The New State Of Enterprise Mobility

US$181 billion. That’s what the BYOD (bring your own device) and enterprise mobility market is forecast to be worth by 2017, according to a recent report. It’s no surprise, with mobility increasingly becoming a centerpiece of IT strategy, as employees continue to clamor for the ability to work on the go and enterprises are starting to truly recognize the immense business benefits of a mobile workforce.

Meanwhile, BYOD is becoming the norm in Asia Pacific, as evidenced by a recent IDC study finding that close to 60% of surveyed organizations across region had mobility policies catering to BYOD.

However, as adoption of BYOD and enterprise mobility grows, so too does the associated IT management challenge, complicated with increasing users demands.

Today’s employees require seamless access to a wide range of corporate resources and applications to get their work done on an increasing variety of devices. They expect LAN-like performance, even over mobile data networks, and high levels of availability. More importantly, they want their personal data and activity on these devices kept out of sight of the company.

Amidst all that, IT departments just need to add 1 more responsibility to their shoulders – ensure security is not undermined from the data center to each endpoint.

So how do you ensure your organization is equipped for the next generation mobile workforce?

 

Maintaining Control, Simply

The first key to meeting the new management challenge is to ensure the organization maintains firm control – over data, over access, over processes and over actions by users themselves. A simple, all-encompassing central point of control is required to provide organizations with the ability to consistently apply policies governing access, even in the face of new inventions, and provide a single location at which those policies and processes can be enforced and enabled.

 

Keeping The Machine Well-Oiled

From the data center to the mobile network to the device, all potential issues that could impact App performance and availability must be minimized and mitigated.

For example, multiple authentication servers configured to process requests should be paired with intelligent traffic management solutions, so that if one authentication server goes down, the others can handle any incoming authentication requests and new sessions can be established as usual. Additionally, remote access solutions must able to optimize and accelerate traffic to accommodate the high latency of some mobile networks.

 

Securing All Bases

With enterprise mobility on the rise, mobile devices are increasingly being targeted by cyber criminals to carry out corporate attacks and steal corporate data. Malware that siphons data, intercepts transmissions, logs keystrokes and more is posing a real threat, and enterprises need to be on active defense.

IT teams need solutions that can conduct a broad range of endpoint checks, including whether the device has been jail broken or rooted or contains any malware, as well as ensuring the necessary encryption and secure protocols are in place for data transmission. F5’s APM can even use data such as device ID, touch patterns and timing information to determine whether a transaction is genuine or if it’s being performed by malware, and then block as necessary.

 

No Compromises

The bottom line is, the future of enterprise mobility means no compromises. Employees will come to expect the same high level of access, availability, performance and security on the go as at their desks. Organizations that successfully tackle this will see that enterprise mobility not only has the power to transform IT, but business itself and the way we work.