Making enterprise mobility strategy 'like playing chess on acid'

Opening keynote reveals the difficulty in planning in a fast-changing environment

In the keynote speech that opened this year's Computing Enterprise Mobility Summit in London, Graeme Burton, chief reporter at Computing, likened the task of formulating mobility strategy to "playing chess on acid". Not only is the CIO required to be several steps ahead of current trends, but the playing board is prone to wild fluctuations in a game where some pieces can suddenly take on unexpected new powers, with others disappearing altogether.

Burton cited the case of BlackBerry. Three years ago few could have predicted that its dominant place in the mobile enterprise was in any danger, yet it has now been surpassed by consumer brand Apple as the mobility platform of choice, according to Computing's own research.

Another slide demonstrated the meteoric rise of the tablet computer as a bona fide business device, with tablets expected to overtake laptops as the main device used by mobile workers in the next three years.

This type of "black swan" change can trip up even the most careful of planners, said Burton.

"It's a tricky strategic game to align IT, business goals and users' expectations."

Burton went on to look at the key drivers for mobility. The main one at 47 per cent was demand from non-senior users, those always-on, often younger employees who want to use the latest consumer gizmos at work. However, demand from senior management - the fabled CEO with his new iPad - was significant too, with 33 per cent of those surveyed mentioning this as a major factor.

However, despite smartphones and tablets being the public face of mobility, such devices come last on the list of priorities for IT professionals. Top of the list was security and control and pressures on the infrastructure. Half of the survey respondents said they had offices overseas - 27 countries being the average. Rolling out mobility across such systems will never be an easy task.

Burton then showed a slide demonstrating what organisations are looking to get out of a mobility strategy. The survey results showed that increasing efficiency and productivity was far and away the most sought-after benefit of enterprise mobility, with 74 per cent saying this was one of their top priorities. Keeping users happy was next at 42 per cent. Unusually for IT interventions, achieving cost savings was a distant fifth at 29 per cent.

There are big technology-driven changes going on, said Burton, rounding off the speech with a slide of King Canute to describe the fate of those IT leaders who might be tempted to set their faces against these changes.