Thought Leadership
Mobile Applications and
Cloud: Companies, Vendors
Take Aim at Mobilizing
Business Workflows
August 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Foundation Is Being
Laid for Massive Mobile Scale
in the Enterprise
2
Enterprise Mobile Apps
Are Few and Far Between –
but Appetite Is Growing
3
Chris Marsh, Principal Analyst, chris.marsh@451research.com
Chris Hazelton, Research Director, chris.hazelton@451research.com
Raúl Castañón, Senior Analyst, raul.castanon@451research.com
Enterprise Data Locked
Up in Unwieldy Backend Systems
Is Degrading in Value 5
The Bottom Line
Interest in the Many Use Cases for
Beacons Is Growing
6
Big Data Is Coming to Mobile Apps
7
The speed at which mobility is penetrating the enterprise is causing challenges
and complexity that companies are struggling to deal with. During the next two
to three years we’ll see companies and technology vendors alike try to catch
the wave of enterprise mobility opportunities evolving the way they develop,
deploy and manage mobile apps.
Highlights
• Enterprise apps have been limited, despite employees’ use of mobile services.
A lack of apps deployed by their employers is driving employees to use consumer
services they have grown comfortable with in their personal lives. Of the apps
companies have deployed, many do not go beyond basic services such as email,
calendars and contacts.
• Companies need to change the way they view their data. To better leverage its
immense value, companies need to start looking at their data as inventory. Doing so
will break it out of its backend silos and allow its power to be fully leveraged by end
users and partners alike.
• Beacons are a breakthrough technology. Leveraging Bluetooth low energy, beacon
technology offers companies a multitude of use cases for more accurate logging of
enterprise data and more contextualized location-based targeting.
• Mobile application management is taking center stage for managing mobility.
Enterprise mobility management built around applications represents the future
of ensuring enterprise data is protected and locked down and end users have the
access they need to mobile service.
• Big data analytics is becoming key to building mobile applications. Best practices
built around big data and analytics that have been traditionally reserved for
consumer-facing apps and games are making their way into B2B application
development. Such practices will be the norm moving forward as companies look to
better customize their apps.
The Focus in Mobility Management
Shifts from the Device to the Data 8
COMPANIES MENTIONED
Apple, BlackBerry, IBM, Microsoft,
Samsung
Mobile Applications and Cloud: Companies, Vendors Take Aim at Mobilizing Business Workflows
August 2014
The Foundation Is Being Laid for Massive Mobile Scale in the Enterprise
When thinking about the major dynamics driving enterprise mobility today, it’s key to
keep in mind the three Cs – consumerization, complexity and consolidation. Our 2014
US Enterprise Mobility: Employee Survey, June, shows that 62% of all US employees use
a smartphone for some kind of work purpose, and 79% of those devices are employee
owned. Thirty percent (30%) of employees use consumer productivity applications for
work and an additional 26% want to. Fourteen percent (14%) of employees use these
applications even knowing full well that their IT department policy prohibits them –
and this is likely to be a case of under-reporting. All together the cascading of consumer
technologies into the workplace has over a short span of time wrenched control away
from the employer.
Mobile’s enterprise value will come from the continued evolution of devices as the
new computing platform, but where the rubber hits the road for individual companies
will be around applications and data used to re-envision workflows and processes as
mobile-enabled. When smart mobile devices began to proliferate across the enterprise
there was a corresponding emergence of mobile device management (MDM) vendors
and ways to lock down and control devices. This was – and still is – suitable as one
component to secure corporate-provisioned devices as long as the experience is not
compromised. Still, it has never really gained traction for employee-owned devices due
to not only usability issues but also employees’ privacy concerns – i.e., not wanting
their employer to be able to see or fiddle with their personal content.
We were really the first to call the shift from MDM to enterprise mobility management
(EMM) (see our June 2012 report “MDM Is Dead. Long Live EMM!”), in particular
methods for asserting policies over data, apps and content through capabilities such
as app wrapping and app management, app containerization, app VPNs, and deploying
data-loss prevention (DLP) measures around content. Increasingly, companies will need
to focus their energy on how to protect and leverage their mobile applications and data
as opposed to the device.
