Rick Brooks-Hill, Partnerpedia's GM Client Services

By Rick Brooks-Hill

Enterprises are feeling the need to be more proficient in the mobile space or in some cases they even just simply want to enter the mobile space. Yet, it is amazing the number of large enterprise companies that have not even started to consider how mobile might help them.

Partnerpedia has been approached by many different organizations that are asking the very simple question: what should our first step in mobile be?

A number of them come at it from the angle of ‘we just need to build an app’ and many of them believe that if they can simply get out of the gate by building an app then at least it gets them started. We would argue that starting by “building an app” would be just fine if you have a very strong business case and use case to drive the utility that an app may deliver. In such a case, building an app might be a very productive first toe in the water.

But a lot of organizations haven’t really even gotten to the level of understanding of how mobile might be a benefit within their organization. Simple questions like should it be for internal or external users are not well understood.

A good enterprise mobile vendor should help enterprises figure out how to tackle mobile within their organizations. There should be a very methodical, consultative decision making process that a vendor guides an enterprise through to determine their best approach to mobile. Partnerpedia’s  framework is as follows: We have a mobile assessment and action funnel in which we look at the enterprise mobile landscape within your industry and assess some of the drivers of mobile within your industry and your landscape. Then we help you assess where you are currently. What is your current mobile footprint (both versus others and just in isolation)?  Once we understand where you are now, we can help you understand what you are capable of achieving.

Then where do you go? What are the business drivers and mobile possibilities that result from those business drivers?

A good enterprise mobile vendor should help determine whether an organization wants to do a HTML 5 build versus a native build or another cross platform build framework when it comes to the mobile app development build process.

A good end result is an enterprise mobility roadmap that helps you address some of your enterprise business challenges and pain points  by means of applying mobile solutions. Then from a technical perspective once strategic steps have been identified, we help organizations actually get there.

Finally, it is critical that a vendor attaches a very UI/UX-centric build methodology to building your mobile apps.

When tacking business challenges with mobile it is so incredibly important to have a strong UI/UX experience for the end user whether they are internal or external. A good enterprise vendor will really understand the audience to make sure that the user experience generates an intuitive, simple, repeatable, and sought after experience within your mobile app or mobile web solution.

Sam Liu, Partnerpedia's VP of Marketing

By Sam Liu

The news that Symantec has acquired Mobile App Management (MAM) firm Nukona wasn’t surprising – not that Nukona was being acquired, but that it’s a matter of time the MAM space would start to consolidate.

Last year, we saw a significant uptick in mindshare when it came to MAM – internal enterprise app stores that provides an easy self-service app distribution and management model for the enterprise.

MAM has been growing in momentum with several vendors in the space. Some are recent startups like Apperian, others like Partnerpedia has been in business for many years.

In any fast growing emerging market, you will see an expansion in the number of vendors providing the solution, followed by a consolidation, before the market becomes mature. Consolidation can happen through acquisition by larger players or companies simply go away due to a lack of funding or business. The remaining players then consist of the large vendors with broad portfolios, and the remaining independent vendors who have a thriving business.

Symantec acquiring a MAM player doesn’t come as a surprise. The MAM market focuses on application policies, while mobile device management (MDM) focuses on device security. Symantec, being a security vendor is expanding its portfolio of MDM solutions to include MAM. Beyond security vendors such as Symantec and McAfee (Intel), large IT vendors should also be looking at this space with similar ambitions. The question is either build or buy.

One might think that large vendor will dominate the market over smaller one. However, sometimes it can be the opposite. Large vendors are not fast movers and innovators in a rapidly evolving market. Their solutions often end up being far more complex (though perhaps more powerful) than the majority of the market may need. Or the sales force and channels have not been incented or optimized to sell effectively.

Improperly assimilated, the smaller company actually becomes less agile and less successful in developing and selling its solutions. As a result, don’t count out the remaining vendors who may remain independent.

