Enterprise Mobility Summit 2014: Firms that fail to keep up with mobile advances are doomed, warns Oracle

No CIO has a proper strategy, says mobile tech director Bushby

Oracle has warned that companies that fail to keep up with advances in enterprise mobility risk the same fate as Netware or Novell - firms that suffered because they had no strategy to fully exploit the shift from text-based interfaces to GUIs.

Speaking at Computing's Enterprise Mobility Summit 2014 in London recently, Oracle's UK technology director for mobility and information security, Andrew Bushby, said he doesn't consider any CIOs yet have a proper strategy to harness the shift to mobile.

"DOS, Netware, Novell - none of them exists today because they didn't make the jump from the text-based world to GUI, and they all disappeared in the process," said Bushby.

"Today, the change is the same thing with the GUI to touch, and we have to be at the cusp of this change, or we're going to be left behind as well."

Reminding delegates that an estimated 11 per cent of data is now generated purely by machines, and that by 2020 the world will boast 20 billion devices, Bushby said that companies have to look beyond the simple needs of users who want to "work smarter", which is driving the need in adoption, and try to "leverage" mobile platforms correctly by taking full advantage of the medium and all its advantages when writing or choosing mobile software solutions.

"Not one CIO already has a proper strategy," said Bushby.

"We need to think, 'What do our users want to do? Data collection, data gathering - how can that be used?"

Saying that Oracle's core strategy is "very much mobile-first", Bushby outlined the concept of a mobile-based work expenses app which, rather than just aping a desktop version, integrates features such as using the phone camera to photograph a receipt, and carry out automatic OCR [optical character recognition] in order to process expenses immediately, and provide funds quicker.

"So we're not just looking at a new device, but an entirely new interface," said Bushby.

"If you select an application, you want to make sure it's really taking advantage of the platform. You can give a better interface by adding these environments."