Mobility is fixated on devices. Bigger phones, smaller tablets, better screens, and the like. Frankly, it’s all reminiscent of the heydey of computing when “speeds and feeds” gave bragging rights to IT departments and, shortly thereafter, to consumers buying personal computers. These incremental improvements, however, are not particularly revolutionary.
Yet, like big screen TVs (which no one buys as glossy black wall art), smartphones and tablets are only as valuable as the content they connect to. For consumers, that’s anything from finance to feature films, shopping lists to Angry Birds. But business users have different objectives for mobility – to be able to use smartphones and tablets as gateways to the enterprise applications and data they use in their jobs.
At this year’s Mobile World Congress, though, the emphasis on access and content was hard to find. There were exhibitors previewing apps that, for example, consolidate a user’s key personal information, such as social media, entertainment, and lifestyle updates, along with news and photos or that provide more granular location-related services or film recommendations. There’s nothing revolutionary in much of that either.
No one was providing similar capabilities for business users (except Webalo), and that’s hard to understand, particularly at a show that’s so entwined with the interests of wireless carriers who have, for years, had to wrestle with requests for enterprise mobility from their corporate customers.
In 2013, there’s no longer a clear distinction between consumer users and business users, and iPhones, iPads, Galaxy S IIIs and Tabs, and Slates are as likely to be found in the boardroom as they are in the bedroom. But the mobile-enabled KPIs (Key Personal Information) at home aren’t being widely translated into mobile KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) at the office.
To get that kind of real-time operational business analytics on a smartphone or tablet has, traditionally, involved developing a standalone mobile app. That app could, then, present the information as dashboard snapshots of what’s going on in the business. Managers would get vitally important information on their mobile devices, but it’s usually presented in batches and isn’t interactive – they can see what’s happening but can’t use their smartphones or tablets to take corrective action if it’s required.
The ability to take action, however, makes mobile truly enterprise-worthy… and revolutionary. It transforms mobile devices from glorified PDAs (the Personal Digital Assistant category established by the Palm Pilot in the ’90s) into PsCs (Pocket-sized Computers) with all the capabilities of a desktop or laptop.
That ups the ante considerably for carriers. They can promote their smartphone and tablet hardware as full-service enterprise computing platforms… if they can also provide the enterprise-to-mobile connectivity that makes the devices full-service. And, if they can provide that connectivity, they can present convincing reasons for their customers to upgrade their data plans.
Providing that connectivity is what Webalo does and, for carriers and corporations, the news is good.
For carriers, Webalo becomes a provisioned service, and service – wireless service – is the foundation of carriers’ business. Webalo lets them provide a self-service platform for creating interactive, bi-directional, enterprise-to-mobile connectivity, and the self-service nature of Webalo takes the carriers out of the time and labor-intensive mobile app development business.
For corporations, Webalo’s cloud-based, self-service platform lets them rapidly provide mobile access – in minutes – to the enterprise applications, data, real-time operational intelligence, tasks, and workflows that employees rely on every minute of every day. They’re able to implement enterprise mobility so quickly that the “app gap” (between requesting mobile access and actually getting it) goes away… along with the high cost of traditional mobile application development – Webalo reduces expenditures to pennies an app.
Best of all, the enterprise mobility that Webalo provides can be individualized, giving each employee only the data and tasks they need and use; and it can be actionable, letting people monitor KPIs and, when corrective action is required, handle it directly from their smartphones or tablets.
So if you’re in a BYOD environment mixing Apple, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows smartphones and tablets, and you (or your users) are looking at mobile devices and wondering why they can’t access the organization’s enterprise resources, it’s time to join the real mobile revolution and provide the content and capabilities that mobile users need. How? Take a look here to find out.
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