In this report we discuss how mobility and mobile applications will transform the
enterprise during the next two to three years (see Exhibit 1 on the next page). If
we include the raft of applications, wearable devices, the Internet of Things (IoT),
beacons and other sensors making their way into enterprises, there will be more data,
more contextual awareness in that data and more intelligence that can be applied to
continually enhance the value of that data to the enterprise. This will allow companies
to fundamentally re-envision how they engage their customers, employees and
partners. The new business models that will arise around the mobile channel as the
vehicles delivering new experiences, workflows and processes will be transformative
for entire industries.
© Copyright 1997-2014, Yankee 451 Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
Page 2
Mobile Applications and Cloud: Companies, Vendors Take Aim at Mobilizing Business Workflows
August 2014
Exhibit 1: Mobile Applications and Cloud Now and in the Future
Source: 451 Research, 2014
Market Vision 2014
Mobile Applications and Cloud
Now
Future
Most processes and workflows
Enterprise mobile apps are
will be, if not redefined by mobile,
few and far between – but
extended to and accessible
appetite is growing
through mobile devices.
And the Winners Will Be …
The enabling technology vendors across the application
lifecycle helping companies to introduce more
automation, faster time to market and greater scale.
The focus in mobility
management shifts from
the device to the data
Companies asserting policy,
security and compliance at the
application and data level.
Mobile application management (MAM) vendors, and the
mobile application platform vendors for which MAM will
be a necessary deployment partner.
Big data is coming to
mobile apps
Mobile analytics will extend
beyond B2C apps; companies will
leverage responsive analytics to
customize the user experience.
Analytics vendors with a strong focus on analytics
and user engagement; vendors that provide tools for
marketing and responsive analytics; and companies that
focus on customizing the user experience.
Enterprise data locked
up in unwieldy backend
systems is degrading
in value
Interest in the many
use cases for beacons
is growing
A flatter enterprise data model will
Vendors providing easy access, orchestration and
allow companies to recycle data
management of data between the data source and the
as a core part of their inventory,
application, such as API management vendors, extensible
continuously adding value to it in
mobile application platforms and cloud access platforms.
iterated mobile experiences.
There will be much more
contextual relevance in the
experiences mobile users
consume.
Beacon hardware manufacturers, enterprises and brands
(especially proximity marketers), mobile users and
analytics vendors allowing enterprises to make sense of
the new contextual data.
Enterprise Mobile Apps Are Few and Far Between – but Appetite Is Growing
Mobile applications in the enterprise have so far been rather elusive creatures:
email, calendar and contacts, maybe access to a corporate intranet, and mobile CRM
and field-force automation for sales and field workers – but beyond that not much
else. The reasons for this are many and reflect a complex nexus of obstacles around
organizational and technological readiness, which prevent companies from thinking
beyond opportunistic and usually siloed deployments. The reality, however, is that
this should and will become a land of plenty, both for companies redefining what
productivity and user engagement means to the way they organize and monetize
themselves, and of course for the vendors and service providers enabling this with new
tools, services and platforms.
Few doubt that mobile devices – in all their various shapes, sizes and intended use
cases – are becoming the new enterprise computing platform. How to actually make
this anything more than a wild west of employees bringing in their devices and using
them unfettered, however, is significantly easier said than done. These devices are of
course platforms for applications, but despite growing smart mobile device ubiquity,
the number and spread of applications being used on them reflects much more the
behaviors of individual users than it does companies looking to shift their content and
data into applications by installing systematic strategies en masse. Although there are
some companies that have taken a very strategic and broad approach to deploying many
applications internally to their own staff and partners and externally to customers, these
are few and far between. The ranks of such companies are growing, but deploying a
handful of mobile applications – if that – is where most stand at the moment.
