IT Briefcase Exclusive Interview: Understanding the Evolution of Enterprise Mobility

Mobility has become perhaps the biggest strategic driver of business across every industry, transforming workflows on a massive scale. Today, more workers than ever before are accessing corporate information via mobile devices and working “out of pocket.”

Managing these masses of mobile workers – and masses of apps – can prove to be a huge challenge. As mobile device use in the enterprise explodes, driving productivity and mobile effectiveness, while at the same time ensuring security for the growing volumes of sensitive corporate data being saved and accessed via employee devices has become increasingly important.

We posed several questions to Wes Gyure, MaaS360 Portfolio Offering Manager, IBM, and he helped us understand the evolution of enterprise mobility and the challenges organizations are facing as they look to enable their mobile workforce.

• Q. Is BYOD dead? How is the enterprise mobility market maturing/evolving?

A. No. BYOD isn’t dead – there will always be a need for employees to use their own personal devices for certain work purposes – but we are moving away from this phenomenon. As more and more devices are supported in the market, having workers bring their own device to work is becoming increasingly expensive and complicated to manage. And, organizations are beginning to understand that mobility need not be restricted to just personal devices, but to corporate-issued and even shared devices. These latter choices are less expensive and are simplifying the life of the enterprise IT administrator, and as a result, are becoming a popular choice for enterprises.

Despite the growing use of mobile devices, however, we are seeing a gap in enterprise mobility enablement – only about a quarter of users are fully enabled to leverage mobile devices, apps and other services. Enterprises today must acknowledge that massive mobile adoption is a reality and that to support the demands this technology places on both the enterprises and the users, a platform that tackles any unique mobile use case without adding complexity is needed.

• Q. What challenges or changes are businesses facing today in EMM that they might not have several years ago?

A. In years past, the purchase of an EMM tool wasn’t necessarily a strategic investment. Mobile hadn’t yet fully proliferated the enterprise and app adoption was low. Today, as mobility has scaled to incredibly new highs, EMM is becoming more important as organizations try to meet the demands of their mobile workforce – aiming to get the right tools to the right people with the right access, without inhibiting productivity or flexibility.

When the mobility experience does not reflect how we work with the device, it impedes usability and productivity. Today, users have a short attention span for apps that aren’t easy to use or that aren’t intuitive. In fact, 65 percent of apps are uninstalled after the first day – they are thrown away quickly if they don’t meet users’ needs.

Today, there is also a convergence of buying power as the CIO becomes more integrated in the purchasing decisions around mobile. CISOs are also coming to the table with their own set of security requirements around mobility, app deployment and EMM. We’re facing a perfect storm of requirements meets use cases meets delivery – which is challenging for many businesses to manage, but can be simplified through EMM.

• Q. Where is IBM at in terms of the Fiberlink integration, since its acquisition of the company in 2013? What forward momentum has the business made in the mobile space since then?

A. Since the acquisition of Fiberlink in 2013, IBM has been working to drive awareness of the importance of mobile security and management, developing solutions that enable IT and security staff to manage mobile from end-to-end, maximizing productivity while enabling security.

As the dynamics of how people work have changed, IT has become critical to making sure mobile device security is in balance with user convenience, as users and employees will find ways around inconvenient security measures.

But stronger device security is just the start of the conversation as the first line of defense. The real threat lies in the danger to corporate apps and data. Organizations must ensure more stringent security is put into place when an employee launches an app, or attempts to access documents from their device. Strategies such as dual factor authentication, certificate-based authentication and network password requirements can help achieve this.

Over the last three years, IBM has conducted numerous research studies into the state of mobile security, uncovering findings about device and app security as well as app deployments across its customer base. We have also deployed a number of solutions and services to help secure a business’ entire mobile security environment, with the ability to start anywhere depending on business priorities.

We’ve integrated MaaS360 and BigFix endpoint security and management technology to allow organizations to manage smartphones, tablets, and laptops (both employee- and company-owned) using the same platform and infrastructure. With this single-pane-of-glass view, organizations can easily manage all enterprise devices without needing to deploy multiple infrastructures.

We have also integrated IBM MaaS360 with our malware detection and remediation technology called Trusteer. This provides a dedicated security library for iOS and Android platforms. Malware is a growing threat to devices and we want to provide proactive protection for our customers.

• Q. IBM recently conducted research into mobile app management and deployment across its customer base. What are the results of this study, why are the findings important?

A. In an unprecedented view into app adoption in business, IBM analyzed app deployments across more than one hundred thousand apps and nearly 10 million app distributions managed by the MaaS360 platform.

We found:

– The most app heavy organizations manage nearly 500 apps with some nearing 1,000 apps in their corporate app catalog.

– 80 percent of apps are public and 20 percent private

We also teamed up with 200-plus survey respondents about their mobility and app usage, finding that:

– 97 percent plan the same or increased funding for mobility, but

– 59 percent say resources must increase for mobile device and app management, as

– Currently, only 38 percent are investing in mobile device management or enterprise mobility management.

It is not just that one stat is surprising – there are several interesting pieces that are highlighted in the data.

– First, is that some organizations are managing an enormous amount of apps today. When you are north of 500 apps and almost hitting 1000, that is a lot to manage. This also highlights how quickly an app population can grow in organizations. I’m sure these organizations did not think they would have that many when they first started out.

– Second, as app populations grow, internal process needs to be developed. IT and security will need to be helped by the creation of best practices and guidelines for development team and line of business teams. Policies will also need to be well communicated with all business units.

Third, organizations need tools like an enterprise mobility management platform to make app lifecycle management, app deployment and ultimately adoption, efficient and successful. No organization can scale massive amounts of apps without this.

• Q. What is IBM MaaS360 doing now to help large enterprises fully adopt mobile across all areas of a company’s employee base?

A. To help businesses further expand their mobile initiatives and end user adoption, IBM recently announced enhancements to its EMM platform MaaS360, allowing new levels of user enablement while also strengthening security and data protection. The end-to-end mobile management platform includes:

– Redesigned enterprise app catalogs to increase usability and end user satisfaction by optimizing the native app experience of each mobile platform for business use.

– Enhancements to its best-in-class enablement and security features for users to process emails faster and IT to protect corporate data. Additional improvements include new enterprise chat capability, adoption of the latest design principles on native platforms, faster navigation, easier actions and better readability for email, calendar and documents.

– Identity and cloud access security broker (CASB) integration with EMM, providing several key benefits including single sign-on for apps, conditional access, and discovery of apps and cloud services users are taking advantage of on their mobile devices.

– An app for the IBM Security App Exchange, providing an out-of-the-box dashboard highlighting out-of-compliance events and devices for smartphones and tablets.

This new platform further extends IBM’s mission to enable large-scale app deployments, provide users with the native experience they expect, and increase mobile security through identity management and security intelligence. These capabilities are all delivered seamlessly through the integration of IBM products as well as comprehensive support for the broad ecosystem of technology partners.

As mobility become more ingrained with business strategy and business success, with growing adoption numbers and booming app deployment, enterprise mobility management will be necessary for streamlining operations. EMM platforms can provide enterprises with the productivity, organization and flexibility they need to ensure mobility remains successful within their organization while also ensuring security they need to control the flow of corporate data (through essential mobile device management, data containment, app security, mobile threat management and unified endpoint management).

Wes Gyure, a 17 year veteran of IBM Software, has held numerous positions in research, development and product management. In his current role, he is responsible for the IBM MaaS360 Product Management and Strategy for Enterprise Mobility Management. Prior to this role, Wes served as the IBM Security & Apple Partnership Alliance Manager focused on better alignment for the Apple ecosystem.