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The tremendous growth in the mobile subscriber base has changed the way enterprise customers go about conducting their business. The idea of anywhere-anytime connectivity, is fast becoming a reality. Business executives, no matter where they are, are realizing the importance of remaining connected. Blackberrys and other similar devices have suddenly become a rage amongst business users and is one of the success stories of a killer application in India. This is enabling the mobile workers to interact directly with the customers on the field instead of rushing back to the office to reach their office computers. The interesting element is that even personal mobile devices of executives are being used for business purposes-such is the need to remain connected. While all these means extending the enterprise, this also has widespread repercussion for the productivity enhancement. According to IDC predictions, two-thirds of US workers and more than half of Western European workers will be traveling for business by 2006. According to all indications, situation in India is no different.

KEY TRENDS
Enterprise mobility will fundamentally change the way people work. The ability to work away from the office and on the move is a defining feature of modern business. No enterprise hoping to remain competitive can ignore the fact that people live in an increasingly mobile world. From the globetrotting CEO to the mobile field engineer, portable devices such as mobile phones, laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs) have radically changed the way people work.

Mobile email and enterprise voice convergence are two trends leading the way for business mobility. Driving these trends are market pull for new devices, access to mobilized applications, and technology convergence. Having experienced the tremendous productivity improvements, complemented with the advancements in wireless technologies, enterprises worldwide are now looking for supporting more mobility, which is not just limited to the already mobile workforce but also looking beyond the obvious scenarios such as sales and service support mobile applications to more cross functional and value added solutions, which enable the work-force to respond faster and delight customers.

	EXPERTS PANEL
	Anil Jain, general manager, marketing, Siemens Chakrapani GK, country general manager, Enterprise Solution, Nokia Dilip Dhanuka, vice-president, Products and Technology Group, Patini Computer Mohan Menon, CEO, Airtel Enterprise Services Sam Srinivas, VP and chief technologist, Juniper Networks

There is a growing trend for enterprise fast adapting mobility to enhance work productivity and become competitive while reducing costs and the Indian market is no different.  A large chunk of enterprises today have mobility as a part of their IT strategy and this is a testimony of the fast growing need for enterprise mobility in India which has 78 mn mobile subscribers today. The growing mobile base in India is definitely a sign of improved telecom infrastructure in terms of increased coverage and robustness providing reliable connectivity anywhere anytime-which is one of the most important factors for an organization to adopt a mobility solution. Operating costs being another major concern for organizations in the Indian scenario and the reducing service charges is another plus point for the organizations to consider a mobility solution. Many of the mobility applications overseas typically make use of high-end mobile devices such as PDAs and smart phones. In India, apart from such applications, some simpler applications making use of standard mobile phones could also have a great potential. Say for eg SMS based applications.

The next phase of application extensions to include Mobile Intranet access eg business forms, rich document viewing is gaining acceptance and adoption in developed markets in the US, Europe, and select Asian countries. Going forward we see this trend, extending further and moving ahead to adoption of mobile business applications such as CRM, work flow management etc. Starting with mobile voice and moving towards capabilities to access and process information wherever, whenever is the natural progression for enterprise mobility.

GLOBAL SUCCESS CALLED MOBILE E-MAIL
IDC projects that by 2009 there will be more than 878 mn mobile workers worldwide demonstrating that mobility is going mainstream. This estimate comes from Worldwide Mobile Worker Population, 2005-2009 (Forecast and Analysis, IDC, October 2005). Mobile workers represent a significant portion of a company's overall staff, and these workers who are often responsible for making critical decisions or providing specific expertise

With e-mail being the main way by which teams collaborate with each other in the enterprise. And with those teams often being geographically dispersed beyond the corporate network, it is no longer sensible or acceptable for mobile data capabilities and remote access rights to be the preserve of executives and niche workers. Mobile e-mail will benefit all employees.