© Copyright 1997-2014, Yankee 451 Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
Page 3
Mobile Applications and Cloud: Companies, Vendors Take Aim at Mobilizing Business Workflows
The following data illustrates this relative lack of maturity
around mobile applications strategies in the enterprise:
• Employees are resorting to using consumer or pro-sumer
productivity applications such as cloud storage, instant
messaging and VoIP, and online travel services. Thirty
percent (30%) of employee respondents to our survey say
they already use these types of apps, with an additional
26% saying they might do so. Interestingly, where the IT
department’s official policy is to allow these apps, usage
shoots up to around 60% of all employees. Even when
the IT policy forbids their use, 14% of employees still go
on to use consumer apps. The main reasons behind such
a significant appetite for consumer apps is employees’
familiarity with these kinds of tools from their own
personal lives, as well as the absence of an alternative
from their employer.
• At 43% of respondents, email is the application type
most often regarded as being strategic on mobile devices.
The next most frequently mentioned is mobile access to the
corporate database. The fact that these are considered as
largely the most-strategic mobile applications reflects how
little mobility has so far touched core business applications.
• Executives are still the group of workers (by 59%)
that companies are prioritizing most often for mobile
applications, followed by technicians and sales
employees. Again, this reflects how much mobility in many
companies is still user-driven and flows top-down, instead
of being more widespread and systematically addressing
the general mass of employee workflows.
Nevertheless, as enabling technologies become more
mature and as companies realize the need to bring greater
organizational focus around how to think about mobility at
scale, some of the pieces are coming together that point toward
a coming gold rush for mobile applications. They include:
• Seventy-five percent (75%) of companies that have
already or plan to deploy mobile applications during the
next year will be increasing their budgets. Twelve percent
(12%) plan to increase those budgets by more than 50%.
• Sixty-two percent (62%) of companies say they have a
comprehensive mobile strategy (although we are a little
skeptical as to what they mean by this). Even if these
‘strategies’ are tactical initiatives (which we suspect they
are), nevertheless it is indicative of a perception that one
is needed.
© Copyright 1997-2014, Yankee 451 Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
August 2014
• Seventy percent (70%) of companies intend to increase
their recruitment of mobile skills during the coming
year. Although mobile-specific talent is not easy to come
by, companies are nevertheless looking to recruit in a
broad base of skills: 24% are looking to bring on board
mobile application development skills, 22% are looking
to recruit someone to head the mobile strategy, 12%
are focusing on governance, compliance and risk around
mobile implementations, and 7% are in need of mobile
architecture skills.
• Fifty-six percent (56%) of all companies now are open
to allowing employees to use their own devices and
applications at work. Half of those are actively providing
some kind of support for personally owned devices and
apps. Those figures demonstrate that the days when a
majority of companies looked at mobile as something to
proscribe or lock down are behind us.
Future Outlook
Sometimes it is easy to forget how nascent mobility is in the
enterprise. That companies are not yet deploying mobile
applications en masse to their employees, partners and
customers therefore should not be a surprise. In the enterprise
IT landscape, mobility is definitively different from what
came before. One of the hardest obstacles for companies is
understanding how to bridge the gap between legacy, nonmobile infrastructure, applications and services, and the
unique technology requirements that mobile brings; not to
mention the organizational adaptations required to redefine
business operations to keep up with the speed of mobile.
Inevitably, what we will see come to pass during the next
two to three years is a combination of extensions to legacy
technologies and newer services born in the age of mobile
– together redefining the enterprise technology landscape.
These pieces are beginning to be put into place (see Exhibit
2 on the next page). This is being driven by a still immature
market without any large incumbents and the opportunity this
has afforded innovative and disruptive companies, along with
the natural response from those vendors with vested interests
to see the technology evolve in their favor. New innovations
and resulting consolidation is beginning to provide the tools
for companies to scale their mobile applications across the
lifecycle. While some companies are already there, we believe
it will be a few years before we see the average company
deploying more than this handful of mobile applications.
