Mobilising the Platform Economy Mobility for Digital Transformation

Every journey has a beginning, but the destination is not always clear from the outset. So far, the beginning of the CIO’s journey in enterprise mobility has been about ‘lock-down’ and control. As the journey continues emphasis is shifting towards unlocking the potential of the mobile enabled workforce.

The need for this change in approach becomes obvious when we look at some recent research findings. For example, Gartner reveals that up to 70% of mobile professionals expect to be conducting all their work on smart mobile devices by 2018.

CIOs are moving beyond mobile device and application management through an intermediate ‘Mobile first’ phase, towards a broader mobile platform approach. The issue is whether this goal might be restricted, not so much by technical limitations such as spectrum availability, but by the commercial models that have been used for the past two decades to manage and provide mobile services.

The future business transformation journey among enterprises leads us in the direction of a mobile digital platform economy. This is equivalent to the shared economy models associated with organisations such as Amazon, eBay, Uber or AirBnB. With a rapidly mobilising workforce, the CIO’s mobile transformation journey should be focused on a mobile platform approach, where a multitude of corporate applications can be accessed in real-time, via mobile, regardless of location or network.

Digital innovation is constantly transforming our mobile experience and what we expect from the way we interact with each other via mobile – Social networks, proximity and location services, instant messaging, presence, rich media, authentication services, payments and mobile apps. These services help define our digital identities. Mobile experience is equally applicable to enterprise mobility and Gartner’s stats are proof of the growing expectations for a fully networked mobile enabled organisation.

CIOs need to look at mobility in the same way they look at worldwide web and Cloud infrastructure. It is about the platform and with this insight, they will be able to realise the full potential of the mobile platform economy. It is a shift in thinking, but one that will streamline their journey to being a fully mobile-enabled enterprise.

It means being able to access apps, content and related services via mobile regardless of national borders or commercial access restrictions without the high cost of data roaming and within a secure and transparent connectivity environment.

The enterprise CIO mobile digital transformation journey might have started with a need for control over device usage and cost, but this focus has evolved towards a need to introduce policies for a ‘Mobile First’ approach for enterprises. To enable the CIO’s journey in mobile requires support for programmable, borderless mobile services, without the cost, security, regulatory or access restrictions that exist today. This is the premise of the mobile communications platform of the future and it can be a powerful new revenue stream for MNOs and provide an innovation engine for the next-generation of mobile services.