Need for mobile management

At the recent Mobile Device Management & Security Forum, hosted by ITWeb in Johannesburg recently, Corrie Froehlich, senior industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan, pointed out that customers are moving from the model of passive user to proactive user with the increasing availability of personalised and participatory content available.

"It`s not about content consumption anymore, but rather content creation," he said. "Customers are not simply `users` any longer, but are becoming content producers."

According to Froehlich, mobile blogging and instant messaging are replacing SMSing, while the MMS is changing to media sharing and video blogging. Instead of operator portals, we are moving towards mobile websites and mobile search engines, and push-to-talk is being replaced by mobile VOIP, he said.

CHOICE REPLACES VOICE

According to Dobek Pater" rel=tag>Dobek Pater, managing member of Africa Analysis Team, voice was the first killer application, but now it is choice. "The killer app will be user community specific." Similarly, he believes that there will not be a killer application, but a variety of customised services based on customers` needs.

Convergence is a huge global trend in organisations, with The Radicati Group estimating that the market will reach $10 billion by next year. However, Pater points out that while the pace of this arena is picking up, concerns about quality, integration and ROI persist

"Converged services, such as VOIP and IPTV, are becoming prominent," said Pater. "But many more convergence products and services are expected over the next few years." He adds that while adoption of convergence services is accelerating in the consumer, enterprise, and public sector segments, new marketing techniques are required to sell converged solutions to users.

Features are an important part of differentiation for handset vendors, especially as the replacement market begins to spread to less developed but more populous markets. Pater says that deployment of 3G phones into the market will pick up pace, making mobile broadband interaction possible in wider business and social circles, and that 3G devices will surpass 2G by 2012, although not all will be used to full potential. Pater adds that Africa Analysis Team expects the mobile market to become saturated over the next two to three years.

MOBILE PROBLEMS

However, this mobile revolution and global convergence does not come without problems. Research shows that as much as 10% of cellphones are lost in the average year, according to Leon Perlman, chairman of the Wireless Application Service Provider Association, who suggested that loss reporting should be mandatory.

"A poll done by Mformation Technologies showed that more than 50% of US CIOs said technical product data, sales data and customer data are accessible through corporate mobile devices," he noted. Furthermore, only 12% of these CIOs actually record the data that users store on their devices, making a security breach near impossible to trace. If there`s a security breach, the remaining 88% do not know how severe that breach is or what specific data has been compromised.

According to Stuart Jack, MD of My Mobility, one thing that is important to keep in mind is that security cannot be effectively controlled without a good master data management system in place, and the strict enforcement of a mobile device policy.

DEVICE MANAGEMENT

"Device management consists of inventory management of field devices and software, deployment of software updates, file and data encryption, and the provisioning and deploying of mobile devices. Each of these areas has a unique set of challenges," Jack explained.

"Security of mobile devices involves both hardware and platform security, but it is also imperative that organisations employ clear and specific policies on cellphone and mobile use within the work environment," Perlman advised. "Mobile management support costs are up to 15 times as much as those for fixed data or voice networks, particularly since the types of support required are so much more varied."

A big problem is that CIOs are unsure of who is responsible for managing security solutions. Perlman says that 65% of CIOs feel that IT should take the lead and 22% said it is the network operator`s responsibility. He suggests a solution in a co-ordinated approach involving both the enterprise and operator.