As the 'Cloud Guy' I'm getting called into more and more discussions with customers where the topic of conversation has started from 'mobility' and rapidly morphed into 'application transformation'. I've seen this in businesses as small as a sole trader up to organisations with millions of employees.
Why?
The drivers seem to be:
- smartphone penetration - especially amongst the economically active age groups
- Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) - wether formal company policy or not
- a shift from competing on quality (being 'best') to time (being 'first and good enough') - Facebook famously has 'Done is better than perfect' as it's development motto and Google has had a 'permanent beta' approach.
But...taking an existing application and trying to transform it carries significant risk and is usually associated with long timescales. Most of my customers are opting for a two-tier approach:
- stabilise their core application set
- adopt new ways of deploying and managing new applications, often using Cloud infrastructure and services as components of the new deployment.
So...the 'mobility' requirement should really be considered a part of a wider 'new ways of working' project by enterprises and not as standalone subject. I've linked to a paper put together by our friends at Orange UK for the public sector, but applicable to all business. As the linked document states: we need to move from discussion about 'where' we work to 'how' we work.
Do you think of mobility as a seperate subject, or is it just part of the application landsdscape?
image © Oez - Fotolia.com
With management roles in sales, marketing, and strategy I have over 30 years in IT and telecoms specializing in transformation projects.