The Healthy Tension That Mobility Creates
- by Kathryn Perry
A guest post by Hernan Capdevila, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps
In my previous post, I talked about the value of the mobile revolution on
businesses and workers. Now let me put on a different hat and view the world
from the IT department and the IT leader’s viewpoint. The IT leader has
different concerns – around privacy, potential liability of information leakage,
and intellectual property protection. These concerns and the leader’s goals
create a healthy tension with the users.
For example, effective device management becomes a must have for the IT
leader, especially if you look at the Android ecosystem as an example. There are
benefits to the Android strategy, but there are also drawbacks, such as
uniformity – in device management, in operating systems, and in the application
taxonomy and capabilities. Whereas, if you compare Android to iOS, Apple's
operating system, iOS is more unified, more streamlined, and easier to manage.
In either case, this is where mobile device management in the cloud makes
good sense. I don't think IT departments should be hosting device management and
managing that complexity. It should be a cloud service and I predict it's going
to be key for our customers.
A New Focus for IT Departments
So where does that leave the IT departments? I think their futures are in
governance, which is a more strategic play than a tactical one. Device
management is tactical and it's the “now” topic. But the mobile phenomenon, if
you will, is going to drive significant change in terms of how IT plans, hosts,
and deploys enterprise applications.
For example, opening up enterprise applications for mobile users presents
some challenges unless you deploy more complicated network topologies, such as
virtual private networks and threat protection technology. If you really want
employees to be mobile you need to remove those kinds of barriers. But I don’t
think IT departments want to wrestle with exposing their private enterprise data
centers and being responsible for hosted business applications – applications in
a sense that they’re making vulnerable to the public world. This opens up a
significant need and a significant driver for cloud applications.
However, it's not just about taking away the complexity – it's also about
taking away the responsibility. Why should every business have to carry the
responsibility and figure out all the nuts and bolts of how to protect
themselves in this public, mobile world? When you use apps in the cloud, either
your vendor or your hosting partner should have figured all that out. They need
to assure the business that they are adhering to all sorts of security and
compliance regulations so users can be connected and have access to information
anywhere anytime.
More Ideas and Better Service
What’s more interesting is the world of possibilities that the connected,
cloud-based world enables. I believe that the one-size-fits-all, uber-best
practices, lowest-common denominator-like capabilities will go away. IT will now
be able to solve very specific business challenges for the different corporate
functions it serves. In this new world, IT will play a key role in enabling
different organizations within a company to be best in class and delivering
greater value to the line of business managers. IT will actually help to
differentiate. Net result is a more agile workforce and business because each
department is getting work done its own way.
