How long would it take to fill a football stadium with water from a pipette if each time you added a drop, the water doubled? (seconds? minutes? days? years?)

You might be surprised by the answer…

Such is the conundrum of exponential growth in mobile that  consultant, investor and mobile expert Russell Buckley explains in this week’s AppBeat.

In this week’s AppBeat episode, Russell Buckley explains the concept of “exponential growth relative to mobile” and paints a compelling picture for why there is no time to waste when it comes to developing your mobile strategy.

Since the 1980s the introduction of the mobile phone, texting and Internet has hugely impacted the way in which we communicate and the level of service, personalisation and relevance people expect as a standard. Since the early 2000s the introduction of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a myriad of other social networks has transformed online user behaviour from information consumption to user involvement/engagement.

How does this impact you, and is it something you can afford to ignore?

When communicating and interacting with people, using the latest technology just for the sake of trend and fad is pointless. However, where it does becomes necessary, is when you are effectively invisible to people because you do not have a presence on the digital channels that they are using.

This is becoming an increasingly critical issue due to the increased pace of innovation, particularly for brands that target young audiences who do not have the historical familiarity with traditional communications channels. Consider, for example, the speed at which consumers adopt new technology:

If you plan on investing in your digital initiatives to reinvent yourself for new channels in 5 years time, realise that much of your audience is already interacting over these channels, and by the time you adopt them, much of your audience will have moved on. While they could still use these technologies from time to time, they will have likely found and focused on newer ways to interact with each other on newer platforms that you have no presence or influence on yet, as such:

This highlights a growing urgency to develop strategy for how to sustain communication and face time with your audience.

This, however, is a reactive approach, and while a necessary measure, it leaves you playing catch up to maintain status quo. Taking a proactive approach to digital, however, opens up huge opportunities for improving your services and sharing your message more effectively and efficiently to a worldwide audience.

At this point you might be wondering:

1. For what purpose should I be interacting with my audience digitally?
2. For an organisation like ours, where should I be digitally?
3. What should I be doing now and in the future to gain traction with my audience?
4. How much time and resource should I be investing?

Be one of the businesses that actively seek answers to these questions to ensure not only your continued success, but also discover how to improve and expand your operations. If you don’t have the skills internally to answer these questions, talk to a digital strategy consultant.

Modern employees are driving the corporate IT agenda with the use of personal devices to access business data. Martin Borrett, Director of the IBM Institute of Advanced Security in Europe, talks about how companies can work with the tide of the bring-your-own-device trend.

“Bring your own device” (BYOD) is quite the buzzword at the moment and Martin Borrett of IBM in this weeks’ AppBeat episode introduces us to what it really means. However, you must be thinking, practically, what’s the impact to my business? Let’s cover off some key points:

Business Challenges

1. Control over separation of work and private content

Mixing work and personal content on a device means you are forced to either:

• Allow the user to control the security of a device – putting your data at risk
• Require the user to conform to your security requirements
• Or, thirdly, utilize additional software that allows virtual separation of work and personal content.

The last of these options is the most desirable for a number of reasons, but by its very nature you require a solution that supports all your staff’s mobile devices such as iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile etc.

2. Control overuse of device

As personal devices, BYODs are subject to use in any kind of situation, including locations / environments where you may not want your company data accessed, and also used by people who are not on your payroll. How can you limit exposure of your data?

3. Control over security on device

Mixing content such as work and personal email or work and personal files introduces new issues around securing that content, particularly around understanding where copies of content reside, and ensuring they does not fall into unauthorized hands.

4. Control over disposal procedures

Tracking down all copies of sensitive information and removing them is increasingly difficult with personal devices that are not under your full control.  This applies to situations of staff termination, device sale, device loss, or change in user authorization.

5. Control of employee devices on your network

Many organizations limit external devices from accessing their inner network to prevent backdoors, which hackers use to access corporate systems and introduce unwanted software (e.g. viruses) onto company systems. BYOD often means you need to relax your security rules or provide multiple layers of security to support greater access to your company data, risking security loopholes.

6. Technical Support

By allowing staff to use their own device as their business device, the overhead of maintaining a support team that is able to troubleshoot issues across all types of devices increases dramatically.

What are the key capabilities to be made accessible across all staff devices?

1. Work email

Identifying how staff receive, organize and send corporate mail on their personal device.

2. Work files

How you can provide access to their company files on their personal device.

3. Work calendar

How your shared calendar is accessible on various devices.

4. Address book

Your corporate address book – particularly if it contains client contact details.

5. Productivity apps

Apps you provide to your staff, either developed in house or by a third party– do they work on the key platforms your staff uses?

Summary

While BYOD has many benefits, as shown there are a number of challenges also.  While it is the remit of your IT department to address each challenge, the implications of BYOD have to be considered at the highest levels of management to allow for the necessary due diligence to guard against the vulnerabilities this policy exposes your organisation to.

When it comes to mobile for enterprise, where are the opportunities and what best practices do you need to know about as you define your strategy?

IBM Master Inventor Vijay Dheap shares in this weeks episode!