The impact on IT has been pronounced, especially in light of the fact that IT staffing has not been funded to hire enough expert staff to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated users’ mobility demands. Only 16% of CIOs polled said they were adding positions in 2016. These ame IT staffs are under pressure to support the latest-and-greatest iterations of mobile, while steadily advancing enterprise-wide strategic initiatives such as cloud computing, security and IoT.
7. Cost management concerns: A recent survey by IDG and CIO.com highlighted the concerns executives have over controlling mobile costs. In all, 44% of executives surveyed stated that cost management was the top challenge in meeting enterprise needs. Supporting multiple mobile device types was the top concern related to costs, with worries about time commitments and resource costs following closely. With the enterprises’ acceptance of unlimited data plans, overages on data usage have largely been eliminated. However, the ongoing staff costs associated with having enough mobile resources to support a myriad of device types and user profiles continues to be a very real issue for CIOs.
8. Backlog of user applications growing, while number of deployed apps remains flat: The resulting impact on enterprises’ ability to “get things done” in mobility may be best reflected in mobile applications. While the demand for mobile applications to support business needs is rising, 91% of survey respondents pointed to an average growth of almost 26% in mobile app development spending. However, deployment of these apps is languishing.(3) Year-over-year growth in deployed enterprise mobile apps has remained flat from 2016 to 2017 with an average of eight mobile apps being developed and deployed, while the backlog of planned, but not developed, applications has increased by 214%.(4).
9. Lines of Business taking over mobility: Due to these unmet needs, more Lines of Business (LOB) are taking over responsibility for mobility. In all, 74% of total mobility spending now happens outside of IT departments, up from 69% the prior year.(5) Gartner expects that by 2020, 70% of all enterprise mobile apps will be developed or adopted without IT involvement.(6)
10. A lack of visibility into mobility management and performance: Most enterprises are struggling to maintain visibility across their mobile device deployments to understand which devices are in use, which are performing well, which need replacement, which apps are being used and how a myriad of other data points can be analyzed to determine enterprise mobility’s overall performance. Complicating this need for aggregated performance reporting is a mix of different device types. The complexity of this multiple variables driving mobile performance either makes vendor-specific management platforms too myopic for the enterprise, or requires a myriad of management systems and tools to understand and manage mobility at the enterprise level.
Clearly, a seismic shift in enterprises’ expectations for mobility and the internal resources needed to plan, deploy and support devices, users and applications occurred in this third era.
Looking Ahead: Predicting mobile’s future As we look at mobile’s rapid evolution, two conclusions about the value of mobile can be made. First, mobile can inform and refine today’s business strategies in real-time to help enterprises gain sustainable strategic advantages. However, enterprises continue to be challenged as to how to best realize those