With the enterprise mobility industry in a state of constant evolution in terms of both technology and practices, the intentions and priorities of stakeholders change regularly.
CBR has rounded up some of the recent reports on mobility, BYOD and enterprise security, giving insight into how the business world is handling the changing landscape.
1. Global State of Enterprise Mobility 2016
By: Enterprise Mobility Exchange
Who: Over 300 senior mobility practitioners worldwide.
The Global State of Enterprise Mobility 2016 report polled a combination of C-levels and IT heads about their previous spending and their intentions. It found that 60.8 percent of respondents had invested in mobile applications development in the last 12 to 18 months.
44.6 percent had invested in mobile & enterprise security and the same number in mobile connectivity. Meanwhile, 43.8 percent had invested in mobile device management and 36.2 percent in solutions for BYOD.
The key reason for the investments was increasing productivity, which 74.6 percent of respondents cited. 63.8 percent and 60.8 percent cited improving customer service and improving operational efficiency respectively.
Looking at the challenges they had faced in implementing the solutions, 47.7 percent cited integrating with legacy systems.
The main thing that respondents said they had learned from their implementations was to "Thing big, but start smaller."
Meanwhile, areas earmarked for investment in the next 12 to 18 months included mobile application development by 50.4 percent, mobile and enterprise security by 38.8 percent and cloud computing by 33.9 percent.
2. 2016 BYOD and Mobile Security Report
By: Crowd Research Partners
Who: Over 800 global cyber security professionals worldwide.
The report found that 21 percent of organisations have experienced a data breach from a personal or corporate-owned mobile device.
This threat was reflected by the burden that BYOD was placing on IT resources, with 35 percent citing it as a burden. 27 percent said that BYOD imposed a heavy burden on help desk workloads.
As one might expect, security was the biggest inhibitor of BYOD adoption, with 39 percent citing it as an obstacle. Employee privacy was the next highest on the list, with 12 percent citing this as an issue.
It also revealed that management opposition and user experience concerns were not huge obstacles, with only 3 percent and 4 percent respectively citing them.
3. Dell Data Security Survey
By: Dell
Who: 1,302 IT decision-makers in the United States, Europe, and the Asia Pacific.
Questioning executives on a range of issues around data security, the report found that security was a key limiter on mobility adoption.
65 percent of mid-market companies were holding back plans to make their workforce more mobile for security reasons. In addition, 67 percent were hesitant to introduce a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programme.
The report also found that while 69 percent of respondents were still willing to sacrifice individual devices to protect their company against a data breach, 57 percent were concerned about the quality of encryption used by their company.
Knowing where data was accessed was a key concern in mobility adoption, with 72 percent of respondents believing that knowing where data is accessed would make their data protection measures more effective.
4. Device security and design key priorities for IT decision makers
By: HP
Who: 1,016 IT decision makers across seven European countries.
The HP survey found that 90 percent of European IT decision-makers are concerned about device security, with 25 percent having suffered a security breach in the last 12 months.
However, only 32 percent were fully confident in the security of their current devices.
Respondents also said that security was not the only issue with their current inventory of devices; design was also an important consideration, with 27 percent citing unattractive design as a reason for being unsatisfied with their work PC.
Battery life was considered key, with 25 percent citing it as a reason for being unsatisfied.
According to the findings, IT decision-makers in the UK were less likely to see device security as a major concern, with only 49 percent citing it as a major concern compared to 69 percent across other European countries.
5. APIs and the Digital Enterprise: From Operational Efficiency to Digital Disruption
By: CA Technologies
Who: 1,442 senior IT and business executives, including 506 respondents in Europe, from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Spain.
This report focused on the use of application programme interfaces (APIs) in enterprises and how they are being used to improve application delivery and customer service. An API is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications.
The report found that 71 percent of UK organisations were using APIs to build mobile applications.
According to the respondents, this was due to several tangible benefits; 81 percent of organisations said that delivery of new apps was faster while 80 percent said that they were able to deliver new and better customer experiences.
Others said strong APIs were helping to drive strong security, with 74 percent of European organisations with ‘Advanced’ API enabling capability saying they had implemented API security measures to protect against ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks.
Despite many companies seeing the benefits brought by APIs, however, only 33 percent of UK organisations had put the right infrastructure and tooling in place to support APIs. In addition, only 31 percent said they had found the right suppliers to provide skills and advice.
