Faced with a growing mobile workforce, a rapidly growing range of feature-phones and smartphones, and an increasing demand for enterprise application mobility, a recent survey of CIOs from top 500 enterprises shows that businesses are looking to their mobile operator partners to provide tools and services to help them control, secure, and manage mobile devices in the same way they manage other IT assets.
The survey, which was conducted by Coleman Parkes and sponsored by Mformation Technologies, found that 45 percent of the CIOs are looking to mobile operators to provide assistance with the management of mobile devices. 62 percent of US CIOs indicate that they would change their mobile operator if they were offered a comprehensive mobile device management (MDM) solution by a competing mobile operator.
Some key research findings:
- 82 percent of US CIOs report that managing mobile devices has become increasingly difficult.
- Almost all CIOs surveyed (95 percent) are currently looking for a solution for managing and securing enterprise mobile devices and applications.
- The vast majority of US companies (88 percent) expect the operator to have a role in enterprise mobile device management, with nearly 60 percent indicating that they would prefer an arrangement with their operator that gives the IT department direct control over their mobile assets.
- Not surprisingly, therefore, 62 percent of US companies indicated they would consider switching to a new mobile operator if they offered MDM as a managed service.
