Enterprise mobility has come a long way in improving organizational efficiency and helping companies empower their workforce digitally. It has been estimated that by 2020 the global revenue generated by enterprise mobility software market would surpass $140 billion annually. With a compound annual growth rate of 15%, it is also expected to be spearheading nearly 15 to 20 percent of annual IT spending by global organizations.  The driving forces behind the growing market for enterprise mobility products are the increased productivity factor for mobile workforce and the availability of low-cost smart devices. 2016 is running to a close and so we decided to have a glance of what’s going to be the state of Enterprise Mobility in 2017.

Let us see the direction in which enterprise mobility will head into in 2017:

Market Focus

As usual, 2017 has a very robust growth outlook in existing markets especially North America, which will be the primary leader globally in terms of enterprise mobility adoption. However there will be a new name on the top of the list for fastest growing markets – Asia Pacific (APAC). With a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21 percent, APAC markets are expected to be an area of huge focus for enterprise mobility product vendors.

Flexible Device Management

Very recently, Forrester claimed that mobility is of prime importance for 71% of organizations. This means they will promote almost all kinds of mobile devices amongst its workforce. Bring Your Own Device or BYOD as it is affectionately known globally, will create room for newer policies in device management and control. Integrating flexibility into the BYOD ecosystem will be a challenge as good majority of employees would utilize the same device for personal and office use.

Information on the Go

Taking a leaf out of the previous trend, the rapid rise in number of devices will pose another challenge for information access. Enterprise data or information would be scattered across multiple organizational departments, hierarchies, geographical locations, etc. But for the end user or mobile workforce, all they need is information on the go, at their fingertips. Cross channel and intra-organizational data communication policies would face increasing pressure to synchronize information across mediums so that more informed decisions can be taken by end users.

Cloud Synchronization

It is hard to call Cloud a buzzword now not because it is irrelevant but because it is a norm for the entire tech world. From music to high end computing, consumers and enterprises are exploiting the world of cloud computing to manage their data. Enterprise mobility is no exception as cloud computing offers room for workforce to retrieve mission critical data from the cloud on demand rather than having to pre-integrate it with their devices. Application development for enterprise mobility too will face increased smoothness with more and more dev teams focusing on creating simple front end applications for mobile devices, while heavy duty tasks get organized and executed on private cloud infrastructure of the organization.

Security

Perhaps for the last few years, when people speak about trends in tech, especially when it involved data communication across channels, security had been the number one point on the list. Today we pick security to occupy a lower position, not because it has become a guaranteed surety, but because of the huge improvements that have been witnessed in the world of data security. Thanks to cloud computing, it is easier for enterprises to have a focused area to spend on information security. Whether companies opt for established cloud service providers like, Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, or whether they build their own private cloud infrastructure is not a relevant question in today’s cloud security context. Cyber-attacks are increasingly being reported globally and hence it is imperative for organizations to lay strict emphasis on security policies. The most challenging security scenario in the case of enterprise mobility would be the unmonitored usage of device on insecure public networks. Security applications would definitely find huge market scope in the coming years.

Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT today is what cloud computing was 5 years ago – the rising area of focus for businesses. The ability of devices, or more specifically sensors, to communicate user data will be instrumental for future marketing campaigns to attract genuine customers. For enterprises, IoT will enable field service agents to better track their core operational data, which would then be utilized at higher levels to arrive at better decisions. Devices such as smartwatches and other wearable will begin to serve dual purposes such as personal convenience and official data collection mechanisms. The future looks bright for wearable and IoT tech.

Dedicated App Development Centers of Excellence

This is a culmination of all the above trends. With such a huge emphasis being directed towards enterprise mobility, organizations would require dedicated developer teams to build customizable solutions for enterprise mobility. These developers would be groomed as an agile workforce to support the massive amount of organizational activities being migrated to enterprise apps.