Mobile e-mail increases productivity during what otherwise might be idle time: waiting for a meeting, or during travel. Using mobile e-mail, users can keep in touch with their clients, partners and colleagues, receive important information from the office, and respond more rapidly when action is required

• Today, 60% of all work is carried out via e-mail-making it the predominant mobile business application (Source: Gartner)

• Nearly 80% of large corporations consider e-mail a driver for deploying wireless wide-area data solutions (Source: Yankee Group)

This indicates that mobile e-mail devices should have full attachment support: read, edit and create MS Office attachments; also support for Acrobat reader, ZIP, MP3, JPEG and video clips; support for several third party e-mail solutions and support for several e-mail standards: POP3, IMAP 4 with idle, OMA Data Sync 1.2., MS ActiveSync.

APPLICATIONS DRIVING ENTERPRISE MOBILITY
The mobilization of applications is currently in many companies' plans and strategy for competitive advantage. This goes beyond simply providing secure remote-access or offering web-access to corporate intranets/applications. Applications such as multi-party (up to six way) conference calling, integrated hands free and conference call, dedicated voice key, internet call (VoIP over WLAN), push-to-talk over cellular, other SIP-based rich call services, enhanced voice commands, speed and voice dialing and car kits will bring a rich calling experience in reach of every mobile professional.

Technology convergence impacting these two business mobility trends is fixed-mobile convergence and voice-data convergence. Businesses are looking to increase their competitive edge through improved cost efficiencies by leveraging their existing IT investments. There is also a growing trend of integration of business devices with voice, messaging, email, intranet and Internet access to allow maximizing productivity while on the move.

Application mobility brings support for popular business applications to the devices to increase employees' interactions with colleagues, partners, and customers and provide them access to key company information.

• 58% of large corporations consider Personal Information Management (PIM) to be a key driver for wireless wide-area solutions (Source: Yankee Group)

• As companies mobilize key business processes, they will expect mobile devices to evolve in step-providing a reliable delivery platform for business applications. (Examples include SFA, CRM and ERP)

MAJOR DRIVERS OF ENTERPRISE MOBILITY
The major drivers of enterprise mobility are reducing the number of devices per employee (easier management); increase accessibility and productivity of employees; avoid missed revenue opportunities; improve customer services; and improve work/life balance among employees. The key industries adopting enterprise mobility will be banking financial services and insurance segments, BPO's and software houses followed by manufacturing and the large PSU's and the government sector.

With more and more international players entering India, there is an increase in user expectations and changing business models are demanding that Indian businesses now be agile, adaptable and right time.

Field service and the sales applications are obviously largest opportunity for mobility applications, as this is the segment with most of the staff in field. India is just beginning to adopt mobility solutions and this would be the first thing enterprises would want to go for. The field service opportunities exist in many industries eg home repair, IT/office automation, industrial equipment repair, courier services etc. Transportation and distribution could be another driver apart from field service and sales. Asset tracking as a functional area is gaining ground.  

Other Drivers are:

• Hardware pricing, multipurpose devices–one device for voice and data access at economical pricing will lead to mass adoption of services

• Data Access Speeds-with edge on GSM the access speeds are much faster than traditional GPRS deployments-user access to applications is faster

• Data Access Charges-Mobile Data Access charges are one of the lowest in India

DILEMMA OF MULTIPLE DEVICES
Typically, in an organization, many employees use their own personal mobile phones for work. Under IT guidance, standardization on specific devices can result in significant cost savings for the organization. IT involvement can have a big impact on successful device management, resulting in a decrease in workload for the support team. For example, an organization that is standardized on specific devices can apply security and application updates remotely over the air quickly and efficiently and effectively extending their existing IT infrastructure to include the mobile workforce.

The management and integration of mobile devices into an organization's overall IT infrastructure is simple and straight. There are a variety of solutions available, which leverage investments already made in the network. Mobile e-mail can be enabled with the addition of a server that sits behind the firewall, keeping data safely in the organization. There is no 'one-device' technology that can be called as single leader. There is no dominant device standard that exists today. The device multiplicity exists in terms of the processing capability, device operating systems, Interface technologies, support for peripherals, ruggedness and so on.

