Rethinking the Approach to Enterprise Mobility

By Hriday Ravindranath, Chief Technology & Information Officer, BT Global Services

Hriday Ravindranath, Chief Technology & Information Officer, BT Global Services

Organizations need to rethink their approach to Mobility as they respond to the competitive threats and new opportunities presented by Digital transformation.

In a BT research study of 400 CEOs,we asked them what the digital employee experience contributes to the business. Cost reduction and staff retention were the top responses, although this was very closely followed by productivity, collaboration, and innovation.

In a more recent survey of 600 IT decision makers, we asked them what they wanted from their employer and mobile working is a top priority. 88 percent say they’d like CIO’s to update the technology (smartphones laptops and tablets) available to work on the move, and 87 percent want CIO’s to prioritise building apps to make it easier to work securely on the move. Not only is mobile working good for employees – it’s a way forward for business too. Ask employees why they want to work on the move, and they’ll tell you that better communication makes them more successful and their productivity improves when colleagues use mobile devices for work.

However, there are a number of challenges that need to be overcome in order to achieve these benefits. 86 percent of CEOs said they encounter challenges in delivering the ideal infrastructure on which their digital programmes rely. The barriers to a great digital employee experience are lack of technology skills, poor insight into end-user needs, and security.

BT has a unique perspective on the challenges our customers face with regards to Enterprise Mobility. We are one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries.

We have built one of the most advanced 4G networks anywhere in the world, and we run one of the largest WIFI networks in the world with 5.9m hotspots.

We are at the forefront of innovation in Mobile; for example, we are pioneering the use of 5G for our customers.

We understand the challenges our customers face. Firstly there is the technology complexity caused by the mashup of inter-related trends that are changing how Enterprise Mobility is managed. For example,innovation in wireless networks such as 5G is leveraging edge computing, network slicing, and artificial intelligence to revolutionize service levels and applications for different industry vertical requirements.

There is also a radical change in how software and applications are managed. For example, by 2020 90 percent of enterprises will be running hybrid multi-cloud and 70 percent of organisations are already running mircoservices in production.

If you want to roll out an omnichannel platform, allowing users to collaborate on any device, anywhere, how do you ensure high performance and availability of cloud-native apps?

Mobile users are also demanding new feature-rich content and services for example ultra-high definition video and Virtual/Augmented Reality. By 2020, a video will account for a staggering 75 percent of mobile traffic.

Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will account for 71 percent of total IP traffic by 2022. By 2022, wired devices will account for 29 percent of IP traffic, and Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 71 percentof IP traffic.

To complicate matters further, everything is becoming connected from the office, hospital, back to the factory floor. The digital transformation of all industries mean Human and machine synergy will become even more important.

In total there will be 28.5 billion networked devices by 2022, up from 18 billion in 2017.

It seems everything and everyone will need a network connection autonomous vehicles, drones, rovers, connected devices, wearables, co-bots, digital twins, from sensors in a hospital bed to video analytics on a production line.

The convergence of IT and OT (Operational Technology) means everything will also need to be secure. Critical operations may facenew security risks, potentially shutting down processes and putting people and revenue at risk.

BT’s customers increasingly want to be able to set policies according to the user, device, group, work function as well as application criticality and sensitivity.

The growth of data and complexity will mean providing users with a better, more consistent and secure experience will be more difficult. Finding and predicting problems will only be possible by using the latest advances in big data, AI, and visual analytics.

This will require radical approaches to systems, skills, and processes needed to manage and maintain user experience and security across the service provider, Cloud provider, IT and OT boundaries.