Daniel Taylor: The Enterprise Agenda For Mobility

Daniel Taylor posts at his Mobile Enterprise Weblog an extensive summary and analysis of the recent Computerworld Mobile & Wireless World event. He looks at some of the press coverage and provides his thoughts on the various analyst commentary. Definitely a good read.

Taylor also discusses his presentation at the event on the enterprise agenda for mobility. It's a good reality check for what is actually happening inside the enterprise. Taylor writes:

The enterprise take on much of mobility is often the opposite of what most people who've never administered and supported more than one PC and a smartphone would think. I talk a lot about policy and process. The policy to define what to do with mobile devices and technologies; the process to implement that policy. And that was the topic of my presentation on Monday, 22 May.

Quite a few people - IT managers - spoke with me about my presentation over the next two days. I'm talking about IT managers from companies of all sizes. From companies with their "act together" when it comes to mobility. Companies with tens and hundreds of thousands of employees.

And everyone is scared. Scared of Windows Mobile. Scared of smartphones with Wi-Fi. Scared of Microsoft's UMPC initiative. Scared of devices coming from Best Buy and Circuit City. Because these managers previously thought that they could deny access to smartphones (a.k.a. "unsupported devices with rogue software installs") at the firewall. Today, they're worrying about how to stop these devices at the access point.

He then states:

IT departments don't care about the latest, greatest technologies. They care about being able to deploy a solution to hundreds or thousands of workers. They care about being able to support those workers and to provide good customer service when things break. To accomplish this, they keep things simple, define a clear set of policies and keep the number of devices and software loads to a minimum.