CIOs must lead the charge on mobility

Mobility has become a way of life for your employees and external customers. What was once a “nice to have” in the enterprise is now a “need to have.” While some IT leaders are playing catch-up with mobility, savvy CIOs have developed their enterprises’ mobile vision by first adopting the technology themselves.

Mobility allows your workforce to be more flexible, as workers are untethered from the desktop. Also, mobility boosts agile development and speeds your IT teams, allowing them to remotely diagnose problems and execute fixes. By taking IT mobile, you improve insight into your customers’ mobile needs, and you can discover opportunities for mobile innovation.

To “go mobile” credibly in your enterprise, you must first master IT’s mobility:

• Design for easy access to data and actions. Design a mobile IT management app that provides easy access to relevant data and actions, instead of mobilizing entire applications. For instance, let IT staff press a button for a complete overview of a request or ticket.
• Support a mixed-device environment. Create a platform that defines a set of capabilities, instead of building for a specific device. Supporting IT’s preferred devices will drive adoption, and it will help you prepare for device management issues with the business. 
• Carefully architect mobile IT management apps. Tailor apps to IT staff needs, but don’t jeopardize security in the process. For example, allow confidential IT management data to be viewable, but not downloadable.
• Monitor and report. Monitor how IT workers use their devices and report on it. This crucial information can provide insights when you deploy and manage mobile apps for the enterprise.
• Manage end-to-end performance. Mobility requires looking at metrics and application performance management differently. When your applications are mobile-enabled, you must measure and report on performance down to the device level.

The current Discover Performance newsletter (from which this post was adapted) offers keen insights and best practices about mobility and its influence on the enterprise landscape. Sign up today to receive the newsletter and learn how you can turn IT performance into business success.

For more on mobile IT management, read the white paper, “Mobilizing the Business of IT,” and check out HP’s broad suite of mobility solutions.