New Oracle Survey Shows Development of Enterprise Mobile Apps to Increase Dramatically

Oracle has sponsored a new global survey from CIO Strategic Marketing Services and Triangle Publishing Services that shows not only are enterprises committed to mobility today, but the rate of development, deployment and spending for support of mobile applications and devices is expected to increase dramatically over the next few years. The survey also shows that there are increasing concerns from IT executives over mobile security and integration with back-end systems.

The survey is titled "New Oracle Survey Shows Development of Enterprise Mobile Apps to Increase Dramatically". The Connected Enterprise: Keeping Pace with Mobile Development and survey respondents included 414 IT management executives from around the world, including CIOs, CTOs, senior vice presidents or vice presidents; directors or managers of IT; and, senior IT professionals.

The survey highlights the technological factors most critical to success and where mobility initiatives can provide the greatest business benefits, both now and in the future. Although the survey results showed a high commitment to mobility, they also showed little consensus about methods of mobile development and deployment, whether across industries or across geographies. The survey also revealed that the preferred method for mobile app development is now internal.

- Security continues to be the top concern for enterprise wide adoption and embracing BYOD adds to this challenge. 93 percent of respondents cited concern over data loss and other security breaches related to mobile devices with BYOD being a key contributor to this concern. Organizations are turning more to centralized management rather than relying on users for security. In the next two years, respondents’ say their organizations will be focusing more on device data encryption (10 percent more than today), centralized updating and troubleshooting (11 percent more), remote wiping of data (11 percent more) and lockdown of features (18 percent more).

- The survey revealed that while 29 per cent of IT development time is spent on front-end mobile app development, more than 70 per cent of their time is spent on integration, security, quality assurance testing and design work.

- According to the survey, 35 percent of midsize and large enterprise organizations update their application portfolio monthly, while an additional 34 percent update their applications quarterly. More than four-fifths (82 percent) of respondents expect those rates to increase over the next two years.

- Average IT department spending per device, per employee stands at US $157 today. That is expected to grow to US $242 over the next two years, an increase of 54 percent.

- Respondents are focused more on external customers versus others by a significant margin: 34 percent, versus 27 percent for employees, 24 percent for executives and 15 percent for suppliers. This focus on external customers is expected to grow in the future.

- Respondents indicated that 44 percent of their application portfolio is internally developed.

- 75 percent 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 percent 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 percent.