Enterprises yet to get to grips with mobile - Oracle report

Mobility becoming ubiquitous but companies are still struggle to adapt, vendor research suggests

It's no surprise that mobility initiatives remain on a roll in today's enterprises, but despite the heady adoption growth figures, little consensus has been reached on the best mobile platforms for business or the best way to secure and integrate those platforms with existing systems, according to new research from Oracle.

Oracle's Connected Enterprise: Keeping Pace with Mobile Development report looks at the issues and challenges affecting mobility initiatives through the eyes of more than 400 IT decision makers from around the globe. The key takeaway: mobile-related IT expenses are expected to grow more than 50 per cent over two years, but troublesome issues with the technology set remain.

Part of the issue stems from the fact that business mobility initiatives must serve two masters. Mobile platforms are expected to help a company's workforce by increasing productivity; enterprises also count on mobility to serve a public-facing role to increase customer engagement.

As a result, these businesses are wrestling to keep pace with the rapid rate of mobile application development on both the client and server sides. Today, the split in development efforts stands at about 34 per cent for client-facing mobile apps versus 27 per cent for internal stakeholders. That balance is expected to shift more heavily to the client side of the next few years, Oracle researchers found.

While 29 per cent of IT development time is spent on front-end mobile-app development, more than 70 per cent of the developers' time is spent on integration, security, QA testing and design work, the report said.

As for their chief concerns, the IT decision makers polled said security topped the list. Ninety-three per cent of respondents cited concern over data loss and security breaches related to BYOD as their biggest fear. To address that, businesses are taking the onus for security away from users and turning to centralised management. Over the next two years, device data encryption will see a 10-percent uptick in adoption. Other rising capabilities in the same time period include centralized updating and troubleshooting (11 per cent rise), remote wiping of data (11 per cent more) and lockdown of features (18 per cent more).

Naturally, along with all that activity comes increased spending. According to the Oracle survey, the average IT department now spends about $157 (£93) per device, per user. That figure is expected to grow some 54 per cent to $242 by 2016.

"Mobility has been ubiquitous for a while, but only 10 per cent of enterprises have an enterprise-wide deployment of mobile," said Suhas Uliyar, vice president of mobile strategy and product management at Oracle. "Its impact and adoption are gaining importance today. This survey is reassuring in that enterprises see potential for great payoff from making a strong mobile commitment.

"They are recognising that mobile applications provide a new way to develop and maintain relationships with customers," Uliyar added.