Page 4
Mobile Applications and Cloud: Companies, Vendors Take Aim at Mobilizing Business Workflows
Exhibit 2: Companies Are Making More Resources Available for Mobile
Application Projects
Source: 451 Research’s 2014 US Mobile Applications and Cloud Survey, June
How will your mobile application development strategy
change over the next 12 months? (n=499)
Increase in-house development
54%
28%
Increase outsourced development
25%
No change
Decrease outsourced development
Decrease in-house development
10%
8%
Enterprise Data Locked Up in Unwieldy Backend
Systems Is Degrading in Value
The explosion of mobile devices, distributed cloud services
and SaaS applications is changing the very rules of the game
for enterprise IT. However, few companies are changing fast
enough to keep pace with what are significant implications
for the architecture, deployment and management of
applications. Mobile applications have different requirements
than non-mobile applications, namely a stronger need
to connect to multiple – both public and private – data
sources. It requires a new way to build and manage APIs
and brings into question the value of traditional approaches
using service-oriented architectures (SOA) and Web APIs
to facilitate transactions between these applications and
backend systems. In particular, demand is growing for a way
to scale the building and management of APIs for the long
tail of internal and customer-facing workflows companies
will look to mobilize beyond those most strategic of business
processes (see Exhibit 3). In doing so, companies need to
think about the following:
• The immediacy of the mobile interface has rapidly
enhanced expectations for access to data and the
richness of the experience delivered by integrated data
streams. APIs need to become much more granular to
provide only the data needed for experiences that are
contextualized to the user’s device, OS and application
requirements. Locking data in siloed enterprise
applications degrades its value to the enterprise.
Increasingly, the connectedness between different data
sets is where its value will lie.
© Copyright 1997-2014, Yankee 451 Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
August 2014
• More flexible and scalable ways of building, deploying
and managing APIs. Doing so can deliver richer and more
connected experiences and help bring down organizational
silos that have been compounded by legacy enterprise
applications. Product managers, developers, security and
risk professionals all have a common stake in API evolution.
• As data becomes inventory, technology usage needs to
be measured in a new way. This should include evaluating
the costs of internal systems and determining how
continuous returns can be generated by recycling this
data inventory to iterate new products and offer more
compelling mobile services.
Exhibit 3: Mobile API Management Is a Growing Segment
Source: 451 Research’s 2014 US Mobile Applications and Cloud Survey, June
With regard to any planned mobile applications
projects over the next year, which of the following
is the most important investment priority? (n=255)
Mobile testing platform
7%
Mobile backend-as-a-service platform
6%
Mobile API management
12%
Mobile application development platform
36%
Mobile application management
39%
Future Outlook
It is somewhat counter-intuitive for companies to think
of their data as a core part of their inventory. However,
as technologies enable more rapid iteration across the
application lifecycle, the value of data will be enhanced by
liberating it from traditional backend systems. For this to
happen, however, companies will need to think of themselves
as nodes – not hubs. As systems and data become more
distributed, modern APIs become not about the unwieldy
dependencies of application-to-data source silos, but require
companies to think about themselves more like nodes
facilitating user access to data while not forcing them to
journey to you to get that data.
Page 5
Mobile Applications and Cloud: Companies, Vendors Take Aim at Mobilizing Business Workflows
August 2014
Interest in the Many Use Cases for Beacons Is Growing
Beacons are small transmitters powered by Bluetooth low energy (BLE) that send
signals to mobile devices while keeping their energy consumption lower than Wi-Fi.
Much of the attention around beacon solutions has been generated by Apple’s iBeacon,
which encompasses the beacons themselves and the software in iOS devices that
detects and can transmit to and receive data from those beacons. BLE is also supported
by number of other devices as well, such as Nokia’s Lumia range, some Samsung Galaxy
devices and the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10.
The reason why these technologies are so promising is that the potential use cases for
both B2C and B2B solutions for the enterprise are exploding (Exhibit 4). To date, many
such use cases have been centered around mobile marketing and engagement, which we
detail in our August 2014 report “Mobile Marketing and Commerce: Loyalty, Engagement
Take Center Stage as Players Look Beyond Payments.” In general, beacons have the
potential to deliver on the long-held promise in enterprise mobility of more accurate
logging of enterprise data and more contextualized location-based targeting. Although
it’s a nascent market, this year will see a boom in interest in beacon deployments.
