More than ever before, 2011 is poised to be the year companies take advantage of increasingly sophisticated smartphone devices and mobile workflow apps to improve productivity, according to Dan Ortega, senior director, product marketing for Sybase, an SAP company.
"Whereas getting email on your device was once novel, organizations are now looking at mobility, be it devices or enterprise applications, as an acceleration point to transform the way work is done and deliver strategic value to the business," says Ortega. "The consumerization of IT has sparked enterprise IT's interest in embracing a truly mobile environment. As a case in point, many companies now allow employees to leverage their personal devices for work. When done effectively, this approach not only reduces upfront costs for new mobile devices, it can help drive the business forward by enabling employees to be more accessible to customers and partners."
According to Frost & Sullivan, says Ortega, as companies spend more money developing mobile apps or buying them from third-party programmers, the North American market for mobile office applications may surge to $6.85 billion in 2015, from $1.76 billion in 2010. Whether a business application is custom built or packaged, this investment will lead to business process re-engineering that can spread throughout the enterprise and lead to new, long-term strategies. "Looking ahead, mobility will extend beyond your organization to your customers, partners, suppliers and any stakeholder in your ecosystem," he notes. Looking ahead, says Ortega, mobility will extend beyond your organization to your customers, partners, suppliers and any stakeholder in your ecosystem and be what Yankee Group describes as the "Anywhere Revolution," where everyone is constantly connected to everything that matters to them.