Enterprises are focusing on managing and mobilizing information from the data center to the point of action. The vision is to create an unwired enterprise, where business critical information can be securely moved back and from the data center to the end device, and delivered to the right person, anytime, anywhere. by Devarajan Mahadevan (With inputs from Maneka Tanwani)

Battles are won or lost by the ability of an army to quickly deploy its frontline troops and most importantly, with units maintaining their channels of communications with command control. So it is with businesses, where the 'frontline' personnel are the most crucial link with the customer-and it is imperative that this immediate touch-point should be provided mobile and remote access to the resources of an enterprise.

Increasing competition and fight for that elusive customer is forcing companies to look for more and more innovative ways for improving customer service. A sales representative cannot afford a "Can I get back to you?" to a customer after a pitch-the business would simply be lost to a competitor who can punch a couple of keys on his hand-held that allows him to complete a sales call.

Enterprise mobility ensures that the correct information reaches the concerned person at the right time and right place. It means that the workers-even staff-on-the-go-are connected to enterprise information and application (as per their requirements) at any point in time.

According to a Forrester research paper (Evolution of the Enterprise Mobility Market), the improvement of wireless technologies and services over the next six years will allow enterprises to incorporate airborne communications and data systems into every aspect of their businesses.

The adoption of Mobility in India has not been uniform across all verticals. Says Anwer Bagdadi, Senior VP and CTO, CFC India Services, "The adoption of the mobile environment has been more in the logistics vertical. We have see that this vertical is more forthcoming about embracing mobile devices. Also the adoption is fairly high in the retail sector worlwide. In India, although there is a lot of hype surrounding the retail boom, it is in its early stage and yet to stabilize. Many consulting organizations and certain pockets of BPOs and KPOs are also moving towards mobility."

Bagdadi says that the "conservative" segments like the manufacturing and consumer durable verticals, despite the technology advancements that they have made over the past ten years, have still not stitched over to mobility.

Look at a logistics company and you will see a completely different picture. "We have made a move forward and have embraced mobility in our organization. About 15 months back we started with a very simple mobility excercise, some of the senior guys were given BlackBerrys with push email that runs on a GPRS network. This helped them stay connected all the time, even when they were away from office, " says Shirish Gariba, CIO, Elbee Express.

The rapid growth of personal powerful mobile devices, the plummeting cost of technology, increased customer expectations and development in connectivity are just few of the technological and business drivers that are fuelling mobility in organizations.

Business trends fuelling mobility

As powerful hand-held devices become more common in today's business, there has been a drastic shift in the way knowledge workers conduct their day-to-day activities.

No longer do knowledge days stay confined to their traditional office environment. An increasing number of their activities are performed outside, making these workers rely on their personal machines to conduct their business. As these devices increase in complexity, knowledge workers are able to carry out a number of tasks independent of their office infrastructure. Across the globe, employers are also encouraging this move to work away from office-for saving on costs and maximizing profitablity.

Studies have shown that mobilized employees are more productive than their traditional office-based counterparts. A mobilized employee will have much more time to concentrate on the job at hand-meeting customers, finishing a survey-than getting bogged down in traditional office time-wasters like meetings, etc. Again an executive like a sales representative typically has to fill up a number of daily forms like a daily call report, etc. A mobilized sales rep would be able to key in his figures on the go, without having to come back to office at the end of his sales visits-thus saving valuable transit time and costs.

Maintenance engineers and sales executives have to be connected to the organization while they are facing the customer. In today's day and age, the customer is not willing to wait for an answer for her query. The enterprise just cannot afford to unleash their frontline staff on their customer without having them linked up.

Organizations do not have to spend time and money training staff on how to use applications that operate on hand-held devices, as they tend to be simple and user-friendly. Since field personnel anyway require a mobile phone, the incremental cost of upgrading them to a PDA is infinitesimal (as compared to a laptop) and hence makes imminent business sense.

A small mobile device that can be carried around makes a lot of sense for a worker who has to be constantly on the move and meet people, or for workers who have to handle heavy machinery like forklifts but keep a tab on the movements of goods. It is neither feasible nor practical for such workers to lug around a laptop for their daily activities.

Technology trends fuelling mobility

Mobile computing power is increasing by leaps and bounds and the cost of technology is also rapidly falling. Analyst firm IDC predicts the number of mobile workers will increase from 650 million to 850 million worldwide by 2009 (Worldwide Mobile Worker Population Forecast and Analysis 2005-2009). In India too, reducing operating costs and development cellular infrastructure are giving a big boost to the adoption of enterprise mobility.