Exhibit 4: There Is Significant Appetite for Tracking Mobile User Behavior To Enhance Engagement
Source: 451 Research’s 2014 US Mobile Applications and Cloud Survey, June
On a scale of 1 to 10, please rate the importance of using business
intelligence and analytics for gaining insight on following customer
activities on smartphones and tablets. (n=152)
Use data to track and measure user experience
to see customer retention and engagement
Analyze customer segments with the highest total
lifetime value to further fine-tune mobile apps marketing
66%
23%
62%
26%
6%
5%
7%
6%
10%
5%
Create segmentation models by understanding user
behavior on mobile application for marketing campaigns
56%
Track user behavior that drives mobile customers
through the most profitable channels
55%
24%
9% 13%
Test multiple variations apps to create a
personalized experience for customers
54%
26%
9% 11%
Measure and improve in-app
advertising campaigns
52%
30%
8% 10%
Run in-app marketing campaigns based on which
hours of the day users are most engaged
High (10,9,8)
High-medium (7,6)
48%
Low-medium (5,4)
29%
30%
11% 11%
Low (3,2,1)
Aside from mobile commerce initiatives, there are many other uses cases that show
great potential for companies across different verticals:
• Hospitals using beacons located in wards to push content to medical staff’s devices,
and as a compliance log to record when, where and that a medical professional had
actually visited the ward at a certain time.
• Museums could locate beacons next to exhibits so that visitors can access relevant
information on the exhibit as they view it.
• Security professionals patrolling buildings and other sites could be logged by
beacons, removing the need for paper-based records of the routes completed and
sending alerts if specific areas have not been patrolled.
• Restaurants can be beacon-enabled to entice people inside, call a server to your
table, see the remaining wait time and pay the check.
© Copyright 1997-2014, Yankee 451 Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
Page 6
Mobile Applications and Cloud: Companies, Vendors Take Aim at Mobilizing Business Workflows
Future Outlook
Unlike NFC, which has a shorter range and is not supported
by Apple devices, BLE has broader applicability for a host
of enterprise solutions. With enterprises hesitant to invest
in mobile solutions other than those offering a clear ROI,
they will not have to look far to see where beacons can
deliver. While some of the beacon hardware is limited in its
capability, it will only be a matter of time before beacons
plus mobile devices plus mobile applications converge
into solutions that help deliver on that promise of greater
contextualization and data utility. When this occurs
companies will begin to think of their data as their inventory,
iterated in mobile solutions for greater worker productivity
and customer engagement.
Big Data Is Coming to Mobile Apps
August 2014
Exhibit 5: Nearly Two-Thirds of Enterprises Look To Engage Customers via
Mobile Apps
Source: 451 Research’s US Mobile Applications and Cloud Survey, June
Ways of enabling customer
activities on mobile devices
Which of the following have you chosen to enable customer activities on
smartphones, tablets or handheld devices? (Please select all that apply) (n=152)
65%
A mobile website
59%
A mobile app
41%
SMS
Mobile coupons
Other
16%
1%
The traditional approach to IT infrastructure has relied
on economies of scale, leveraging automation and
standardization to improve enterprise effectiveness. Mobility
is now taking organizations to a new level in productivity;
and large-scale customization of the user experience is a key
element for this.
Mobility is transforming how businesses and employees
work, allowing companies to achieve new levels of efficiency;
the shift to a mobile economy is making mobile apps more
relevant, and the focus will increasingly be on mobile
analytics and user engagement.
The concept of large-scale customization is not entirely
new to the enterprise. Organizations in verticals such as
retail, mobile commerce, travel and healthcare are already
introducing gaming and consumer apps best practices into
B2C apps to measure and understand how users interact with
mobile applications, as well as develop strategies for user
engagement and responsiveness. While this has been mostly
developed for customer-facing applications (see Exhibit 5),
deployment of these practices is now extending into B2E and
B2B apps. For example, we’re seeing:
Future Outlook
• Mobile apps for smartphones, tablets and connected
devices such as wearables are transforming the ways
organizations and employees work and providing a boost
in enterprise productivity.