Also there exists a wide range of options for integrating these devices with enterprise systems. The multiplicity will continue to exist and one can't wait for things to mature. Organizations need to find a solution to the existing business problem and make use of the best-fit devices at this stage. Gartner recommends adopting a more tactical approach than strategic approach at this stage.

SECURITY RISKS
Probably the number one IT issue facing all enterprises today is the problem of security, and in particular, the problem of how to secure remote access links into the company.  Security of corporate data has become a key concern for many enterprises. Enterprises today look at a secure, reliable connection from many mobile devices and control access to enterprise networks to ensure the integrity of the network and the content that flows in and out of it. Security continues to remain the key element and consideration in all mobility implementations. Large corporations have strong security implementations but at the same time, have to review these to cater for the more demanding needs of business mobility.

Many IT managers still regard remote users as a major threat to the integrity of the corporate network, and believe that allowing workforce-wide access to enterprise data resources from outside of the office is more trouble than it's worth. And with e-mail borne viruses and spam still on the increase, as well as the problems of data theft through hacking, it's no wonder that IT managers are concerned that embracing mobile data will only increase their corporate security headache.

But the situation is changing. Previous barriers of expensive technologies, lack of standards and consequential low return on investment (RoI) are being demolished as relevant technologies become more affordable and the necessary support services to combine full e-mail and secure remote access capabilities on fixed or mobile devices become widely available.

It is important that appropriate security infrastructure be in built into mobile data services, which to name a few are achieved using various encryption technology like IPSec, 3DES and AES and secure VPN/ secure tokens (strong authentication) clients supplemented by a security architecture on the service provider core

When proper measures are taken, mobile devices offer a safe, secure and reliable means of communicating sensitive information and provide businesses with a mobile infrastructure that is as secure as any organization's “traditional” IT infrastructure.

The security measures available on traditional IT infrastructure are available on mobile devices too-The CIO needs to consider the following before rolling out the solution:

• Remote management of devices

• Anti-virus software for devices

• Data encryption

ROI MODEL
Though there could be direct benefits and few indirect benefits such as increased employee satisfaction, improved customer satisfaction, which can lead to better business in future. Also there are many different technology choices available. One can always choose a solution, which will provide a balance between the operational efficiency and the costs. TCO can be very small or very large, depending on the capabilities of the hardware, middleware and type of architecture and deployment. The choice of the right mix needs to be decided strategically and not purely on traditional TCO and RoI model.

QOS ISSUES
Real-time services, eg interpersonal communications using voice or video, as well as critical enterprise applications (eg ERP or CRM) demand a certain level of network performance to provide enterprise-grade service quality. Critical transport parameters include latency, delay jitter and data rate, which can be controlled in managed packet-networks by various QoS mechanisms, which operate on different network layers

Apart from the standard QoS issues such as bandwidth optimization and traffic conditioning the mobile network relate issues include the network availability and coverage, over-the-air QoS, network contention issues, load balancing among access points, issues while interfacing with IP networks etc.

End-to-end QoS across network boundaries requires the co-operation of QoS management functions and defined network-to-network interfaces. Within the network of a single operator, this can be more readily realized, but across networks of different operators this is currently hard to achieve due to the lack of open standards. Access network is in many cases the weakest part of the transport chain in terms of network performance, QoS management is most required for this network.

Most of the large enterprises today have their own ERP systems. The key is to integrate the mobile devices with such applications for true enterprise mobility. Today, the challenge is both on the variety of mobile devices as well as the cost. Also, there are very few integrators available in India who can understand and develop such applications to run on mobile devices. Lots of the enterprise mobility applications are spectrum dependent (such as video streaming and live TV) and abundant availability of spectrum will play a key role.

Sudesh Prasad  
sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in