Mobility Platforms: Examining the Mobility Stack

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Clik here to view.Organizations need a strong mobility platform to gain the benefits from enterprise mobility. Before selecting a platform, it’s critical to sort out confusion surrounding platform requirements. The key to addressing this problem lies in correctly defining each of the layers in mobile platforms and examining how those layers mesh with the organization’s IT architecture. Only with this information can IT organizations see whether their mobile platform strategy is sound.

Redefining an Old Concept in a New Way

The topic of enterprise mobility has been analyzed academically for more than a decade, and efforts toward creating rudimentary mobile applications started around the same time. Well-known examples such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft ActiveSync became popular because of their focus on enterprise mobility. In addition, advocates for unified communications also focused on mobility, although in a limited way. Several investments in converged devices provided mobility to enterprises through incorporating unified messaging and presence.

However, mobility technology and applications have undergone a sea change over the past ten years. With advancements in telecommunication and high-speed wireless data transfer made possible through 3G and 4G mobile systems, enterprise mobility has gained significant momentum. It has been further fueled by the surge in a variety of smartphones.

The need for enterprise mobility is hardly a point of discussion anymore. A good mobility platform can provide competitive advantage for the enterprise from two angles—lowering the cost of operation and delivering more value to the customer.

A mobility platform should enable better information exchange with partners and other stakeholders in the industry value chain. Nonetheless, there is still a lack of consensus over the standardization of architecture when it comes to platforms required for enterprise mobility.

Simple Objectives; Complex Hurdles

Despite the business needs, technical possibilities, and a desire to use mobility as a lever for productivity, the complexity of the mobile ecosystem creates a certain ambiguity around the platform requirements for both enterprises and telecom service providers. Key reasons for ambiguity stem from multiple factors and manifest themselves in the form of challenges (Figure 2).

Uncovering Layers of Challenges

To meet these platform-related challenges, multiple layers must be understood and addressed from the platform perspective. These layers can be broadly categorized into the User Devices layer (mostly smartphones and tablets), Transport/Network layer, Device Management layer, Applications/Services layer, and the Enterprise Portal layer (Figure 3).

From an enterprise operations point of view, the top three layers are of the most importance whereas the telecom service provider is involved with the bottom three layers. This means that both entities jointly manage the Device Management layer, which plays the most critical role in a good mobility platform strategy.

Mobility Management: Convergence on the Enterprise Portal Layer

In most enterprises, the Enterprise Portal layer serves as the gateway for authentication and provides access to applications and services. Enterprise mobility requires integration of this portal into the Device Management layer. This layer has two views: the administration view to manage the mobility of the enterprise and the application access view for users of enterprise applications and services.

Key considerations at this layer include an integrated view that enables system administrators and operators to manage most of the aspects of the mobility of their employees and associates. In other words, this layer should not only serve as a window to all the layers below it, but also facilitate the integration of this platform into any other classic IT systems. Considering the fact that many enterprises have outsourced their IT and infrastructure management operations, this layer should ideally be extendable to IT service providers with the requisite access, authentication, logging, and reporting mechanisms.

Additional capabilities at the Enterprise Portal layer may include a window for users to access the applications from their desktop or laptop. To increase user experience, it is desirable to provide an analogous view (on-device portal or an equivalent mechanism) of the same window for the users’ smartphones and/or other mobile devices.

Application/Services Layer: Integrate Mobility into the Business Process

The Application/Services Layer is the core framework for service creation and delivery. To a telecom service provider, it can be compared to the Service Delivery Platform, with additional capabilities for creating and managing enterprise applications. This is the fundamental user plane layer exchanging enterprise data between the applications on the smartphones and the backend enterprise application. Ideally, this plane should be seamless between the user device and backend IT; specifically, a database on the device which is used by one or more applications (multiple databases can exist if required). This layer should also support online and offline modes and provide synchronization with backend systems. It requires a thorough analysis of parameters such as the data intensity needs (e.g., light or limited data transfer, medium to heavy data, and rich data transfer) of the applications, the usual usage conditions (e.g., actively mobile, portable office, etc.), primary information usage (i.e., messages, alerts, forms, tables, knowledge, etc.) and the type of data exchange (i.e., email, SMS, file transfer, alert, etc.).

Application creation and inclusion in the service delivery mechanism should be part of the framework, allowing development and maintenance of the device applications as a continuous process. Both thin-client and thick-client approaches are being used today. The primary consideration when selecting an approach relates to the variety and capability of the user devices the enterprise workforce is using. An enterprise with mostly smartphones that have good computing and data storage capability can use a thick-client approach, but if you must support feature phones, a thin-client or mixed approach yields better performance and manageability.

Device Management Layer: Critical to Mobility

The Device Management Layer, a relatively new addition, is what makes mobility feasible. It plays a critical role from both the end device perspective and the enterprise operations perspective. It provides an inventory view of the enterprise mobile assets and their status, verifies compliance to corporate policies before access to enterprise data, and provides remediation solutions. The functions that should be performed at this layer are shown in Figure 5.