If you look at the days of sales automation systems when Siebel was the dominant player and the preferred solution for large companies, Salesforce came out with its lightweight cloud solution that grew quickly first through SMBs, and is now an enterprise player that dominates that market.

Sam Liu, Partnerpedia's VP of Marketing

By Sam Liu

Recently we have seen carriers enter the enterprise mobility space, specifically Verizon Wireless’ private app store for business and AT&T’s mobile app management solution. This is a good indication of the continued maturation of enterprise mobility.

Carriers are known for supplying commodity voice and data plans to corporations along with a selection of mobile phones, but as enterprise mobility takes off with the “consumerization of IT” these same carriers are looking to move up the value chain by providing higher level (and potentially higher margin) services.

Not known for being visionaries, the fact that carriers are now offering business oriented apps and a solution for managing such apps within the company is a sign that the enterprise market may be ready for broad adoption. We’ve already seen the volume of consumer style mobile devices enter the business environment. Now the apps and the ability to manage them will follow.

The idea that carriers are offering an app store is not new. Some have tried in the past, but most have failed to catch on. Yet the success of the Apple App Store continues to motivate others to mimic behavior. This time around however, by focusing on the business sector carriers may have more luck. While some of the largest of enterprises will still procure technology solutions from traditional IT vendors, small to medium businesses may opt for a single supplier or a managed/packaged service approach from carriers. Also, SMEs/SMBs may be more likely to purchase standard off-the-shelf apps than large enterprises.

Just in the last few months, we’ve seen tremendous interest and entry in the enterprise mobility space – from media and analyst coverage to active customer interest; from new technology solution providers and now carriers also making a play. In a rapidly growing emerging market, it is natural to see multiple players enter the game. And at some point, consolidation will happen. But in the meantime it helps validate the space and provides customers with options. As they say, “a rising tide raises all boats.”

Recent reports by Gartner and InformationWeek list mobility security as top of mind for CIOs in 2012. Security will always be a top priority, but framing the discussion from this perspective may lead to overemphasizing the risks at the expense of the benefits.

Guest blog by Raul Castanon-Martinez

There is a tendency to see consumerization and security as opposites; this linear approach is overly simplistic and overrides the “nice to have” aspects of enterprise mobility by focusing on tighter control of employee owned devices.

A more comprehensive approach should take into account the following four recommendations:

#1 To BYOD or not to BYOD is not the question

There are industry experts on both sides of the BYOD dilemma; some advocate for strict IT controls that disallow personal devices in the workplace, while others argue that users will always find a way to get around these controls, undermining the very policies that IT is trying to enforce.

There is no right answer to this dilemma. Some individuals will require a company-owned and controlled device, and others will be fine with different ‘flavors’ of BYOD policies — BYOD/self configuration, white listed BYOD/company provisioned, white listed/company owned — depending on their job function, access to sensitive data, industry regulation, and other factors.

# 2 Data governance trumps BYOD

Before deciding on BYOD policies, it is a good idea to first review the company’s Access Governance practices. Organizations need to have visibility and control of who has access to what resources, regardless of whether this is done by using personal devices or not. BYOD can uncover security flaws that might otherwise go unnoticed or ignored, but security risks come from not having a process in place for managing and controlling access to business applications and sensitive data, not from BYOD policies per se.

# 3 Variety is the spice of life but standardization is still your best friend

The Android versus iOS versus BlackBerry battle and the cornucopia of Android menu items — Eclair, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich — can be overwhelming. Given the variety of devices available to consumers, it is unreasonable to expect that IT will provide support to all types of devices.

Standardizing devices and procedures has always worked well for IT, and there is no reason why these practices cannot be updated for a flexible work environment. This will require that organizations define and enforce clear policies that govern which specific devices and mobile applications will be supported, and how they will be managed and secured.

#4 Enterprise app stores: Don’t reinvent the wheel

Even with clear governance policies in place, there are limitations to what IT can reasonably manage. Relying on third parties to address the complexity of supporting a variety of mobile devices via enterprise app stores can reduce or eliminate development and customization efforts; there is no need to re-invent the wheel when “there’s an app for that”.

