Mobile IT: Preparing for a revolution in working practices

Where once businesses were desk-bound, office-centric environments with inflexible working conditions, this situation is now changing fast. Organisations are increasingly beginning to appreciate the benefits that flexible working can bring. This ranges from increased productivity, reduced sick leave, happier employees and lower costs as they move to smaller offices that use less energy.

However these benefits soon begin to fall apart if they fail to put in place the systems that allow employees to genuinely work effectively when and where they want. The problem is IT infrastructure has been designed to be accessible from well-connected offices with secure dedicated broadband connections.

Once employees leave the office their network access to crucial office, data centre or cloud-based enterprise services is no longer guaranteed. The devices they connect from are frequently less secure than corporate desktops and laptops. Their ability to work effectively with their colleagues and customers can also be impacted when they’re geographically spread apart and don’t have access to the same tools like the enterprise PBX.
IT departments need to start evolving their infrastructure, services and approach to overcome these challenges. In practice this will involve moving towards a cloud computing model and ensuring employees can access these services through a reliable, secure and ubiquitous network. Critically, IT departments also need the tools to easily manage and - above all - secure the growing fleet of mobile devices.

Choosing a network for the cloud
The reason why mobile IT is flourishing is due to two principle factors – the emergence of powerful mobile devices and cloud computing. In fact, the two are now so inextricably linked that both need to operate optimally if any mobile IT endeavour is to be successful. While mobile devices are essential – they are fundamentally limited without cloud computing services. Employees must have access to the data and applications they need to do their job.

While ensuring cloud-based applications operate effectively is relatively straightforward in an office environment, it’s a different matter entirely when users could be working anywhere and on any device. Traffic will be coming from the mobile network or from a variety of ISPs when employees connect through self-owned Wi-Fi or public hotspots. Whether enterprise apps work properly is therefore dependent on a wide variety of different networks.
In response IT departments need to carefully consider their cloud and mobile provider – not to mention the connectivity of their datacentre.
The mobile provider needs to provide excellent mobile broadband connectivity across the area where employees will be working. This should extend to offering Wi-Fi hotspot access to deliver high speed connectivity in busy areas. In cases where a key user does not have a mobile signal in an important location, such as their home, the provider needs to be able to extend connectivity on request using a device such as a femtocell.
Cloud services need to be accessible through well designed and intuitive mobile applications. Another crucial means of improving the application experience is to ensure that the cloud provider is well connected to tier one internet networks as well as the enterprise’s mobile provider of choice. The better these links, the better the quality of experience.

Cloud communications
The proliferation of mobile workers armed with a range of separate devices is also challenging traditional enterprise communications. It is no longer unusual for employees to routinely use a smartphone, desk phone, tablet, laptop and desktop PC not to mention at least one instant messaging and VoIP service.

The problem, however, is that employees increasingly spend more time working away from their colleagues and even though they are able to connect through a number of different mediums, this fragmented approach doesn’t necessarily result in better communications.

Put simply, the ascendance of mobile working and the diversity of modern communication methods is rendering the traditional PBX obsolete. In its place cloud-based unified communications services are coming to the fore. By uniting the wide variety of communications devices and methods into a single, intelligent and completely configurable service, employees can be reached first time, every time.

Intelligent voice services bring fixed, mobile and VoIP telephony together in a single platform so each user has a single incoming and outgoing phone number, voicemail and contact directory. The service is completely customisable so users can control how and when their fixed, mobile or desktop phones ring. Intelligent messaging unites voicemail, SMS and corporate instant messenger services so a message to one can be simply managed so it appears on all three.

These services are increasingly being augmented with real-time collaboration tools that allow employees to remotely build a community and work effectively together. Examples of this integrate mobile-friendly video conferencing, white boarding, instant messaging and enterprise social media services.

This mobile IT friendly approach to corporate communications can also deliver major cost savings. Quite apart from the fact that employees no longer need to leave costly diverts on their deskphone to their mobile, cloud-based unified communications radically reduces capex costs as there is no need for a PBX and therefore no need to continually pay for maintenance, upgrades and inevitably to replace it once its useful life is over.

Management & Security
As the number of mobile workers continues to rapidly increase so too does the burden on the IT staff who need to manage the growing number of devices. They need to ensure that all corporate-owned devices and increasingly personal devices too, have the latest version of the right productivity apps, and above all that they are completely secure.

This requires mobile device management tools that allow organisations to centrally control an entire fleet of smartphones and tablets. It is possible to buy this technology and manage it in-house but it demands specialist training and separate tools for each mobile platform making it a real burden to support the variety of devices found in most businesses. It is easier and more cost-effective to outsource the tools to a cloud provider.

IT teams can then use a simple portal to manage all mobile devices. Policy enforcement means it is easy to control who has access to what data and services. Applications can be installed or upgraded on a single device or in bulk across the entire company making device administration infinitely easier.

All devices can also be checked to ensure they feature antivirus and malware software to protect vital applications and data in the cloud and on the device. It is difficult to overstate how important this is. Recent studies have shown that malware increased 600 per cent in 2012 alone, yet 80 per cent of smartphones still aren’t protected against it1. As mobile devices are more likely to be stolen than enterprise desktops and laptops, these services can also ensure that all on-device corporate data is fully encrypted and can be remotely locked down or wiped.

The growth of BYOD mean these tools are also able to protect personal devices without infringing on user privacy. IDG research shows that 71 per cent of employees access corporate resources from vulnerable personal devices2. Device management services can create a separate on-board corporate container where business apps and data are fully encrypted and can be managed remotely. These leave the rest of the phone untouched so employees can be confident that their user experience and personal data remain private.

To date, most businesses have tried to add mobility to their existing IT approach resulting in a largely best effort service. But as flexible working becomes the norm, they need to change their approach to put mobile at the heart of their IT strategy. If they don’t, it is their competitors that will reap the benefits with a more flexible, happier and effective workforce – as well as lower costs.

1 Juniper Research reports ‘Mobile Security – What’s the Risk? 2013‘ & ‘3rd Annual Mobile Security Report’

2 Global Mobility Study conducted by IDG Research Service