Prepare for the tidal wave

The growth of mobile broadband among businesses and the consumerisation of enterprise IT present two distinct problems (Enterprise use of ‘big-screen’ mobile broadband set to triple). Primarily, organisations now face the challenge of working with consumer devices not designed to be secured by the enterprise, even though they have long had to cope with securing users in the field. However, if iPads and tablets are to be an asset rather than a liability, IT managers do need to ensure that they can remote manage such devices and set appropriate access and resource policies.

These devices also present a significant challenge for the stretched mobile networks. Mobile broadband downloads already strain 3G capacity and many operators are struggling to maintain margins on these connections. It is critical that operators get their houses in order and learn to optimise traffic over their existing networks, while also working to run traffic over 4G networks, before the emerging data flow becomes a tidal wave that will overwhelm the unprepared infrastructure.
Owen Cole, F5 Networks