Enterprise Mobility and BYOA in 2014

Let’s get out the crystal ball, stir the tea leaves and see what lies ahead for enterprise mobility in 2014.

With strategies figured out for BYOD, businesses will start focusing on BYOA - application. BYOA means that employees are bringing their own applications to work more efficiently and be more productive. While all leading industry analysts, like Gartner, Forrester, and Yankee Group cite the growing BYOA trend, it’s hard to quantify exactly. However, after some digging, I found recent research sponsored by anti-virus maker McAfee, which says the average employee uses three applications that aren’t officially sanctioned by IT, and, rather unsurprisingly, the IT team is more likely to be violators with 19% of IT employees using six unsanctioned apps.

1) Whether you like it or not, BYOA is a reality that’s not going away. And it’s really a good thing. Because employees choose apps they like and know how to use, saving businesses software licensing costs and training time. The double whammy of BYOD + BYOA will lead more organizations to embrace formal mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM) programs to better protect corporate data.

2) We will also see an increase in enterprise app stores as businesses allow employees to Choose Your Own App (CYOA). The Enterprise App Store allows employees to select just the role-based business apps they need and nothing more.

3) Despite the drive to increase security, cybercriminals will still be able to get to the most vulnerable individuals by targeting mobile devices with poisoned links, viruses, malware, and more. Enterprises will abandon mobile browser apps to help mitigate this risk.

4) Integration will take an ever-increasing priority in the mobile organization. Mobile business apps without access to real-time enterprise data, and the ability to update it, add little value.

5) Speaking of real-time, we believe that 60-70% of field service staff and functions will be 100% dependent on mobile apps to do their jobs, meaning if your apps don’t support offline functionality your sales and customer service may suffer, putting your business at a competitive disadvantage.

6) Looking back 10 years, no one would have predicted where we are today with Enterprise Mobility. Looking ahead 10 years, let’s take a wild guess – all current devices will be replaced by wearable tech and instead of typing and swiping, we’ll do everything verbally and/or with gestures.

No matter what stage of enterprise mobility your organization is in today, by paying attention to the market trends and creating mobile businesses apps that increase productivity, operational efficiencies, customer satisfaction and sales, your business will succeed in the increasingly mobile world.