeholders about their problems /
challenges, opportunities with mobility services and what they want
Analyse usage data from current mobility services to understand
what works and doesn’t work
Perform a use case analysis to identify opportunities that your staff
may not have identified themselves
Once you know what your employees’ and customers’ needs
are, prioritise based on opportunity (revenue and cost savings),
complexity and cost and develop a roadmap.
Relevant work carried out for clients include 3M, London Heatrow
Airport and Warburtons.
Prioritise based on opportunity, complexity
and cost when developing a roadmap

4. 2. Application Management
We’ve talked about this for over a year but mobility managed services
are now finally starting to change. It’s no longer a question of company
owned devices vs. BYOD. With employees wanting to upgrade to the
latest iOS and Android devices and wearables every 12 months for
personal and work use it’s impossible for companies to keep up with
the device upgrade cycles and BYOD becomes inevitable.
Challenges also include employees using company devices for private
matters and private devices for business, which causes big privacy
concerns. The most important thing is secure management of the
applications and content.

5. What this means for you
Devices need management and applications need security but this
doesn’t mean they need to work together and cannot be separated.
Organisations should re-evaluate their needs for management of
confidential and private data based on requirements and needs.
Rethink the concept of BYOD and focus on securing company data
and maybe it won’t be as complex anymore.
Rethink the concept of BYOD

6. 3. Web Apps, Hybrid and Native Apps
In 2014 enterprises spent 39% of time on native, 30% on hybrid and
31% on mobile web apps.* Forrester, Gartner and other analysts
all spoke about how mobile web and hybrid apps are taking over
the enterprise space, but we’ve seen a growing demand for native
apps. Organisations that are focusing on one or two platforms are
specifically stating that they want a native experience to live up to
employee and customer demand. Xamarin and possibly a couple of
other cross-platform solutions can deliver this but at a cost that is
usually higher than native development. Phonegap/Cordova, which
is the basis for most hybrid apps including IBM Worklight and Oracle
Mobile, is great for delivering cross-platform web apps but they are
always a compromise in terms of user experience.
*Source: CIO Strategic Marketing Services - “The Connected Enterprise: Keeping Pace with Mobile Development”

7. What this means for you
It’s not an easy decision so try to make it as fact based as possible.
Assess your needs in terms of functionality, user experience and
performance. Then evaluate this versus the available technologies,
skills that your internal team or development partner has (web vs.
native iOS, Android and Windows developers) and the budget
available for development and more importantly long-term
maintenance.
Relevant work carried out for clients include:
Native 3M, Warburtons and US Coast Guard
Hybrid Bookatable, Budgetplaces and Life-Link
Make your decision based on needs vs.
technologies, skills and budget

8. 4. (Big) Data is The Fizzle That Drives Success
Good mobile services are useful, easy to use and fast. They get the
work done. Great mobile services are powered by data to deliver a
smart personalised experience and constantly monitor and collect
data that can be used to improve the business and future versions
of the app. This is the fizzle that will make your enterprise mobility
service stand out. Great examples include Google Maps prediction of
what you are searching for based on previous searches and content
(e.g. a hotel booking).

9. What this means for you
Gather insights on the use cases and identify what data could
be used to enhance the service and the sources available to get
it. If it’s not available through existing SOA / APIs then evaluate
solutions such as Google Cloud Biq Query to easily build a data
layer. Then evaluate what data / metrics are key to further improve
the understanding of the user profile and needs to personalise and
enhance the experience.
Relevant work carried out for clients include Lexmark and
a Global Manufacturing Company.
Improve your service by personalising
and enhancing the experience

10. 5. Tablets Replacing The Laptop
With the phablet trend smartphones are becoming bigger and tablets
are becoming smarter and faster with accessories such as keyboard
and mouse becoming more common. In 2014 Microsoft also finally
released Office for iOS and continued to improve the Surface, which
means that both iPad and Surface are now a credible replacement
for laptops for most people.

11. What this means for you
It’s time to rethink how we see computers for work. Do we really
need a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop and accessories to make the
laptop into a desktop? Assess how you can reduce the number of
devices that employees need at work and in the field. Maybe there
are better solutions.
Relevant work carried out for clients include pilots by BP, CEMEX
and DMI.
Do we really need three different devices
to make the laptop into a desktop?