In conclusion, there is no question that BYOD can present security risks for the organization, but a higher degree of flexibility in the workplace does not necessarily translate into increased security risks. The increased complexity of the IT environment in an era of personal devices, 24/7 connectivity and social networking can be managed more effectively when adequate governance policies and practices are in place and the organization focuses on managing and controlling consumerization, instead of fighting the presence of employee-owned devices in the workplace.

Raul Castanon-Martinez is a Massachusetts-based marketing professional with more than 15 years experience working in mobile communications, enterprise software solutions for collaboration, and security and endpoint management. His experience includes technical positions, business development and product marketing working at Comverse Technology, Kaspersky Lab and most recently as Partner Marketing Manager at Novell.

Partnerpedia's CTO

By Geoff Mair

When Jeff Chop and I started this company in 1997, the Internet was just starting to take off. I thought it was magic and you could tell it was going to become really important.

We were so young and naïve about business that we thought it would be easy to start and run a successful Internet company.

Thus Constructive Media – the predecessor to Partnerpedia – was born. When we started out, we didn’t have an office space, we had Jeff Chop’s apartment. I would show up there every day in my tie so I didn’t feel like I was just hanging out.

Our initial success was fuelled by desperation. We had no money and no financial backing. Ours was a ‘sell or starve’ scenario.

Our first few months in business were far tougher than we anticipated. But we learned quickly and before long we managed to land our first major customer: Microsoft Corp. This legendary software vendor was instrumental to our small company’s growth and it was through this customer relationship we survived the dot-com meltdown that began to unfold in the early 2000s.

We forged business relationships with two other important customers in those early days: Research In Motion and the Caribbean Tourism Organization. It is our pleasure to be serving both of these fine organizations to this day.

As you can imagine, due to our youth, we were full of piss and vinegar. We had more balls than sense. We wrongly assumed more customers would simply waltz through the proverbial door and that financial backing was a given. They didn’t and it wasn’t.

Despite early successes, we considered turning to a large Canadian marketing and advertising agency, Cossette Inc., for help. The timing seemed right. We weren’t making enough money and Cossette was looking to expand its presence in Vancouver, B.C. We were wined and dined by the good people at Cossette. They pitched an offer to buy Constructive Media and initially, we agreed to sell out.

But there’s much to be said for second thoughts and we certainly had ours. After discussing the matter with trusted, business-savvy advisors that included my father, we changed our minds. It proved to be a wise decision.

Within a year of turning down Cossette’s offer, we landed more customers, our revenues rose steadily, and profitability and business growth came to town. We’ve never looked back.

Fast forward to modern day, and in the last year our work with Cisco Systems on a global marketplace and mobile app management platform has been massively rewarding. Ours is an innovative, collaborative relationship and one we’re very proud of.

Likewise, our cutting-edge work with three other valued customers, VMware, Avaya and Alcatel-Lucent, has been equally significant and fruitful.

Reflecting now on the past 15 years, I would have found it difficult back then to imagine this company gradually evolving to become an important player in the Mobile Application Management (MAM) space. But we have and we are. It’s a logical extension of our core skill set as a Web services company.

And what of the future? At this point in time, we’re one of a few firms that are driving the MAM market segment. We see only opportunity and the potential to help more organizations realize their enterprise mobility goals in a business world now inundated with smartphones, tablets, and other devices.

That’s not too bad for a couple of guys who started out with next to nothing but wide-eyed enthusiasm.

To our customers, partners, employees, and friends: Thank you. The future is bright. We’re looking forward to our continuing joint success.

Guest blog by Stuart R. Crawford

How will you react when your next perfect hire wants to use their own mobile phone and demands access to social media to stay connected to their friends, contacts and colleagues?

I can hear it now: “Not a snowball’s chance in hell will that be allowed in our business”. However, trends are indicating that more new hires and employees want the ability to use their own phone and access any social network they want regardless of what corporate IT says, and they also want access to all of their social networks.

