Business survival down to agility and mobility

Corporate mobility will be a key driver as a way for workers to be productive

The current global financial crisis is forcing business leaders to focus on the here and now, but IT managers who do not properly plan for the longer term will face even greater problems down the line.

Peter Sondergard, senior vice president at analyst firm Gartner, gave the warning during his presentation at the Alcatel-Lucent forum in Paris earlier this week.

"Those holding their breath waiting for the end of the year in the hope that everything will be back to normal in 2010 are going to suffocate," he said.

"As important as it is to cut costs and consolidate in the current economic climate, it is absolutely vital to make sure you're still planning for the future, and mobility is a fundamental part of that."

Sondergard went on to highlight Gartner's predictions for mobile device technology trends over the next four years. As the silicon driving these devices gets faster, media and imaging will continue to improve, and bundled applications and services will drive ever richer visualisation.

In particular, Sondergard believes that handsets will have multi-core mobile processors by 2011, and that touch screens with haptic feedback and high-definition imaging will be the norm, although battery life will remain a challenge.

While these trends will affect all segments of the market, corporate mobility will be a key driver as a way for workers to be productive and efficient no matter where they are.

Some organisations will be only just beginning to investigate or pilot various mobility schemes, while some will already have implemented them. But the majority will be in what Sondergard calls the "rationalisation phase".

In this critical phase the most important focal points are to integrate mobility into the overall IT strategy and architecture, incorporate wireless devices into corporate voice, unified communications and collaboration strategies, and define standards, tools and procedures for managing an increasing number and selection of devices.

Sondergard predicted that there will be more than 7.3 billion networked devices worldwide by 2012, and 298 million subscribers to location-based services. Furthermore, more than 75 per cent of new search installations will include a social search element, and $150bn (£106bn) of the $1.8tn (£1.2tn) global telecoms spend will shift from services to applications.

As a result of these changes, the global market potential of "context-aware" computing will have an impact of up to $215bn (£152bn).

Sondergard defined 'context' as being "the location, identity and state of people, groups and computational and physical objects" and 'context-aware' computing as "the study of how entities use information that characterises the situation of a person, place or object to adapt its behaviour or the content it provides".

"So, how can enterprises assess the business value of context-aware computing? How are you going to sell this to your board?" he asked. "It can be as simple as scrutinising the cost savings that can be made, and the return on investment, in the short and longer term."