CA Southern Africa plans to showcase Mobility in its forthcoming IT Management Symposium, taking place in Johannesburg on 20 February.
Gareth James, CA Southern Africa solution strategist for mobility and cloud, says the mobility trend is being driven by the business need for agility and speed in an attempt to respond to demands from consumers both inside and outside the enterprise.
“Technologists have to move quickly to respond to these changes – as the perimeter moves outside of the four walls of the enterprise,” says James.
“The greatest challenge facing IT this year will be how technologists manage the flow of information – whether that comes in the form of apps, data or collaboration.
“If IT doesn’t provide business with the mechanisms to be Mobile, users will simply bypass IT, leaving that critical enterprise information exposed on mobile devices and shared spaces on the Internet.”
James says global Internet consumption figures reveal that more internet traffic is now being consumed by new platforms – iPads and smartphones – than the traditional PC.
“CIO’s need only to take a walk through the company to see how users are not just taking notes on tablets, but are sending emails, and delivering presentations from their latest smart device. So we have now moved from ‘it’s something we will have to deal with’ to ‘we need to get this under control’.”
He notes that the first step on this roadmap is the endpoint – mobile device management. “Once we have the endpoints inventoried, secured and managed, then we can move on to extracting value from these devices.
“When control is regained the next logical steps must address: mobile apps and content. The bottom line is we stand to gain tremendous business agility from these devices.”