David Meerman Scott, who sits on the advisory board of Converseon, believes that the most talented people coming out of college today can choose to work for corporations that let them communicate where they live and breathe every day: social and mobile.

In a recent article on the social media governance blog, there is a citation of a recent study of 3,000 international college students and recent grads, by Cisco, which found that:

• More than two in five would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
• One in three considers the Internet to be as important as air, water, food, and shelter.

Are we on the dawn of the consumerization of IT influencing the corporate world and those who are entering the workforce? Actually this movement started years ago, but just look around at the number of “always connected” persons dotting the landscape from the boardroom to the bedroom. They’re not just recent grads but well-seasoned vets in business that now have more than one device connected to the corporate network.

Should IT professionals continue to fight this growing trend or simply figure out how to deal with the BYOD to work trends? What are the risks if we draw a line in the sand?

Some of us in the IT world are coming up with all the excuses. What about security? Yes, some devices are more secure than others; and there are sound arguments for safeguarding corporate secrets in the digital age. It wasn’t that long ago when CEOs were saying “no email” citing many of the same excuses. Actually, the same was said about the telephone. Can you imagine running your business today without email or a telephone? Do we have solutions today that reduce the security risks associated with these aging technologies? Sure we do.

Just look around. Everyone has at least a smartphone, some have moved to tablets and almost every business professional has elected to go with a laptop versus the clunker of a desktop computer. Consumer products are now influencing many of the corporate IT decisions; and as IT professionals, we better learn how to embrace it and deal with it.

What are your options for dealing with BYOD?

Consider paying a cell phone allowance versus buying devices and plans: Many corporations now are electing to supplement employees with a “cell phone allowance” allowing their employees to choose the phone of their choosing and the plans to support what they need. The bonus of having a “cell phone program” in your office is very broad. Cost savings come into play since employees are now paid an allowance versus the corporation picking up the tab. Employees are free to use as many minutes or download whatever they want, and the company is not left flipping the bill.

Don’t neglect security challenges: Corporate IT must figure out how to secure many of these personal devices. This is going to be a challenge for many; and for others, it may not even be a concern. There are many security strategies available to make sure corporate IT investments are safeguarded and corporate information is secure.

Control, don’t restrict access to social networks: Want to drive your employees underground? Go ahead; restrict access to their favorite social networking sites. Today’s firewalls have the smarts built into them to help IT control what information is shared over social networks. Social networking is now woven into our fabric of personal and professional interaction. The worlds of work and life are now closer together than any other time in history. For many, their life is their work; figure out how to control the flow of information just like we did with email and the telephone.

Have strong policies in place: Everyone needs rules and guidelines to follow. Make sure you have yours. Strong policies must be in place around acceptable use of corporate Internet, who owns your work email information and who has the right to speak about the company online. Good fences make good neighbors; strong policies weave good employees into exceptional ones.

There is no getting around BYOD and social networking. Now is the time to embrace it and figure out the best ways to make it work for your company. What are you risking if you do not allow your team to communicate in the way they like on the device they prefer? Lots.

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Stuart R. Crawford is a St. Catharines, Ontario-based Managed Service Provider marketing & business consultant. He is the founder of Ulistic Internet Services.

Geoff Mair, Partnerpedia's CTO

By Geoff Mair

We are entrenched in the Mobile Application Management (MAM) market and one of the big problems organizations are facing today for developing mobile enterprise applications is how to distribute apps in a consistent, secure, and efficient fashion.

Simplifying application distribution to employees drives innovation of the developers and IT departments that come up with easy-to-build tools. And driving innovation is what I see as the key difference between MAM and Mobile Device Management (MDM).

In the past, organizations looked at MDM solutions as way to deliver applications and do it in a manner that is secure and policy compliant. But as the market matures, organizations are starting to understand the true value of empowering the knowledge worker, which is the real driver behind MAM.