12. 6. Apple Continues to Dominate
According to the latest research data, Apple continues to dominate
the enterprise space in the US (69% of smartphones and 89% of
tablets sold to enterprise in the US*) in particular albeit with a slightly
lower market share in the rest of the world. Why is this? Because
it’s the first choice when employees and customers have a say. The
devices, user experience, service integration and apps for iOS are
simply better than similar Android and Windows Phone devices. The
main reason for choosing another OS is usually cost or technology
preference by IT. Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry are
constantly improving their hardware and software however and in
some markets and segments one of these have a greater preference.
*Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/10/android-apple-enterprise-market-share/

13. What this means for you
Employees chose where they work and they also want to chose
what mobile device they use. Apple devices may be more expensive
but the employee satisfaction often outweighs this. Evaluate the total
ROI including productivity, cost of training, maintenance and life span
and don’t just look at capabilities and cost.
Relevant work carried out for clients include:
iOS only 3M, Bosch & Lomb, Novartis
Android only Warburtons
Windows Phone only US Coast Guard
Employee satisfaction often outweighs
a higher cost

14. 7. Security is A Barrier
We often hear that the main barrier for mobile enabling enterprise
services is security concerns. With mobile devices being used over
open connections, devices getting lost, apps being installed on
employee devices, constant hack attempts, the ability to reverse
engineer code, the vulnerability of connected devices (IoT) and
other security threats the organisations simply don’t think that the
opportunities outweigh the risks yet.

15. What this means for you
Security is and should be a concern but there are plenty of great
solutions that provide security equal to, or better than, existing
PC web solutions. Therefore this shouldn’t be a barrier anymore.
However, this is complex due to the large number of platforms and
type of services available. We work with Mocana, Fixmo, Mobile Iron,
Airwatch, Good, CA, MyMobileSecurity and plenty of others and
each one have their use case and pros and cons.
Start by defining your needs and then have an expert assess and
recommend the best solution for you. Don’t accept no as an answer
from your IT, security or legal team.
Relevant work carried out for clients include Allergan, CEMEX and
the US Government.
Let an expert recommend the best
solution for you and your company

16. 8. Mobile Cloud Platforms
Over the past year a myriad of mobile cloud platforms launched by
start-ups and established players. This includes companies such
as Kinvey, Telerik, Kony, FeedHenry and KidoZen and solutions
including IBM Worklight, Adobe Cloud and SAP Mobile Platform. The
benefits are stated to include everything from faster development
and deployment cycles, drag and drop app creation interfaces,
multi-platform support, IoT backends and plug-ins to the major
backend platforms (SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, JD Edwards, IBM
WebSphere, etc.).

17. What this means for you
Gartner and Forrester have provided several great reports worth
reading. We’ve worked with most of them one or two times based
on customer requirements and from our perspective none of these
stand out, all of them lock customers in and often compromise the
user experience. In addition to this they can turn out to be very
expensive. Instead we believe Google, Amazon and Microsoft are
driving the greatest innovation in this space and provide the most
flexible and scalable solutions.
First of all, think about why you need a mobile cloud platform at
all. Maybe all you need is a good CMS and cloud-hosting provider
to support your app. If your mobile service has heavy back-end
integration, start by looking at the capabilities of your existing
backend and the skills of your developers. Often the mobile cloud
platforms add an extra layer in-between without adding any value.
Also evaluate the capabilities of Google Cloud, Amazon Cloud and
Microsoft Azure as they usually provide the greatest bang for your
buck thanks to their scale.
These alternatives provide the greatest
bang for your buck thanks to their scale

18. 18
Stay Ahead in Mobile
You can always find further reading and more valuable insights on
our SlideShare channel. Do you want to stay one step ahead of your
competition in 2015? Then make sure you also check out our Top 10
Mobile Trends for 2015 presentation by clicking the image above.
For more information, contact us at info@goldengekko.com.

19. Fighting for a world
full of mobile solutions
since 2005
web www.goldengekko.com
email info@goldengekko.com