Apart from these mandatory functions, it is good to leverage the troubleshooting and problem solving capabilities that most device management platforms offer. These capabilities offer easier and faster troubleshooting, debugging, and problem solving. In the absence of such capabilities, devices may be needlessly returned or sent for repair.

The Device Management layer also performs critical functions of device authentication. It can lock the device in case of undesirable handset changes by the user, loss, or theft. Most device management products allow remote wipe. A comprehensive Device Management layer also allows pushing applications and patch upgrades to the mobile device in both silent mode (without user intervention) and assisted mode (with user intervention), making it appropriate for problem resolution separate from policy enforcement and security management.

From an operations perspective, this layer has greater significance for the telecom service provider partner, which provides the transport channel (IP and wireless connectivity) to the enterprise. From a deployment view, this layer may very well reside in the IT stack of the telecom service provider, integrated into its operational and business management sub-systems (OSS/BSS).

Transport/Network Layer: Effortless Communication

The Transport/Network Layer is the layer for voice and data connectivity from the telecommunication service provider partner. However, with convergence and unified communication, this layer has been extended beyond the traditional telecommunication service provider domain.

With IP and WiFi inside the enterprise as well as hotspots, mobility is not totally dependent on standard mobile communication systems (such as 3G and 4G). Most smartphones today can switch to a WiFi network, saving on data costs. The platform for enterprise mobility should leverage this feature and incorporate security management at a separate layer (i.e., not tied to a particular access mechanism). In essence, an enterprise mobility platform should remain decoupled from the access network.

User Devices Layer: Serious Consideration Required

The User Devices layer is fundamental to mobility because it is the end device that provides the mobility and serves as a window for applications and services to the end-user. While end-user devices have motivated enterprise mobility programs, they also bring significant challenges. One of the key reasons for the challenges lie in the focus on consumers by most of the platform and device OEMs and ignoring or at least underplaying the needs of the enterprise. This trend is changing now, albeit slowly (e.g., ‘iPhone in Business’ initiative incorporating enterprise needs like connectivity, security, encryption, local/remote wipe, etc.).

The aspects to consider at this layer, which obviously vary depending on the nature and goal of business, are shown in Figure 6.

Considering the many aspects to take into account, the User Devices layer is one of the most critical in the decision making process for an enterprise. It has bearing on users, scalability, manageability, cost, future roadmap, and day-to-day operations.

Putting the Pieces Together

If an enterprise or a telecommunication service provider decides to go for a “build and operate” model for the mobility platform, the following components and functional view should be considered for platform requirements and capabilities. Figure 7 only shows a functional view. Actual IT architecture would depend on existing enterprise architecture, products, and the telecom systems under consideration.

In Figure 7, the Integration layer is the key to communication and control with classic IT systems. It should enable the Device Management layer to interact with the two layers above and forms a bridge between the mobility platform and other classic IT systems (mediation, inventory, CRM, etc.). In actual deployment, it can be a collection of scripts based on the business logic and specifications communicating with the enterprise portal, the telecom service provider’s OSS/BSS components, and the Device Management layer through standard APIs exposed by these components or web services. This integration may be challenging based on the availability of APIs and exposed interfaces and may require custom API development or an alternate data exchange mechanism. The business logic obviously varies from one scenario to another, thus the interconnection logic will be specific to the implementation. For example, every time a new device is added to the enterprise, the Telecom Service Provider’s order management system could update the device management system. When the device management system has to push a service or product onto a device, it follows the instructions given by the order management system. One may choose to implement this in other ways too, such as the device management system deciding on each device-related action after receiving verification from order management.

One of the prime considerations for mobility programs are setup and operation costs. Regardless of the benefits of a mobility platform, a full-fledged platform may not be justified for every organization. In such a scenario, opting for mobility services from a hosted/managed services vendor is a viable choice. Now that many service providers are moving to the cloud for better services penetration and cost optimization, this option should certainly be explored by enterprises. There are pros and cons. Procurement of services does lower the associated CAPEX and OPEX and reduces the need for operational and technical capabilities. Nonetheless, using a service provider may mean marginal to significant changes in the strategy with respect to devices, applications, and data management.

Culture and Processes Are Critical

Amid all the technical considerations for the platform lie the important aspects of organizational culture and existing business processes. Both aspects need to be carefully dealt with and will have an impact on the platform architecture.

An application that is hard to use, a combination of manual and automated processes, a difficult sequence of steps for a field worker, and other challenges may lead to poor user experience and be a weak link in the productivity chain. While some challenges can be addressed technically, others may require organizational change management. Care should be taken to avoid poor user experience to ensure success of adoption. Business processes are an entrenched part of organizational culture and many of them are not easily adapted to incorporate mobility. Careful consideration of the potential return on investment for each business process is a better approach to deciding where to incorporate mobility.

Some people in the organization may feel that a comprehensive mobility program may usher in a high level of automation resulting in job losses. It is important to consider this to garner ample support for implementing this change. Finally, training programs can add immense value in putting the platform in place.

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