MAM makes knowledge workers in enterprises more productive by giving them access to the tools and resources that they need in order to do their job more effectively. That includes instant access to high quality business apps that are designed for an enterprise business. Consider the desktop world: It’s not just the software that’s important to the knowledge worker but also the access to documents, data, and resources, all done in a controlled and systemized manner.

A logical extension of application management is knowledge management and knowledge management in the enterprise is largely about how you distribute, share, and collaborate on documents and other data. However, I don’t think customers should turn to MDM vendors to try and solve this problem. It is not what they do and they shouldn’t try to. MAM is very much about putting the knowledge worker at the center of the enterprise app store.

At the end of the day, MDM and MAM are competitive but they shouldn’t be. They are competing technologies because MDM players are attempting to develop app distribution to add to their overall offerings. I would suggest to you software that is developed for and focused on the compliance and security of mobile devices shouldn’t be the solution you deploy to foster knowledge worker empowerment and developer innovation.

Please share your thoughts on this subject in the comment box below.

Sam Liu, Partnerpedia's Vice President of Marketing

By Sam Liu

Last week in Orlando, Partnerpedia had the opportunity to not only exhibit at the 2011 Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, we also presented a session called Enterprise Tablets and Mobile Application Management (MAM).

The concept of MAM is driven by the prevalence of mobile apps and devices entering the enterprise. Gartner made many references to MAM throughout the conference, which made it top of mind with IT executives and decisions makers. Many companies are also dealing with the opportunities and challenges of employee-owned devices. Instead of the usual top-down mandates from IT, there seems to be a willingness to collaborate with the end-user especially on personal devices used for business.

The event was an excellent venue for IT to gather information and research around these topics.

The timing of Gartner ITxpo was great as it aligned with our recent announcement of Enterprise AppZone – a solution that allows IT to gain secure control over mobile apps while offering end-users the convenience of consumer style app stores which they’ve become accustomed to. During the show, we previewed the Enterprise AppZone and the session we presented on MAM was the most attended of all the emerging tech vendors.

We also discovered during the show that while managing mobile apps is top of mind, IT is also faced with how to develop mobile apps. Many companies approached us looking for mobile development help. Traditional IT shops simply don’t have the expertise and resources when it comes to mobile apps. This is further complicated by the permutations of devices and platforms, along with the frequency of change.

We encountered questions on the differences between MAM and mobile device management (MDM). MDM came out of the days of laptops and is an IT security tool used to manage device profiles and wipe data in the event of loss or theft. Though MDM has its place in the IT tool chest, it does not add value to end-user productivity nor offers the “consumerization” experience that end-users demand. In addition, MDM solution can be considered invasive for employee owned devices which presents privacy issues.

All in all, it was a great show and a very exciting time for enterprise mobility. Gone are the days when mobile business apps were limited to email and largely on a singular device such as the BlackBerry. Now the world of enterprise applications is limitless, and the end-user productivity gain that can come out of it is as well.

Geoff Mair, CTO of Partnerpedia

By Geoff Mair

This week has been an exciting one for Partnerpedia: We announced the launch of Enterprise AppZone, our mobile application management (MAM) solution.

While we’ve been offering an Enterprise App Manager and Customer Marketplace solution to our corporate customers for quite some time, Enterprise AppZone is the first self-service IT-focused app store for organizations that want to establish a private mobile app store.

When it becomes available later this year, IT administrators will be able to go to the Enterprise AppZone website and set up their own mobile app store and onboard employees and devices. Enterprises will be able to purchase applications available in our commercial repository of apps as well as upload their own internally developed applications. Thereafter, their end users will be able to access and install those apps on their mobile devices in a self-service manner.

Within that configuration module, we allow the IT admin to brand their mobile app store with their own corporate colors, set provisioning and purchasing rules, and determine parameters with respect to users providing feedback on an application. IT admins can also contain their mobile app store to a specific set of users within an email domain. That in-turn enforces security and privacy.

For example, Enterprise AppZone ensures the integrity of mobile apps with a centralized management system for secure testing, provisioning, monitoring and patching of the apps.

