There was a time when “enterprise” and “mobile” were rarely seen together – only in the shadowy recesses of IT drudgery like ashamed lovers forced to elope or endure the paternal humiliation of CFO scrutiny. That was 2009.
Now, they gallivant openly, Kardashian-like in the publicness of their affection. In a reversal of fortune unimaginable two years ago, to avoid CFO scrutiny today every project “must” include mobility – showcase it, embrace it, celebrate it. Mobile first: the new mantra of IT. Who would have thought?
Recently, we’ve seen this trend accelerate in ways we didn’t foresee even a few months ago. Case in point: the call we received from a telecom service provider that purchased BMC Mobility, then Aeroprise, more than a year ago, relegated its mobile self service and change approvals project to IT purgatory, and all of a sudden “needs to implement it for 10,000 employees in the next three weeks.” Great! But, uh, what happened?
Here’s how that conversation went:
Me: “Uh, what happened?”
TB (“Telecom Behemoth” VP of IT): “Well, we planned to mobilize self service a year back. But then…”
TB: “…our timeline for deploying self service got delayed by a Remedy upgrade and, well, mobility was postponed also.”
Me: “Why the urgency now?”
TB: “Simple. In the past year everyone got smartphones – we went from zero to 2,300 Android devices alone in 12 months – and now the business says nobody is using the new self-service portal because it’s not available on smartphones.
We’ve invested a ton in every aspect of the portal but we literally have customer outages going unreported for days because nobody’s at a PC anymore. So we thought mobility was a phase two and it turns out it’s more like a phase zero. Yeah, we got the tail and the dog mixed up.”
Me: “Wow. I see. And who’s behind the sudden urgency?”
TB: “The business owner – the VP of Field Operations who reports to the COO. We were afraid of the CFO before, but now he’s putty in our hands. Turns out he never opposed the project. It’s just the business wasn’t vocal enough about mobility because they weren’t mobile.”
That’s one of three similar conversations from the past weeks. And while they may be unrelated, I guarantee they’re symptomatic of a broader trend. So, lovers: elope no more. Enterprise IT: prepare for some serious, unabashed PDA (not the “personal” or “digital” kind) in 2011.
By: Alf Abuhajleh