In 2013, mobile is the main event

The major trend I see running through this list is that mobile strategy in enterprise is no longer a side-stage project. It has become the main event. We’ve reached a point where many businesses already have basic mobility in place: smartphones, data plans, some security, some device protection, compliance policies, and mobile email access for employees.

And, more importantly, almost everyone in the organization – IT, marketing, sales and operations – is thinking about what to do next.

It’s all about the applications that improve productivity, the “Internet of Things” that connects a company’s assets and the security services that keep this information protected. 2013 is going to be the year when we see many more examples of businesses, industries, and eco-systems transforming through the innovative use of mobility.

Predictions for the evolving mobile landscape

Here are the eight ways I see mobility evolving in the coming year:

1. 2013 will be a tipping point for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. With greater standardization throughout the industry and falling costs of key components, I believe that M2M is poised for much more rapid adoption in the coming months.

2. Customers will heighten their focus on end-to-end mobile security –Including devices, data, and networks – in light of increased sensitivity to major breaches that may be looming. Everyone realizes that real innovation will only come if we adequately address security and policy issues.

3. Business mobile users will continue to diversify their mobile operating systems. I think that the Windows mobile platform has a chance to be a surprise hit in the business world.

4. Adoption of mobile applications in business will spread across multiple platforms. Native applications are currently the standard for enterprise apps, but we expect HTML5 and mixed-mode applications to gain more traction in 2013.

5. Businesses will start to layer more “platforms” on top of their basic mobility services. Think solutions like Near Field Communications, Push-to-Talk, and Biometrics.

6. Enterprise app stores (or downloadable enterprise apps) will become more prominent in 2013. And they’ll be integrated with application management, blessed by IT.

7. We’ll start to see more “mobile first” applications. Right now, most companies mobilize apps that already exist as desktop or Web-based software. In 2013, we expect to see a shift toward apps designed originally for mobile platforms. Some potential examples: collaboration software, context-, location- or persona-aware access and mobile-based assistants in business-to-consumer industries.

8. Enterprises will start to develop mobile centers of excellence and mobile IT teams to handle the creation and management of mobile strategies across different lines of business.

We will all be surprised at this time next year by what the industry as a whole was able to accomplish in 2013!

Keeping pace with innovation

Each new year brings exciting opportunities for businesses that want to improve their processes with mobility. And the pace of innovation in the wireless space is so rapid that we’re bound to see more advancements than we could possibly predict. I look forward to revisiting this topic at the end of 2013 to explore just how far we’ve come.

You’ve read my predictions for 2013, and now I’d like to hear from you! What kind of mobile developments do you expect to see next year? And what do you want to see?

It’s also true that things have changed significantly in the last half century. Breaking into a bank vault might still result in a windfall for a criminal, but a great deal of commercial activity now lives in cyberspace. If the bandits of the early 20^th century were alive today, I’d expect to find them sitting in front of a computer.

Global e-commerce is expected to total $1.4 trillion by 2015. I bet you can appreciate what an appealing target that is for the bad guys. What’s more, those bad guys are developing increasingly sophisticated means for infiltrating networks and devices. Spyware, for instance, can collect data such as credit card numbers, bank account information, usernames and passwords – and it’s often such an unobtrusive piece of software that people don’t notice its presence.

The threats aren’t limited to computers. Our always-on mobile devices are ripening into a juicy opportunity for cybercriminals as we perform more transactions on the go. Many retailers have optimized their websites for use on smartphones and tablets to make mobile purchasing easier. Near field communication (NFC) technology has the potential to turn your device into a digital wallet. And online banking applications are flooding mobile device app stores.

Mobile commerce only accounts for around two or three percent of the e-commerce market today, but it’s expanding at a rapid rate. A June, 2011 report by Forrester Research, Inc., entitled “Mobile Commerce: 2011 To 2016,” predicts that the industry will reach $31 billion by 2016¹.

There’s a very legitimate concern that companies’ efforts to protect and police e-commerce, especially in the mobile environment, aren’t up to the challenge. Take a look at this infographic, and you’ll see that more than 80% of IT executives are worried about mobile security. And since only 37% have established security provisions specific to mobile devices, you can understand why.  Depending on the type of data and the industry a company belongs to, may require different levels of protection.  IT executives not only have to worry about corporate data on a device, but data compromise while communicating and through virus/malware/rogue application on the mobile device.  All of this requires a very comprehensive and strategic view of levels of security and solutions to address them.

Is this an area that worries you? How do you feel about using smart phones as a replacement for credit cards? Do you take any special precautions with your mobile device? Have you enabled a remote lock or remote wipe application? Should you?  Join the conversation!

But what if you could combine the benefits of traditional push-to-talk and rugged devices with the most advanced mobile technologies, new smartphones, mobile applications, presence and more?

Today, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Companies that rely on instantaneous communications – think those in the construction, manufacturing and transportation industries – can now get push-to-talk capabilities on the latest and greatest mobile devices or newer ruggedized devices. What’s more, they can bring together push-to-talk and a whole range of applications designed to improve employees’ productivity in the field.

The next generation of push-to-talk has arrived. And if you haven’t thought about push-to-talk for your business in a while, here are five reasons why you should reconsider:

1.    It’s fast. Really, really fast

That means call setup times and latency of less than one second. With IP-based technology, we now have the ability to run push-to-talk over lightning-fast 4G LTE networks.

