Australian I.T. teams don't want to manage mobility

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18 July 2018

If IT managers had their way they would not be responsible for managing corporate mobility.

Gigaom Research IT Buyers Survey, asked IT managers whether they would be willing to outsource mobility management and the answer was a resounding 'Yes, get this off my plate!'

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IT doesn’t really want to know about mobility management

The IT Managers surveyed said yes to outsourcing 'everything mobility' - from ordering and provisioning devices, to connecting services, cancelling contracts, recycling devices when employees leave, plus all the configuration and support that happens along the way.

The reason: mobility management is not really IT - and many IT departments deal with it under sufferance. 

 

Mobility has moved beyond the scope of traditional IT

VoicePlus managing director, Michael Giffney, explains how mobility management has moved beyond the scope of traditional IT.

"IT generally inherited responsibility for mobility management as an accident of history.  Initially when corporate mobility was in its infancy IT got involved in making sure that corporate email could be received on mobile phones. Remember these were dumb-phones which still didn’t have internet browsing!

"As senior management wanted the latest devices and conveniences, IT was at the forefront of making it happen. However over a short space of time, with the rise of the smartphone, the complexity of mobility grew at an alarming rate."

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“Corporate IT tried to control the growth by locking down the mobile fleet to one or two handsets and a small range of tightly managed platforms. This was destined to fail as the smartphone became commonplace, the cost of web access dropped, the number of mobile apps sky-rocketed and employees demanded greater flexibility in their working arrangements.

“Nowadays corporate IT departments are having to deal with constantly updating mobile technologies, a plethora of smartphones, tablets and connected laptops; public and custom apps, and workers demanding the ability to work from anywhere. Added to that - almost everyone now has a corporate mobile phone with internet access, so the number of devices to manage has gone through the roof.

“Often the IT teams that have tried to do it all themselves are changing their minds, because doing it all yourself - telecom expense management, procurement and provisioning, repairs, user support,  mobile device management, and add-ons to mobile device management such as content management and application management - is really difficult."

Operations, Procurement or Finance - instead of IT?

There is a case for each of these functionalities being responsible for managing corporate mobility - maybe as strong a case as there is for IT.

  • Operations
  • Procurement
  • Finance 

All three business functions are impacted by mobility and have a vested interest in it being effectively managed.

Alternatively, enterprise companies will find advantages in having a third party manage their mobility. Outsourcing to a Managed Mobility Service provider frees up internal IT resources to focus on the core business, and also delivers a more holistic managed mobility service which focuses on cost optimisation and productivity.


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