The popularity of devices like BlackBerrys which support mobile email has lead to a number of enterprises making mobility an integral part of their IT strategy. In India, simpler SMS-based applications with standard mobile phones have also started gaining in popularity.

According to a Forrester Research Paper (Evolution of the Enterprise Mobility Market), carriers will continue to expand their 3G networks to extend coverage to areas not under range, device makers will manufacture new hand-helds to tap emerging industrial markets, and software makers will take a fresh look at their wireless management applications development efforts.

Networking vendors will focus their wireless plans on catering to new demand in industries, which will exibit a robust demand for these technologies-with a focus on the healthcare, transportation, and utilities verticals.

Over the next seven years, Forrester is predicting that enterprise mobility plans will finally take off and result in wireless technologies finding their way into the hands of wider majority of workers.

While enterprise mobility has become a strategic priority for a number of organizations, IT managers are grappling with a number of challenges that this move throws-up among them being security, data management and synchronization, justifying ongoing costs and poor infrastructure.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a concern that worries most technology decision-makers today. Simplicity drives down TCO, but trend in a system is towards an increase in complexity. The rate at which devices are becoming obsolete, and newer, more powerful versions hitting the market, IT has to constantly grapple with disparate devices in the system, which constantly push up TCO.

"If you want to buy software which is costing something aorund Rs. 20,000 or 40,000 then the cost becomes very high. Obviously, some of the companies opt out of adoption mainly due to this reason. Also the cost of these mobile devices comes down in a very short span of time. So huge depreciation of assets is another cahllenge to overcome", says Gariba of Elbee.

Mobility itself can push up complexity due to the fact it loads the data center with unstructured data. "Usage of mobile devices for video conferencing, email, IM results into a lot of unstructured data. using this data in real-time, then managing this for retrieval later becomes a challenge," says Bagdadi.

Other areas of concern are developments on the corporate front. Last year, when Research In Motion settled a patents dispute with NTP for $612 million, it avoided a disruption of its hugely popular BlackBerry service-and America Inc, which was waiting for the outcome of the proceedings with bated breath, started breathing again.

Security is another huge concern-both enterprise security and device security. It is imperative that the data being transmitted from the wireless device to the data center should be encrypted to prevent any interception-extremely crucial for financial transaction. Further, in case of the loss of a hand-held device, there should be a provision to lock the hand-set so that access to any data is not possible.

"Our big challenge is security. Here not only we are looking at the data security but also the physical security of the device. For this we are looking at insurance companies," says Gariba.

Another problem that can come in the way of an organization adopting mobility is its culture-a bottleneck almost unqiue to India. "If it is a traditional organization, it can be barrier in its efforts to move towards mobility," says Bagdadi.

Despite some quality of service issues, India has been steadily developing its telecom infrastructure. "I beleive that you look from a long-term change maker perspective, there has been a tremendous amount of technology advancement in India that has surpassed all expectations. Today in India's quarter on quarter growth is faster than that of China," says Bagdadi.

Even looking forward he seems confident. "I think that the infrastructure that we have is more or less adequate to support the mobility phenomenon in enterprises and we will definitely mature to encompass the entire gamut of mobility functions in the next three-five years," Bagdadi adds.

The future

"Now-a-days, you can get an office application loaded on your laptop or PC. But, over the next few years the scenario is going to change. At that time whenever you will need an application it will get streamed from the data center" - B V Jagadeesh (Chairman, NetMagic Solutions)

Expect a radical change in the way you buy and use your software. "Now-a-days, you can get an office application loaded on your laptop or PC. But, over the next few years the scenario is going to change. At that time whenever you will need an application it will get streamed from the data center," says B V Jagadeesh, Chairman, NetMagic Solutions.

What's more you even have flexibility over your license period. "If you are mobile you get a license, the application remains with you for that time and then it automatically expires. So, the advantages are many, like you don't have to worry about the version of the software or application. It reduces a lot of complexities," adds Jagadeesh.

It is likely that there will be more consolidation among the existing wireless players and hence integration among the plethora of offerings available in the marketplace today. That is when more applications will be specifically developed for the mobile plactform (rather than how it's done now-developed for the PC, used on mobile devices) giving more choice and flexibility to technology managers.