Benefits still to be realised.
The enterprise mobility market in Australia grew by an insignificant 0.63% in 2016 but the future holds brighter prospects, according to IDC Australia research. Australia is one of the most progressive markets for enterprise mobility in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, (APeJ) as organisations shifted from a defensive to proactive approach regarding employees’ use of mobile technologies and 2016 was an accentuation point, according to IDC. While the hardware market lacks upside, with organisations expecting that hardware to be in the hands of employees, the forecast is predominantly driven by mobility software and services.
“The extension of the enterprise perimeter through mobile enterprise applications, device management, and the pull through for application development platforms and security drives a strong growth for enterprise mobility software and related services,” IDC senior research manager, Sabharinath Bala said. “Although there are a few organisations that are advanced in their mobility journey with dedicated platforms and architectures for mobile to be a primary mode of usage, most mobile use cases are isolated, uncoordinated initiatives with a lot to be desired from Australian businesses,” she said.
Mobility is still viewed as a tactical arrangement by a vast majority of Australian organisations as security concerns continue to overweigh advantages that mobility brings along. The market will be dominated by growth from the enterprise mobility related software while the hardware market will continue to shrink through to 2020 due to business laptop and smartphone market saturation.
Australia slipped to fifth place in enterprise mobility maturity in 2016 in the region as maturity benchmarks continuing to evolve. As Australian businesses move up the scale, they are becoming more concerned with mobile applications, their procurement, development, and management. And as they move up even further, their concerns centre increasingly on a holistic approach to the mobility of their IT systems and the role of mobility in business strategy.
“The big picture is critical as enterprise mobile strategy needs to tie to other 3rd Platform pillars, especially cloud and analytics, with the Internet of Things (IoT) effectively extending the business value of enterprise mobility, as well as opening opportunities for enabling vendors to service this space,” Bala said.