 2.    New push-to-talk features go above and beyond expectations

Modern-day push-to-talk applications aren’t just a button on the side of the phone. The latest services allow you to check a push-to-talk user’s status to see if he or she is available. If you’re a supervisor, you can override a conversation to communicate an important message. You can create talk groups immediately on your mobile device.

3.    Mobile applications take it to the next level

Integrating mobile apps with push-to-talk changes a useful tool into a comprehensive solution for field workers. Think about how much more productive employees can be if they’re filling out forms or invoices on their devices instead of on paper – and then add in the ability to call an expert, refer a manual, and take in a video at the same.

4.    There’s no better way to get in touch quickly

The average push-to-talk conversation lasts 40 seconds, while a traditional phone call takes three minutes. And what about text messaging? Unless you’re a world record holder, you can probably speak a lot faster than you can type.  In many situations, it may not only be more productive, it may be required for safety reasons.

5.    The future looks bright

What’s ahead for push-to-talk? Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allow businesses to fold push-to-talk functionality into almost any application. We also expect to make our new service, AT&T Enhanced Push-to-Talk, available over Wi-Fi connections and internationally through roaming agreements.

The 21^st century version of the ‘walkie talkie’ unites the best of modern mobile technology – high-speed networks, smartphone compatibility, new rugged phones, mobile apps – with the longstanding requirement for calls at the touch of a button.

So what do you think? Is push-to-talk dead? Or are we just getting started on a new age of instant communications – the push-to-talk of the smartphone era?

Editor’s Note: Speaking at the Enterprise 2.0 Building Social Business conference in Boston in June, AT&T Enterprise Mobility Executive Director Mobeen Khan joined other panelists to discuss “The Future of Big Data: What’s Next?” The discussion was facilitated by Johna Till Johnson, President and Senior Founding Partner of Nemertes Research.

Our discussion on “The Future of Big Data: What’s Next?” drew an audience of mostly technical and marketing professionals looking to use big data to make smarter decisions in their operations. Attendees were interested in learning more from the streams of data originating from online sources and customer interactions, as well as from social media marketing and sales campaigns.

I spoke about all of the data produced through mobility and about the future of Big Data in general. The future is very exciting, with devices, sensors, appliances, and “things” around us – and our interactions with those things – producing valuable data. For example, there are approximately 4.4 billion or so cell phones in use today, and we expect to see the number of connected endpoints reach more than fifty billion as communication gets embedded into everything we use directly and indirectly.

These devices and our interactions with them will produce a vast amount of data in the future. How do businesses make sense out of this data? How do they interpret it to make near-real-time decisions? How can this data make our businesses smarter?  Furthermore, how do we invent new businesses from this opportunity?

Answers to these questions are emerging as companies use technology and disciplines like analytics to make sense of the growing amount of data generated from fixed and mobile devices. In preparing for this panel, a couple of things made an impression on me. First, the volume of data that our customers, society, and businesses are creating is tremendous. The opportunity to extract important intelligence from this data is just as huge.

At AT&T today, 30 petabytes of data crosses our network on an average business day. That’s a humongous amount, almost incomprehensible, especially given that not too long ago that number was one petabyte of data a month. The amount of data crossing the network continues to grow at a tremendous rate.

The second thing that struck me was that the data being produced is not just data that should be stored for reporting purposes. Rather, the opportunity is in finding the intelligence within streams of data in real time—this is the real challenge and where the real opportunity lies.

Analyzing data produced by mobile and fixed assets in real time can provide insight into the supply chain. For example, oil and gas companies have assets and processes scattered all across the world on rigs and at offshore facilities, and so on. Improved tracking, an optimized supply chain, reduced maintenance costs, and lower injuries among workers are now possible due to the flow and real-time analysis of this data.  The benefits are virtually endless. Beyond using the data within the supply chain, these organizations can take select data and expose it to partners or their end customers, making entire eco-systems more agile and productive.

For the average individual, there are big data benefits as well. For a diabetic in his home using a health care application that reads his blood glucose results, it can be lifesaving. If those readings are consistently off normal, for example, and the patient hasn’t answered his last four phone calls and texts, or the doorbell (and your location shows the patient is at home), help can be dispatched to look after that person’s well-being.

When our customers implement a mobility solution, whether it’s for their employees, customers, or a machine-to-machine solution, the intelligence extracted from data using analytics is becoming a much more important part of the overall solution. The goal is to enable customers to collect, curate, and expose the right data so that businesses can make real time decisions that improve performance.

From leading companies like AT&T and Oracle (also part of the panel) to technology startups, innovation is underway in this area. I knew about it, but seeing it firsthand at the conference, I was really impressed.  I guess those tough courses on graph theory and design of statistical experiments may finally pay off!

What new uses are you putting “big data” to in your business? Are you using or analyzing data from mobile devices in new ways?

Prior to joining AT&T, Mobeen was with an SaaS CRM company as well as a mobile applications tool business heading sales and marketing functions.  Prior to that he was a management consultant with a boutique firm in NY and product manager for mobile solutions with Cingular Interactive.  In his previous roles, as well as at AT&T, Mobeen specializes in bringing new and innovative solutions to business customers and thus opening new markets.

Mobeen holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, in addition to an MS in Communications Engineering and a BS in Computer Engineering, both from Rutgers University.

In his free time, Mobeen enjoys playing tennis, hiking, and travelling. He also has begun to express himself creatively through writing fiction and poetry. Mobeen resides in New Jersey with his wife and three children.