Reshaping Enterprise Communications: Mobility and Wireless LANs

Wireless and particularly mobility continue to play an increasingly central role in enterprise infrastructure and strategy. The number of wireless-only workers is growing, pointing to the maturation of wireless infrastructure and changing work patterns for certain employees. An increasing number of companies make decisions regarding application development with mobile devices in mind as a key instrument in the employee’s toolbox. The consumerization of mobile devices has brought about big changes, concerns, and hurdles for IT departments used to controlling the internal device environment, but it also creates opportunities to lower cost and improve employee satisfaction. Buying choices for mobile devices are being pushed out to business units, managers, and even employees themselves, to meet their specific needs. This decentralized approach can have profound implications for the way IT works as departments attempt to be more proactive. Critical to a successful mobility strategy is Mobile Device Management (MDM), a growing, but underutilized piece of the puzzle. MDM makes provisioning, maintaining, and generally keeping track of devices much less chaotic, and directly correlates to more successful mobile deployments.