I D C

E X E C U T I V E

B R I E F

Enterprise Mobility: Promise and Pitfalls

May 2011
Adapted from Mobile Product Development and Test Service Strategies: Where Are Outsourcers Investing? by Rona Shuchat and Mukesh Dialani, IDC #226453

Introduction
The rapid proliferation of powerful mobile devices with different form factors is spurring growth in enterprise mobility (EM). Businesses are seeking cost-effective, agile mobile solutions that can positively impact bottom-line results as enterprise knowledge workers gain real-time access to company data anytime, anywhere. Independent software vendors (ISVs) have the opportunity to go after billions of mobile subscribers in developed or emerging markets with innovative approaches to mobilization and monetization. Time pressures and ecosystem complexity are driving many ISVs to look for an enterprise mobility specialist to bring together mobility road map expertise and design and deployment experience with an integrated set of EM frameworks to accelerate the ISV mobilization journey with a keen eye on monetization for strategic growth. IDC believes that the following factors will be critical in the selection of an enterprise mobility partner: Multiplicity of horizontal and vertical mobile use cases. As the number of business use cases stimulates mobile adoption, the pace of formal ISV program and product mobilization will lead many to seek EM specialists with a heritage in enterprise software development. It will be critical to find a partner that is grounded in the use of agile business models, with deep communications ecosystem understanding, investments in EM platforms, and global delivery centers. The partner can influence innovative yet proven approaches to the successful launch of mobile ISV initiatives. Prepackaged mobile frameworks. Enterprise mobility specialists with flexible open architectural platforms that are agile enough to adapt to new, emerging and rapidly changing technologies will enable ISVs to jump-start their mobile application solutions. Partners that can combine EM framework expertise with transparent budgeting or business outcomebased pricing models will provide true differentiation. Mobile monetization strategy. Relevance and usability of mobile applications will be fundamental components driving toward success and growth of ISVs' net-new business transactions. ISVs need to consider the monetization factor as they think about leveraging an enterprise mobility partner with experience in design and personalization of mobile services. As mobility goes mainstream, making an application highly relevant to any given mobile user with respect to the task at hand and location will raise adoption levels and brand perception while minimizing future cost of product development life-cycle services.

This IDC Executive Brief discusses the challenges faced by ISVs embarking on the enterprise mobility solution journey (e.g., speed to mobilization, addressing multiple form factor design and operating system [OS] platform configurations). The paper also highlights opportunities and considerations inherent in designing mobile applications to drive and monetize net-new business transactions (e.g., conceptualization, visualization of workflows, simplified and smooth navigation user interface [UI] design, security and management options).

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Market Situation
As mobile devices and applications proliferate in business environments, enterprise customers expect the same functionality from any mobile application that was traditionally delivered on the desktop, along with remote anytime/anywhere access and a more engaging user experience. This development has increased pressure on the IT departments of enterprise customers that now have to support multiple applications on multiple devices at additional costs. Most customers interpret mobility as "shrink-wrapping their product." In essence, customers want the services provider to take an application on the desktop and convert it into a mobile application. While ISVs may want to accelerate the mobile conversion by shrink-wrapping their own products, they are confronted by a complex mobile ecosystem (e.g., multiple devices and form factors, OSs, networks) and the quickening pace of change, which is pushing them to seek EM experts. Traditional issues facing ISVs related to maintenance of multiple code bases, the ability to adapt to various platforms, and different device technologies in the marketplace remain challenges and are coupled with the critical need to deliver commercial-grade mobile applications. The need to test mobile applications on different devices and form factors, and across different networks and different geographies, demands the availability of scalable virtual mobile testing frameworks with the concurrent ability to test live. Enterprises and ISVs are also seeking EM specialists to provide mobile device management (MDM) services that include: Procurement of devices Loading VPN Provisioning applications on these devices Upgrades Managing expenses and data plans Support and maintenance and so forth

An ISV's ability to assist its enterprise customers in mobile application transformation and deployment versions will ultimately rest upon its own ability to jump-start its internal mobilization efforts in highly efficient and creative ways to meet the mobile software monetization agenda. The value of and the need for a partner are expected to increase as ISVs are forced to prioritize and balance business use cases with agile development and critical experiential components of the mobile software development life cycle (SDLC).