Though still in early stages, we expect the consumerization of
best practices in user engagement and analytics will extend
beyond marketing automation and B2C apps during the next
two to three years, helping enterprises move beyond mass-scale
economics. Enterprises will leverage existing infrastructure and
know-how from customer-facing business processes for defining
the user experience for B2B and B2E apps.
• Currently IT has more of a mass-scale mindset than
one that focuses on the customization of the end-user
experience.
Mobility is about customization of the user experience.
Enterprise mobility requires more than simply providing mobile
access to enterprise resources; it means providing employees
with the right tools and data when and where they need
them, regardless of the location their job requires them to
be, or the device they choose to access them with. Delivering
this experience can only be achieved by understanding user
behavior across the entire app user lifecycle.
• The new era of large-scale customization is making mobile
analytics and user engagement increasingly relevant.
© Copyright 1997-2014, Yankee 451 Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
Page 7
Mobile Applications and Cloud: Companies, Vendors Take Aim at Mobilizing Business Workflows
The Focus in Mobility Management Shifts from the
Device to the Data
The fact that mobile computing is now displacing a share
of so-called traditional computing in the enterprise is
clear. What is less clear is how mobile computing will run
in the enterprise. The inherent and ongoing complexity of
mobile environments necessitates a flexible set of tools for
managing mobile users. EMM is more than a collection of
competing tools – it is the evolving overall toolset that IT can
use to support users and control the movement of corporate
data outside the enterprise.
The world of enterprise mobility is evolving rapidly, and there
are key tools that IT staff will need in order to manage and
control the mobile devices, data, applications and services
that employees require to be productive. The primary tools
fall under the banner of EMM – a combination of software
and services that provide visibility into the enterprise’s
mobile deployments. It’s important to keep in mind:
• EMM is primarily concerned with smartphones and
tablets, but the reach of these tools is expanding. This
is occurring as vendors incorporate EMM into desktop
management, and the rise of a new class of connected
devices – including wearables – pushes corporate data
even further to the edge.
• Over the next few years, enterprise deployments with
only MDM will decline. Companies are shifting their
enterprise mobility strategies from a device- and assetmanagement focus toward an approach that is centered on
data and user management. BlackBerry Enterprise Server
5 has the largest deployment base of any EMM player, but
the vendor is struggling to drive adoption of its latest BES
10 and 12 offerings.
August 2014
Future Outlook
The mobile application is rapidly gaining prominence in the
enterprise, and the need to manage the entire lifecycle of
a mobile app will push development tools toward EMM.
Adoption of traditional proprietary mobile enterprise
application platforms (MEAPs) in the enterprise has slowed as
companies cautiously advance their development capabilities
for mobility, often redefining their needs. Regardless of
whether mobile apps are sourced externally or built internally
using development platforms, MAM will be driven by the
growing need for companies to control the movement of
corporate data. Over the next two years, 46% of companies
that have deployed EMM tools will invest in MAM (see Exhibit
6). Company data will continue to be pulled to mobile devices
by employees that need anytime, anywhere access to the
information that allows them to be productive.
Exhibit 6: Future EMM Tools Will Focus on Apps
Source: 451 Research’s US Mobile Applications and Cloud Survey, June
Which elements of managed mobility do you have deployed
today? Which (additional) ones do you plan to deploy within
two years? (Please select all that apply for each column)
(n=505)
46%
Mobile application management
44%
Mobile connectivity management
Mobile security management
35%
Mobile device management
34%
24%
Mobile telecom expense management
None of the above
13%
• EMM is about enabling employees while protecting the
enterprise when it comes to the use of mobile computing
devices. As mobile computing becomes pervasive in the
enterprise, so too will the requirement for EMM. Wherever
there is mobile data, there will need to be controls for
the enterprise – whether at the device, application or
hypervisor level.