While security and compliance is a couple of the table stakes of the enterprise app store world, it is really end user experience that matters most.

Enterprise AppZone makes the end user experience similar to a consumer app store because what is working in the consumer world will work in the enterprise world. So Enterprise AppZone features things like a rich browsing experience including the ability to see which apps are the being downloaded the most.

What also makes Enterprise AppZone different from other MAM solutions is that we enable IT administrators to publish documents, sales sheets, and PDFs along with applications. It is a logical extension of the enterprise app store and this concept of a mobile Intranet has resonated with the analysts we’ve spoken to.

After launch, what people can expect from Enterprise AppZone in the future includes application quarantine (the ability to quarantine an app without removing it from the device but disabling it along with its data). In addition, there are plans for a centralized login that works with single sign-on and with corporate identity management systems. Finally, there are plans abound to extend the application store paradigm in the same way that Apple did. We see the ability to distribute desktop software in the same way that IT departments distribute mobile software as another logical extension.

At the end of the day, companies are looking for ways to leverage the benefits they see in the consumer mobile app store world; things that are going on in the Apple App Store and the Android Market to better serve their employees.

Partnerpedia will be previewing Enterprise AppZone at the Gartner ITXpo event Oct 16-20, 2011, at booth #ET6. Partnerpedia will be offering a free 100-user license to any company that stops at the booth.

Guest blog by Raul Castanon-Martinez

However, top of mind doesn’t always translate into buying intention, as we have seen with cloud computing. Everyone talks about the cloud, but it has yet to become a priority for CIOs; cloud adoption seems to be slower than what one expects, given its benefits.

Will something similar happen with enterprise mobility? In a recent discussion about the topic with Scott Lewis, former VP of Partner Marketing and Enablement at Novell, he pointed out to me that “the main issues for mobility solutions happen to be the main issues for external cloud computing: Integration challenges and security.”

However, it is precisely these issues that may accelerate enterprise mobility adoption. Unlike cloud computing, which can be described as a top-down trend where IT is in full control, enterprise mobility is a bottom-up trend driven by end users.

A recent IDC survey found that workers report using consumer devices at twice the rate employers report; this dissonance is a red flag that IT needs to address. Enterprise mobility by itself is “nice to have”, but the need for tighter control of employee owned devices is what makes it a “must have” technology for the enterprise; this is what is driving the first phase of enterprise mobility.

These security requirements can be addressed by defining and enforcing policies for employee owned devices and with enterprise solutions for Mobile Device Management (MDM) and PC Lifecycle Management Tools (PCCLM). However, we are already experiencing limitations in MDM and PCCLM capabilities; current solutions are incompatible with non-Windows and mobile devices, according to the January 2011 Magic Quadrant for PC Configuration Life Cycle Management Tools by Gartner Inc.

These limitations are the catalyst for a second phase of enterprise mobility, with developments in enterprise applications and Enterprise App Stores that address the complexity of supporting mobile devices with different platforms and can provide a security layer that sits between devices and application data, instead of relying only on endpoint security. Their potential is such that Forrester Research recently revised their prediction for the size of the MDM market in 2015 from $3.9 billion to $6.6 billion; Forrester believes that the market will shift to building mobile app stores and managing mobile enterprise applications for smartphones and tablets.

There are developments in the smartphone market that can be a game changer, like the battle of the smartphones, which has now shifted to the platform with iOS versus Android and new contender Microsoft pushing into mobility with Windows 8 operating system. Security, however, will continue to be a top concern for IT managers, and the key driver for enterprise mobility.

We haven’t even covered the potential that mobile applications can have in enterprise productivity and their impact in improving key performance indicators. This is still, in my opinion, borderline between “nice to have” and “must have”. Building a strong business case for enterprise mobility based on this alone can be challenging, but when we factor in the security risks of IT consumerization, it becomes clear that the enterprise needs tighter controls; this should be compelling enough for CIOs and IT managers to develop a comprehensive enterprise mobility strategy.