Challenges Faced by ISVs

Speed to mobilize. The challenges that customers face when they embark on an enterprise mobility solutions journey include the speed at which they can overcome legacy issues, the complexity of the application, the size of the product, and the rollout of the mobile version that can operate on multiple devices and platforms. User interface and experience. Many applications that are already mobilized do not rank high in terms of user interface and experience. Although most native applications on mobile devices enable great user experience in terms of speed, many other mobile and browser-based applications do not provide compelling or smooth access experiences. Many mobile solutions reflect the direct mobilization of existing desktop applications without taking into consideration many issues, including: Availability of information
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Access to information based on hierarchy Workflow differences between the manner in which an application is executed on a desktop versus a mobile device Visualization and personalization of the application screens and so forth Technology considerations (How will the application be used? Will the application require touchscreen or keyboard interface? ISVs need to be cognizant of two issues from a technology perspective: application behavior and light design.) o Application behavior. The application, while retaining the same functionality, needs to behave differently across different networks and on different devices. Light design. The mobile application should not be data intensive and should enable the end user to browse functionalities of the application and provide information on demand.

Creating the Mobile Version of the Enterprise Application

Enterprise mobility is about enhancing the efficiency and productivity of the application with the goal of enabling the addition of net-new business transactions. Conceptualization. Prior to building and packaging a mobile application, ISVs should explore and answer the following questions: Who is the end user for this application? What is the workflow? What information will be accessed and presented on the mobile device? How will the mobile application interact with the main application? (If this is not a new application) What is the nature of the customer's business? How will the application be used?

Platform considerations. The enterprise mobility segment appears to be moving away from BlackBerry dominance to an explosion of other platforms, including Android, iPhone, Phone 7, and WebOS devices. What platform should a mobile application be deployed on or does a mobile application need to be deployed on, in light of its use for B2B, B2E, or B2C? Keeping up with the multiple software development kits (SDKs) and integrated development environments (IDEs) for each of these platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry RIM) is a must. Building or finding partners with deep knowledge across a range of development languages/IDEs is becoming essential (e.g., Apple Xcode, Microsoft Visual Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans). Form factor options. To what extent are different industries requiring the integration of complementary components into their mobile solutions, such as location-based services for routing optimization, driving directions or vehicle/fleet management, or asset tracking using barcode scanning and RFID? These will further influence selection of mobile form factor (e.g., tablet versus smartphone) and application architectural approach. Feature reach versus rich functionality. The decision to build native device applications, or mobile Web applications or mobile applications built on middleware platforms (MEAP), will be partially driven by the simplicity or the complexity of mobile features required. Optimized mobile Web applications can be economically viable and suitable for mass client deployment with specific capabilities. Alternatively, the richer the feature set, the more likely native or MEAP solutions may be appropriate.

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Hybrid approach to mobile application development. Partners should be able to guide their clients in optimum approaches to mobile architectures, leveraging a blend of development options depending on requirements. Specialists in mobile application development are building out large libraries of reusable application components, which can be applied at many points in a product and solution life cycle. Components allow for broad use across mobile architectures, including native device applications, mobile Web applications, and mobile applications built on middleware platforms (MEAP). Mobilizing versus miniaturizing SaaS applications. An ISV looking to effectively extend all or part of its SaaS applications to mobile users will need to think beyond simply miniaturizing a Web page to fit on a mobile screen. In the traditional SaaS and Web page world, menus, tabs, icons, buttons, pictures, and hyperlinks can all be used to navigate from page to page. On mobile devices, not all browsers present these items the same way, if at all. Without a mouse, a user must scroll with a thumbwheel or trackball to pass through each and every navigation option until reaching the desired link. Missing or skipping a link is a frequent occurrence. If the user is fortunate enough to have a touch screen, is the icon or link big enough for fat fingers? Are the links too close together to ensure the right link is selected? And if they are big enough, how much space is left on the mobile screen to present content? These are all factors that must be considered when defining a mobile SaaS UI and navigation strategy. Standardizing navigation keeping the flow simple and consistent for mobile users improves usability. Personalize content make it relevant. How you standardize navigation and how you personalize mobile content and make it relevant to the customer (based on task at hand and location) are key. Personalizing a mobile SaaS-based service, or making it relevant to any given set of users, is dependent entirely upon the ISV's SaaS solution, business goals, and user needs. What is critical is making the content relevant to a user's privileges and the task at hand, relevant to a user's device, and relevant to a user's location. For example, a marketing or sales rep standing in an empty tradeshow booth is concerned only about the boxes that should have arrived three hours ago, not the other two shipments going to the next show. Workflow and creation of the interface. Explore how one can convert the stored procedures, APIs, or Web services, and so forth into small footprints, with nimble, agile interfaces for mobile applications. A key consideration is that large data packets cannot be exchanged across the mobile network or the Internet with the customers back-end ERP, CRM, or database; the APIs, Web services, and so forth need to be converted into standard RESTful APIs for managing and optimizing client interactions. This can be accomplished by a customized tool that not only converts these APIs but also provides control in terms of accessing, storing, and displaying information that needs to be used. Visualization. This stage involves defining and finalizing the design for the UI. This design is passed through a tool that should ensure that the applications are platform agnostic and can be packaged for platforms such as Android, iPhone, and Symbian without any change in the code. Security. The application part that resides on the mobile phone primarily provides information exchanges for the end user. However, the validation of information, the data security aspect, the filtering of workflows, and the filtering of the database in the workflows are issues that will still be controlled by the server back ends. Information can be restricted based on the user workflow, and the device that is trying to access the information can dynamically decide what data to pass and what data not to pass. However, there will be customer requirements to plan for local data storage onto the mobile device because 24 x 7 access of the application is not desirable. The local data storage should encompass standard encryption mechanisms that platforms come with as well as any specific encryption requirement that the product may have.

