First, recognize that mobile computing is necessitated by many things:

•   – Frequent travel by staff who need enterprise access “on the go”

•   – Requirements for situational access to data, such as in airports, meetings, etc.

•   – Companies that survey and dispense services at dispersed client locations

•   – Specialized apps for communications with, and services to, customers and prospects

•   – Marketing requirements, and associated apps

Then evaluate how you might leverage the following:

Targeting:  You can target your audience; on-the-go clients have mobile, and they want to engage.  That means you’ll want them to engage with you.  Once your client population is aware of you, you gain a targeted audience.  Also, your employees, solutions partners, and contractors have come to expect ready-communication and access – to information, to decisions.

Communication and support:  Apps help customers in their communication to you.  Your organization can collect data and feedback from them.  Questions, suggestions, and complaints can be addressed with ease and efficiency.  But further, your staff can communicate with the org too; whether on travel, in the field, or at the customer-site.

Marketing and promotion:  Apps are more essential than ever given the increase in the number of mobile users.  eCommerce requirements, payments, and the administration of shopping (such as layaways, “recently looked at” histories, and other sales boosts), make robust mobile enablements a must.

Customization:  Apps can be fitted to your specific missions, agendas, goals, products, and services.  Also, various features, preferences, and security controls are available for perfect fit.

Increased Earnings:   An obvious benefit of increased reach, targeted audiences, and more sales is increased earnings.

For SMB, exploring mobile is not an expensive proposition – at least as a first step.  Interview some mobile providers in your area:  They’ll meet with you for a free assessment of your environment, requirements, and goals.  From there, you can solicit some ballpark figures for forward progression and deliveries.

A mobile app, or suite of apps, is an investment – not just another cost.

We want quick returns on our investments, and we want to maximize profit by keeping overhead low even as we invest in, and implement, those things that drive revenue.  And so, in the face of an ongoing mobile revolution, any business has to ask itself:  Should we have an app?

Regardless whether any small business sees the need for an app now, or later, it is wise to have a mobile strategy.  Stay current with what is available and what it may do for you now, or in time.  A good start is to simply optimize your website for mobile.

“Mobilizing” your website

Engaging a provider to build a mobile-friendly website is quite inexpensive.  Most sites today utilize a Cascading Style Sheet-based design (CSS).  If you’re not on a CSS protocol, you need to get there in order to be positioned effectively for the future anyway, and that is going to cost a bit.  Assuming you’re utilizing CSS, optimizing your site for mobile isn’t difficult, or expensive.  Many web hosts will even provide a free basic mobile site.  However, for a polished look, best operations, and best certainty, you’ll want to partner with a strong mobile solutions provider.  It’s a good relationship to get underway in any case.

Advantage of Mobile Site over App and Vice-Versa

In terms of compatibility, mobile sites work universally, independent of device, and generally independent of browser.  Score an advantage for the mobile site.  However, recognize that a mobile user must open the browser, and negotiate to the URL, or to the Favorite, or Bookmark…

Apps, on the other hand, can be anchored right on the device’s desktop.  And, apps can be customized to do anything, whereas mobile sites are merely replications of regular site, or even slightly diminished versions.  Apps can provider reminders, can notify of new products and services, can be customized to tie into other apps, and so forth.  It’s important to recognize that each app will need to be created for each platform you intend it for, whether Android, iPhone, or Blackberry.

Apps can also be “inside-facing” – that is, they are not customer-oriented, but rather they help your inside people and processes.  Inventorying, for example.  Dispatching, as another.

Cost?

An app for your organization can cost anywhere from thousands, to tens of thousand, to hundreds of thousands of dollars – depending on the size and scope of your business and related desires.  A good place to start is with an initial, high-level, conversation with a mobile applications solutions provider – that much is free.  They can help you to decide where the advantages lie:  site vs. app, and the robustness of each, and where the paybacks are.

I’d like to wish all readers of this blog and all staff at TechTarget:  Happy Holidays!

Small and Medium Business (SMB) can really benefit from mobile readiness.  Beyond the obvious reasons (the idea of “readiness” and a paired security posture hardly needs to be sold), the SMB market can capture and leverage a whole population of assets that essentially have no overhead.  No TCO, no appreciable Time to Value (TtV); they’re here now, in that they’re often owned and maintained by people as personal assets:  Things such as smartphones and laptops.

Of course, often enough these devices are provided by SMB too, as tools of any particular job; but there does exist a ready population that can be exploited – and that must be protected.

Whatever devices (and associated users) desire to access your data, systems, and tools – you must take inventory and qualify access before you greenlight it.  Assess whether a particular user really needs remote access – is it going to be an efficient enhancement to work?  Will it be productive?  Does supervision agree that access is desirable?  Is a strong case being made?

Then the risks can be weighed against the benefits – and there are always risks.  Mobile devices will harbor sensitive data – and that data can easily be lost.  Also, mobile devices transmit updated data back into your central repositories – on your network:  filestores that represent the content feeding your mission critical applications.  Things such as the organization’s sensitive financial information; customer databases and records, sensitive correspondence – you name it.  You must ensure sourced mobile data is healthy, accurate, and whole.

Mobile devices also represent a portal through which malware may enter the organization.  Therefore, an entire regime of recurring user education is necessary, and a standard schedule for review of devices for compliances and updated protections for malware, etc., is absolutely essential.

When devices are lost, it is imperative that users alert IT – lost devices can allow unauthorized access to the network; IT must immediately bar a device’s ability to access upon loss.  And while on that subject, beware devices that have unsecured remote access – that is, no password or stored password, allowing the “greased entry” upon a simple switch-on of the device. 

Let’s keep rolling on this…

NP:  The “In” Crowd – The Ramsey Lewis Trio, jazz24.org.

Once upon a time, all an IT manager had to do was to secure an infrastructure and allied systems and tools that existed inside the “four walls” of the organization.  That is, some measure of a computer room (speaking in a virtual sense; any of these elements could stripe through multiple buildings, offices, allied agencies, etc.), fileserver(s), a wiring closet or two, a computer workstation population, and so on…

A few forward individuals, either by power, station, or adventurousness, dialed-in to the network.  Wow!  I remember jokes in the workplace:  Who the heck wants to bring the office home?

Today, we’re approaching universal connectivity.  There are so many mobile devices, and associated mobile apps – paired with new data-densities, new bandwidth and processing power considerations – that business is everywhere.

The challenge to business and IT leaders alike is not just protection to organization assets and daily production, but the challenge includes spec’ing up to accommodate present and future demands for the mobile workforce.  It also includes more than that…

It goes well beyond:  You must document allowances, as far as which classes of users have mobile access, when, and how.  And you must consider the blended environment of personal vs. business assets.  Keep in mind that folks access your organization’s central computing and data assets from personal computers, laptops, phones, tablets, etc.  The avenues for breach are many, in that you do not have an exclusive measure of control over these devices, and their associated “wellness” in terms of virus protection, malware protections, etc., etc.

Security demands are high.  You must guard against spam, spyware, malware, viruses… denial-of-service attacks, whether directed or random.  In this environment, it is prudent to consider data encryption for mobile devices.  Today, you must safeguard sensitive organization data on mobile devices:  Information is always vulnerable to theft and loss, but never more so when it’s repository is mobile and susceptible to loss itself.

More on this in the coming days…

March 10^th:  On this day in 1933, Nevada becomes the 1^st state to regulate narcotics.