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Mobility needs to be recognized as another critical channel to reach out to customers as well as provide an edge to the sales force. Just as the Internet has become a default channel for any IT service, mobility will soon establish itself as a critical channel. Until a few years ago, the cost of the technology and its readiness were areas of concern that resulted in enterprises holding up mobility initiatives. Today, cost and technical value propositions favor the enterprise.

I assume that, like me, you are convinced about the value that mobility can bring to the enterprise. I am convinced that the mobility value proposition is a very critical step, but only the first one. Next, we must start thinking about where the grand scheme of things breaks down. And that’s what defines my research agenda.

How do you leverage the right mobility opportunities while dealing with the unique IT challenges associated with it? We believe we have some unique and effective answers, but I will leave the answers for a follow-up issue. In this issue, let me articulate the challenges.

Managing Device Diversity
The mobility solution should scale across device platforms - there should be no impact on the existing solution with new mobile devices available in the market

Ensuring Gradual Service Evolution
An organization must be able to gradually enhance its portfolio of mobile-enabled services with minimal cost and complexity. New service enablement should be possible via configurable interfaces.

Context Sensitivity
The mobile solution should be able to deal with user, device, network and application contexts. Traditional methods – where an application responds to what it is programmed to do – will not work with mobility. In a networked context, the solution should dynamically adjust the amount of data exchanged over the wireless interface, improve performance and reduce cost. Further, in a user context, a transaction such as the generation of quote for end-customer should have higher priority than for a synchronization request.

Planning for, but ‘not assuming’, anywhere, anytime connectivity
The solution should allow mobile users connected over wireless networks to access real-time information. However, it should also be able to shield the end-user and application from occasional connectivity losses by incorporating appropriate caching, connection management and session management techniques.

Right approach to Security
Mobile solution architectures should take care of end-to-end security and not make assumptions about network-level security. Similarly the end-to-end security should not be left to the mercy of secure individual applications. Solution architecture should provide a layer of security irrespective of application/network.

Synchronization Capabilities
The architectural backbone should have mobile synchronization capabilities. In any field force scenario, the middleware should ensure direct synchronization between any devices and data source in the IT infrastructure. Further, it should be able to perform peer-to-peer synchronization while avoiding reliance on basic synchronization middleware like ActiveSync and HotSync. Instead, true network-based synchronization middleware should be adopted.

Leveraging existing application and IT infrastructure
There should be minimal or no maintenance overhead for separately maintaining mobile and internet infrastructure.

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About the Author

Puneet, who specializes in mobile computing, wireless technologies and convergence of electronics, telecom and information technologies, currently leads the pervasive IT research initiative at SETLabs. As part of the research initiative he is involved in conceptualizing and driving market driven research initiatives and solutions in pervasive computing, enterprise mobility, wireless and emerging technologies like RFID and providing thought leadership. Previously, he was with Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, where he was a key contributor to Lucent’s 2nd and 3rd generation wireless technologies program. Puneet is an avid writer and has published more than 80 articles and papers on technology and business related themes for several reputed internationals magazines and Journals. He has co-authored multiple books and reports on themes related to wireless, mobility, web-services and is currently authoring a book on enterprise wireless technologies.

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