How End-User Computing Solutions Support Business Mobility

Over the past decade, mobile devices and apps have changed the IT landscape. Across virtually all industries, organizations are now equipping users with smartphones and tablets to boost their productivity, and enterprises that were once hesitant to invest in mobile solutions are now scrambling to catch up. But often, these organizations find that the landscape is shifting again, from one where IT departments support only the very basics of mobility for their users to one where enterprises incorporate mobility into everything they do.

In its November 2015 “State of Business Mobility” report, VMware outlines three levels of mobile maturity. At the first level, “individual productivity,” organizations give their users access to basic productivity applications via mobile devices. Eighty-five percent of organizations, according to VMware surveys, have implemented this basic level of mobility. The next step, “team productivity,” involves new forms of applications and services to empower teams as well as to increase collaboration and communication at the group level via mobile devices and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). This second step represents an improvement, but still does not take advantage of all the benefits that mobile technology has to offer.

To unlock these benefits, organizations must reach the third and final step of mobile evolution, which VMware refers to as “business mobility.” This step, which the report calls the “ultimate goal” for organizations looking to leverage mobile solutions to make themselves more competitive, is characterized by shifting core business processes and operations to a mobile model. According to the report, this level of transformation “holds the greatest potential to make an organization more competitive, and thus more successful,” but only 20 percent of organizations have successfully made this transition. Things are quickly changing, however. Nearly two-thirds of surveyed companies reported that they are re-engineering or have plans to re-engineer a core process to achieve business mobility.

Introducing End-User Computing

As mobile deployments have evolved, so too have solutions for managing mobility resources. In recent years, the mobile computing industry has moved from mobile device management (MDM) to enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions, giving organizations greater control over the applications and content they deliver via mobile devices. End-user computing is the next step in this evolution. This approach not only helps organizations manage mobile devices, apps and content, but also does so in a way that is designed to optimize the end-user experience. The goal of end-user computing solutions is to give users a consistent computing experience across their entire range of devices, so that users are just as productive from remote locations as they are sitting at their desktops. At the same time, these solutions are designed to simplify management for the enterprise and tighten security. Essentially, a good enduser computing solution multiplies the benefits of mobility while also reducing risks and drawbacks.

New solutions are needed to manage and support increasingly complex mobility deployments. For all of the benefits of mobile devices and apps, mobility also creates a number of challenges for IT departments, many of which revolve around information security. Organizations also struggle with basic mobile management issues, such as how to deliver mobile applications and authenticate users. The presence of legacy applications within many organizations further complicates matters, as these applications often prove difficult to optimize for mobile devices (while simply keeping them tied exclusively to desktops does little to enhance productivity). Users have their own concerns, especially regarding privacy issues that crop up when organizations deploy mobile management tools that allow them to track their workers’ movements through GPS, or even erase workers’ personal data. The ability to overcome these hurdles is often what separates the large number of organizations supporting “individual productivity” via mobile devices and apps from the small minority achieving true “business mobility.”

End-user computing solutions help solve these problems by bringing together management, security, virtualization and authentication tools in one cohesive system. This process allows enterprises to create an efficient, effective and satisfying experience for users, no matter what device they are using, while at the same time giving IT departments the level of control they need to ensure that mobile deployments deliver value to the enterprise and protect sensitive data. Instead of piecing together sometimes incompatible tools, organizations with end-to-end mobile workspace solutions can securely deliver apps to their users, grant single sign-on access based on user role, support apps on a variety of devices and operating systems, and prevent data breaches.

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