Mobility in the Enterprise

  • Article

Mobility is having a major impact on the enterprise: both internally and in how businesses engage with customers.

  • On the business side, mobility is empowering users to keep the business moving from anywhere.
  • On the customer side, today’s consumers want and, in some cases, expect to be able to interact with businesses through a rich mobile experience—the kind of experience that will keep them coming back for more.

Microsoft's Mobility strategy can help businesses:

  • Connect employees, as well with partners and vendors, in real time, streamlining workflows and cutting down on the time to deliver end value by:
    • Allowing for device choice and anywhere access without compromising security. With Windows 8 we are taking our commitment to deliver the experiences and devices that users love and demand along with enterprise-grade solutions to a new level. Windows 8 laptops, tablets, and
      phones offer no-compromise experience for business. Built on a shared core, both Windows 8 tablets and Windows Phone 8 deliver the same user experience along with enterprise-class security and management features. With end-to-end encryption, information rights management, and a secure application container model, businesses can enable access while protecting sensitive information and data. Windows to Go, and improvements to DirectAccess, along with Mobile Broadband enhancements enable new possibilities for deskless work. With the concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), they’re likely to be owned and controlled by the individual and cannot be “managed” like a typical corporate-controlled PC. These challenges require flexibility in the way corporate policies are defined, such as determining which policies can and should be applied to which devices, and how those devices should be managed. Microsoft offers two separate endpoint management solutions – System Center 2012 Configuration Manager for on-premises management, and Windows Intune for management through the cloud. With System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Service Pack 1 and the next version of Windows Intune, Microsoft is taking the first step in delivering interoperability between these products through Configuration Manager’s administration console. This will enable customers to add mobile devices managed through the cloud with Windows Intune into their System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Service Pack 1 console and manage all the devices through one tool.

 

    • Helping them stay productive on the go with familiar, connected experiences by providing integrated tools for communication and collaboration to connect your mobile and distributed workers, you can support a productive experience whether they are working on a PC or mobile device, across any type of connection (from the corporate network to a public wireless connection in an airport), and even offline. Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office 365 technologies, including Lync, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft SharePoint, provide enterprise-class communication and collaboration capabilities today. With the new Office, we have made significant investments to transform Office from a document-centric set of applications into a hub for connecting people and knowledge. It will work beautifully and consistently across the desktop, tablet, and phone. And while Office continues to offer the best experience on Windows, we deliver best-in-class productivity applications to iOS and Android as well – such as Lync, OneNote, and now SharePoint. Office has been re-architected for the cloud, which means that Office is now a service – It’s available on-demand, it roams with you and is always up-to-date. Also, the new Office is always logged-in and saves to the cloud by default. When you sign into Office you get roaming settings and quick access to your documents stored in SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro & SharePoint online, which means you can access your content from wherever you are.

 

    • Enable specialized in-the-field workflows with mobile LOB apps. When you provide your people with access to business data and insight from their mobile devices, they can resolve issues and keep the business moving without delay. A common design language that spans PC, tablet, & phone helps you target multiple device types in a single development effort. While Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure offer choice in bringing your apps to the cloud. Lastly, because Windows 8 apps may be built with the foundational Microsoft .NET languages, allowing you to leverage existing development skills and resources. We've embraced standards such as HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript so that even non-Microsoft developer skills are transferable.

 

  • Enable smart, engaging experiences for mobile users through richer, more context-aware, cloud-enabled applications by:

    • Exciting and engaging users with an immersive, connected mobile experience. The key to digital marketing success in today’s market is creating a killer, must-have app, and the key to an engaging app is to optimize the user experience. While these apps are consumer facing, they must still be “enterprise grade.” Breadth is also important. With Windows 8–style mobile applications, you can delight your customers with immersive and connected content experiences. Windows 8 and Windows Phone, highlights include:

      •Content before chrome—letting your content shine and immersing users in your experience

      •Live tiles—to engage users and draw them back into an immersive experience

      •Snap view—so users can consume and interact with content and any other app at the same time

      •And finally, engaging users and connecting content to other apps and play-to devices across Xbox, Office, Internet Explorer, Bing, and more 

    • Embracing a growing, global, always-on mobile community with the Cloud. Windows Azure enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any operating system, language or tool. With Azure Media Services you can distribute the "best instance" video and live media events to any device. And with the upcoming, Windows Azure Mobile Services will enable the top three things every mobile app needs: user authentication, push notifications, and structured data storage.  

With this understanding one could use the below representation to help determine measurable business impact for an enterprise mobile strategy around any of these five pillars mapping to Microsoft Products and Services that can help create that impact.