Enterprises face dual pressures when it comes to mobility: they must serve internal stakeholders to increase productivity, while also serving external customers to increase engagement. As a result, they struggle to keep pace with the rapid rate of mobile application development, both for the client and server side.
But, even as mobile development has become entrenched in the enterprise, its goals and challenges continue to quickly evolve.
A new global survey from CIO Strategic Marketing Services and Triangle Publishing Services, sponsored by Oracle, reveals that not only are enterprises committed to mobility today, but the rate of development, deployment and spending for support of mobile applications and devices will increase dramatically over the next few years. Additionally, the survey showed that there are increasing concerns from IT executives over mobile security and integration with back-end systems.
Key findings from the survey include:
* Security continues to be the top concern for enterprise wide adoption and embracing BYOD adds to this challenge. 93% of respondents cited concern over data loss and other security breaches related to mobile devices with BYOD being a key contributor to this concern. Organisations are turning more to centralised management rather than relying on users for security. In the next two years, respondents’ organisations will be focusing more on device data encryption (10% more than today), centralised updating and troubleshooting (11% more), remote wiping of data (11% more) and lockdown of features (18% more).
* The survey revealed that although 29% of IT development time is spent on front-end mobile app development, more than 70% of their time is spent on integration, security, quality assurance testing and design work.
* Mobile applications change continually. According to the survey, 35% of midsize and large enterprise organisations update their application portfolio monthly, while an additional 34% update their applications quarterly. More than four-fifths (82%) of respondents expect those rates to increase over the next two years.
* Average IT department spending per device, per employee stands at $157 today. That is expected to grow to $242 over the next two years, an increase of 54%.
* Respondents are focused more on external customers versus others by a significant margin: 34%, versus 27% for employees, 24% for executives and 15% for suppliers. This focus on external customers is expected to grow in the future.
* Respondents indicated that 44% of their application portfolio is internally developed.
* 75% of respondents said that cloud/hybrid cloud is “somewhat important” or “very important” to mobile application deployment. Cloud technologies include platform as a service and a cloud-based mobile enterprise application platform.
* 84% of respondents reported sales and marketing, as well as customers, as the two stakeholders with the most influence in mobile applications today. IT followed with 82%.
“Mobility has been ubiquitous for a while but only 10% of enterprises have an enterprise wide deployment of mobile. Its impact and importance are gaining importance today. This survey is reassuring in that enterprises see potential for great payoff from making a strong mobile commitment. They are recognising that mobile applications provide a new way to develop and maintain relationships with customers,” says Suhas Uliyar, vice-president, Mobile Strategy & Product Management at Oracle.
“Oracle’s mobile solutions allow organisations to develop, connect and secure their own mobile applications. Our comprehensive mobile strategy simplifies enterprise mobility for any organisation.”