Ask Steve: Managed Mobility Makes Sense

How many employees in your firm have a mobile device? Did your employer issue you the mobile device and pay for it under a corporate plan? Imagine being that poor stiff in the IT department managing all those mobile devices, associated rate plans, services, applications and offers. Oh... that’s you? You’re that poor IT stiff? Well ... have you considered managed mobility solutions? This month in Ask Steve, let’s talk about the future of managed mobility.

Q: A lot of our SMB customers have BlackBerrys or iPhones and every day, more of their employees want support. How do we help them manage all this? I’ve heard about managed mobility. What are your thoughts? -- Barry from Newark, N.J.

A: Let’s start with a definition. A managed mobility solution relies on a third-party service provider to manage all or some of the functions associated with a corporate mobility deployment. These functions include: •Device management and security: Security specifically, but also security and management, are routinely named as barriers to corporate mobility solution adoption. With already overworked IT teams that need to focus on a variety of technologies and strategies, third-party expertise in these areas can augment an internal IT staff.

•Telecom expense management (TEM): Probably the area most commonly associated with managed mobility, this function includes managing the bills and contracts for corporate-purchased mobility solutions.

•Vendor management: Anyone that has ever had to call an operator's customer service department knows the trials and tribulations of customer support, contract negotiation, problem resolution and ongoing relationship issues. Having a third party take on these areas will make sense to companies that have a variety of complex relationships or a fairly sizeable mobility device deployment.

•Provisioning/hardware service: Most often linked to TEM, this function facilitates communications with operators and vendors for new orders, replacements and resolutions of setup problems. All of these activities can be extremely time-consuming, taking employees away from their main job functions and reducing the productivity of the employees whose devices are unavailable for a period of time.

•Mobile application development and management: As the most forward-looking segment of managed mobility, businesses that require custom applications deployed to mobile devices will look to a third-party partner to aid in technical application development, implementation, integration and ongoing maintenance.

•Managed connectivity: Mainly associated with the management of wireless LANs, this is one area of mobility that is not specifically related to mobile devices or endpoints but instead private corporate networks. Yankee Group expects the market to grow from roughly $81.⁶ million in 2006 to more than $350 million by 2009. According to the Yankee Group, between 11 percent and 35 percent of U.S. businesses are using managed services for at least a portion of their mobility needs. Managed mobility solutions are more highly adopted by large businesses in the United States; however, even only 19 percent of the largest multinational corporations use managed solutions for all their mobility management needs. The vast majority of businesses uses a combination of in-house (do-it-yourself) and outsourced management of mobility solutions. So many companies are struggling with how to manage mobile assets.

Who can help? Movêro Technology, Tangoe, Enterprise Mobile and Integrated Mobile. However, the smaller the business, the less likely they’ll be able to engage the services of these specialty managed mobility companies. That creates an opportunity for channel partners like you to fill in the gaps.

Managed Mobility Adoption by Business Size

Steve Hilton is the vice president of Yankee Group’s Enterprise Research Group with an expertise in converged solutions for SMBs. Hilton manages a team of analysts delivering consulting, research and programs to help vendors and service providers better serve SMBs, midmarket enterprises and large enterprises globally. Visit Yankee Group online at www.yankeegroup.com.