Where Is It All Going?
As I said at the beginning, it's a big mess out there. It seems clear that no single mobile platform is going to dominate the market in the foreseeable future, and all indications are that businesses are expanding from supporting a single mobile OS to supporting at least two or three. In a poll I posted back in January, just under 28 percent of respondents indicated their companies were supporting only one mobile OS, and 12 percent were already supporting more than four different mobile OSs. Managing smartphones in the enterprise will continue to be a complex issue.
A couple of interesting suggestions came out of the discussions I had with some mobility experts. For instance, Mark Gentile thought that the way to address the security problem with user-owned mobile devices would be to develop what he called "bi-modal profiles." The idea is that you could have a business profile on the phone that could adhere to all the corporate policies for application use and so forth and a separate personal profile, partitioned at the OS level, that you could switch the phone into during off hours so that you could download apps, play games, and all the other things businesses typically don't want you to do—all without jeopardizing the security of corporate data. Seems like a great idea—any developers out there paying attention?
And Brian C. Reed talked about the smartphone as a social media tool. "Organizations are going to start looking at the mobile device as being a customer revenue driver," he said. Traditionally, a smartphone has been seen as a productivity tool. However, with the rise of social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, and their continued integration into business—witness Outlook 2010's Social Media Connector—and consumers' increased reliance on smartphones, it makes sense that savvy businesses will need to use these devices to connect with their customers. And that leads back to more employees needing support for their phones from IT.
The Foreseeable Future
The four major players all have big updates expected before the end of this year. In the case of the more consumer-oriented platforms, Android and iPhone, their updates are expected to add better security and features to generally make them more attractive to businesses. Windows and BlackBerry already excel in enterprise features; their updates are aimed at appealing more to the consumer market. Yes, the more you look at it, the more of a hodgepodge the picture becomes. So if it's your turn to answer the door when that flaming bag shows up, I hope you're wearing your muck boots—or better yet, take a fire extinguisher.