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Packaging and testing the application. Finally, the mobile application will be packaged and tested on one or more appropriate platforms, devices, and network environments. Taking advantage of third-party reusable mobile test frameworks and best practices to validate or simulate end-to-end mobile services can accelerate time to market, minimize internal investments, and elevate the quality of user experiential testing.

What to Look for When Selecting an Enterprise Mobility Partner

The following provides a simple "blueprint" (see Figure 1) of factors that ISVs should consider when looking to leverage the expertise of an enterprise mobility specialist: Business use cases. What inventory of horizontal- or vertical-specific mobile use cases does the EM partner bring to market? IP investments (prepackaged mobility frameworks). What level of investment and expertise does the EM specialist offer in supporting the complex mobile ecosystem (e.g., mobile and network lab investments, end-to-end automated EM platforms, global delivery centers, scalable virtual cloud offerings)? Innovative mobile marketing programs. What successful engagements have been carried out in supporting the product mobilization of its ISV customer base or of its broader mobile ecosystem clients (e.g., OEMs, mobile operators)? For example, has the potential partner done work in mobile advertising, mobile rewards and voucher programs, mobile learning, mobile banking, and so on? Does it specialize in specific industry segments? Monetization experience. What experience does the EM specialist have in establishing solid business cases for mobile solutions with lucrative track records in monetization? User interface life-cycle capabilities. What level of experiential work has the EM specialist done to support successful mobile design strategies (e.g., use of heuristics, accessibility, internationalization, context and usability testing, rapid UI customization frameworks)? Flexible pricing models. What types of pricing models is the EM specialist able to offer an ISV to control budgeting and procurement processes for an EM program? Does the vendor offer business outcomebased pricing for ISVs that prefer this approach? SLA and technical support maturity. What levels of SLAs and technical support are being offered in assisting ISVs with ongoing mobile device management and upgrades? Benchmarking frameworks. What benchmarking frameworks, KPIs, or quality metrics does the provider recommend or offer when deploying mobile solutions across multiple devices in different geographies? Is the EM specialist collecting quantitative data to understand and guide its customers in acceptable mobile performance metrics? Ability to keep pace with technology change. What strategies does the EM specialist follow to keep its mobility solutions team current on rapidly changing technology changes, such as OS and middleware shifts, to ensure that the latest programming and automation techniques are being leveraged in the agile mobile SDLC flow? Outsourcing model flexibility. What types of outsourced mobile product development services does the EM specialist offer that will allow an ISV to flexibly outsource just the pieces it wants to outsource and maintain control over the pieces it wants to control? Governance strategies. What governance strategies does the EM specialist offer to ensure that business data and other IP are not compromised and that the latest application security guidelines and protections are applied?
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Reference accounts. What successful reference accounts are available to speak with an ISV about their EM partner experience?

Figure 1 Critical Factors to Consider W hen Selecting an Enterprise Mobility Partner

Source: IDC, 2011

Conclusion
The ISV community will be under pressure to accelerate the pace of mobilizing existing software solutions and planning for new mobile product opportunities in the short term and midterm. Keeping up with the rapidly changing mobile technology landscape, as well as understanding and adapting to shifting mobile application development strategies (e.g., native application development versus use of MEAP platforms versus hybrid architectural options), is expected to tax any ISV that is already balancing multiple product releases, from on-premise to cloud-based SaaS offerings. An enterprise mobility partner with business insight, usability experience, and deep technology expertise in the mobile domain can help an ISV accelerate the design, development, and deployment of mobile solutions in efficient and innovative ways.

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A B O U T

T H I S

P U B L I C A T I O N

This publication was produced by IDC Go-to-Market Services. The opinion, analysis, and research results presented herein are drawn from more detailed research and analysis independently conducted and published by IDC, unless specific vendor sponsorship is noted. IDC Go-to-Market Services makes IDC content available in a wide range of formats for distribution by various companies. A license to distribute IDC content does not imply endorsement of or opinion about the licensee.
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