© Copyright 1997-2014, Yankee 451 Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
Page 8
Mobile Applications and Cloud: Companies, Vendors Take Aim at Mobilizing Business Workflows
August 2014
Conclusions and Recommendations
Mobile applications are slowly gathering pace in the enterprise. The impetus behind
the partnership IBM and Apple entered into in July was a good indication of how
enterprises are shifting their focus from employees sitting behind desks or simply
having a mobile device in their hands to a future where processes and workflows are
being rethought in the context of mobile applications. We recommend enterprises and
technology vendors selling into enterprises to consider the following:
Recommendations for Companies
• Look for deep mobile expertise in the EMM infrastructure. As IT leaders look to
implement or evolve their mobile strategies, it is important when choosing an EMM
vendor or vendors to look to those that are constantly investing and looking to push
the boundaries of security and management in mobile. Leveraging vendors that
have bolted on MDM to meet check boxes will ultimately mean buying additional
products and services down the road. Just as IT management vendors are moving
into the mobile space, EMM vendors are increasingly looking up the value chain
at securing all end points. As part of looking at EMM vendors, IT should look for
mobile competency, but also broad applicability to the enterprise as a whole. Just
as workers and corporate data move across devices, so to should IT in its ability to
manage across mobile, cloud and the desktop.
• IT leaders should consider including an analytics solution when they deploy or
evolve their mobile strategies. Incorporating analytics early in the deployment
cycle will provide valuable insight that can shape the company’s strategy. This is
particularly important for customer-facing projects, but also relevant for B2E and
B2B applications.
• IT should invest in analytics across the entire app monetization lifecycle. Analytics
vendors are increasingly looking to provide end-to-end solutions through market
consolidation or integration with other vendors; as part of their vendor evaluation, IT
should look for comprehensive solutions or solutions that require minimal integration.
• Test new solutions implementations on the edge of your IT infrastructure.
Companies should scenario plan what impact a wider rollout would have to avoid
any unwanted surprises and delays when it goes fully live. They should also think
twice on waiting to deploy until they have what they might think is the perfect
answer. Mobile moves too quickly for that to make sense, so companies should
deploy new solutions sooner and then plan on more frequent iterative updates to
improve the experience as they go along. They should obviously look during the
initial rollout to have in place metrics and performance monitoring in order to plan
where updates and improvements should best be prioritized.
• Be comfortable with being imperfect in defining your ROI metrics. Have some KPIs
or metrics around some kind of measurable ROI; otherwise, you might find it hard to
justify future updates or future new projects, which may just send you back to the
drawing board and waste even more time.
© Copyright 1997-2014, Yankee 451 Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
Page 9
Recommendations for Technology Vendors
• Focus on managing data and users. As IT deploys more applications to support
mobile workers, EMM vendors will need to provide robust MAM capabilities. As
shown previously in Exhibit 6, MAM will see the greatest interest for future EMM
tool deployments. Secondly, pricing pressure will continue in this space from both
pure-play mobile vendors and larger IT management vendors. This segment will move
from per device pricing to per user pricing, further eroding margins. Vendors should
be ready to move quickly to this pricing format, while at the same time continuing to
build or partner to deliver additional mobile services to EMM customers.
• Vendors must ensure powerful analytics solutions do not require a data
management specialist. As part of their vendor evaluation, IT will look for analytics
solutions with user-friendly interfaces, visualization tools and similar approaches
that can help the end user derive meaningful insight from large amounts of data.
Analytics solutions should be designed with the line of business user in mind.
HEADQUARTERS
About the Author
Chris Marsh
Principal Analyst
Chris Marsh is a principal analyst researching enterprise mobility.
As part of the 451 Research Mobility team, which was established
in July 2014 with the integration of Yankee Group, Marsh focuses
on analyzing the impact of mobile, social and cloud technologies on
enterprise and service provider business models.
© Copyright 2014. Yankee 451 Group, LLC. This content is for the sole use of Yankee 451 Group, LLC subscribers. It may
not be duplicated, reproduced or retransmitted in whole or in part without the express permission of Yankee 451 Group,
LLC. All rights reserved. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgment as of this date and are subject to
change without notice.
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