Mobile Device Management: How to Deliver Business Data to iPads and iPhones

You get a request every day it seems from executives who want IT to give them the ability to download critical business data to their iPads or iPhones. These executives don’t care what it takes; they just want to see this important information quickly and easily, and they expect you to respond fast. Rather than stress out, let’s talk about a solution that gives employees the information they want, and the control IT needs. If your company is like most, the proliferation of both employee- and company-owned mobile devices, particularly iPads and iPhones, is driving demand for access to corporate data. But in most companies, there is little support for such access. There is great dissatisfaction with the level of support IT provides for consumer technologies in the workplace, a 2011 IDC survey1 of 2,820 information workers and 610 C-level executives, vice presidents, director-level IT personnel, and business-unit level executives from 10 countries found. This lack of access to business data is getting harder to justify. Executives, business managers, knowledge workers, and other employees already use iPads and iPhones to surf the Web, get email, and conduct other tasks directly related to their work. So they also want (and in many cases insist on) access to the sales, inventory, customer, and other data they need to perform their jobs, be more efficient, and make timely decisions.

Delivering what users want
The information users need is often stored in SQL databases, Excel spreadsheets, and a variety of other data sources. Access to raw data can be helpful, but employees often want their data in easy to read reports and charts. IT organizations are especially keen to and easy and quick ways to deliver business info to iPhones or iPads. To do this requires tools that are efficient for those quick “one-off” requests, yet robust enough for long-term solutions. Ideally, these tools should be easy, and usable by a wide range of IT staff, not just by the most experienced programmers. Overall, delivering business data to iPhones and iPads demands:

A quick development cycle: Users want results in days or weeks, not months

Easy import of data in a range of native formats (e.g., SQL databases, spreadsheets, etc.)

Painless serving of data to iPhones and iPads with forms optimized for these devices’ screens

Ability to deliver data in visual formats such as charts, as well as in reports, lists, and forms

Ability to combine data with ?les, such as PDFs, spreadsheets, photos, and videos

Choice of distributing information to users for of?ine viewing, or connecting directly to live systems for real-time information

Tools usable by a range of IT staff, not just experienced object-oriented programmers.

With these criteria in mind, how can companies provide workers with fast and easy access to data on their iPhones and iPads?

One Option:
Deliver business data with FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Go FileMaker®, Inc., a subsidiary company of Apple®, creates database software that is the ideal tool for developing and securely hosting databases that reside at the heart of such solutions, and for delivering information to iOS devices. FileMaker Pro allows organizations to quickly build iOS solutions, including the rapid creation of easy-to-use charts, reports, lists, and forms. The software, which runs on Windows and Mac OS PCs, has shipped more than 16 million copies to organizations of all sizes, from large corporations to small businesses, and from schools and universities to government agencies.

Secure iPhones in the Enterprise

Copy of an free white paper from Zenprise: With over 75 million iPhone OS devices in use, the odds are that someone is connected to your corporate network with an unauthorized iPhone or iPod Touch right now. There’s nothing wrong with allowing your end users to access your network with an iPhone, provided that the device has the appropriate IT security settings. Left unsecured, the iPhone OS however can present security risks to both corporate and customer data. Stolen personally identifiable information or trade secrets is the last crisis any IT manager or executive wants to manage. The compliance risk alone is staggering. As a recent Aberdeen Group report detailed, a single compliance lapse (e.g., SOX, Privacy, PCI, HIPAA) can cost a company up to $2 million USD. A single lost or stolen iPhone incident may encompass multiple compliance lapses. Authorizing, securing, and updating the iPhone OS should be a top priority. The risk is real. Apple is diligent at fixing and patching security risks. But, is your mobile workforce or IT administrator as diligent at applying Apple’s updates? An unpatched iPhone – not the iPhone itself – is the real security risk. In the last two iPhone OS updates alone, Apple identified and fixed 15 security risks.1 Numerous iPhone Safari security patches were made that fixed the device’s vulnerability to exploits from basic web surfing. More worrisome still is the recently repaired recovery mode vulnerability that allowed for someone with physical access to a device to bypass passcode and access user data. Additional remote attacks and security vulnerabilities are identified every month. A secured and updated iPhone can empower mobile workers to be more productive than ever before. There is good news: Apple has taken significant steps to improve iPhone security for the enterprise. You can implement a number of iPhone training, process, and IT best practices that greatly mitigate the security and financial risk to your company. In this white paper, we identify ten best practices that you should consider implementing immediately to best support iPhone OS devices. Overall, we suggest that corporations that support the iPhone OS use Microsoft Exchange 2007 or 2010 with Active Sync and use Apple’s iPhone Configuration Utility. Combing these two applications with other well-known certificate, directory, and authentication security services make implementing these best practices possible. MONITOR FOR AND BAN JAILBROKEN IPHONES Jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches can represent the largest security threat to an IT department. A jailbroken phone is one that has been modified in order to use the device on non-issuing carriers. Last year, a worm (i.e., ikee-b) was launched that exploited an SSH service activated during the jailbreaking process. This was just the first of many likely attacks against vulnerable iPhones. REQUIRE EXPLICIT IPHONE ACCESS PERMISSION AND CORPORATE DATA ENCRYPTION Require each mobile user to explicitly enroll and configure both employee- and company-owned iPhones. Managing over-the-air enrollment and configuration for the iPhone is possible via the tools provided by Apple. IT departments must create their own iPhone Profile Distribution Service that accepts HTTPS connections, authenticates users, and creates iPhone mobileconfig profiles. Users with new, recently activated iPhones can access a simple URL (e.g.,https://iphone.company.com) via Safari to make the enrollment process seamless. TRAIN EMPLOYEES ON IPHONE DATA SECURITY Every employee who has an iPhone should undergo training on not only how to configure and use the device, but also what to do if the device is lost, stolen or compromised. Trainings can be delivered online or in person, and need to stress the importance of immediately contacting the IT department as the moment a device is lost or stolen. Training employees how and when to react to security issues could save your corporation millions of dollars in security and compliance breaches. CONFIGURE AND ENFORCE IPHONE SECURITY POLICIES Always secure and restrict iPhones. Like any other network-connected system, an iPhone must have welldefined security policies that are monitored and enforced. By using the iPhone Configuration Utility, you can create profiles for different organizations (e.g., sales, marketing, engineering) that have different payload settings. Payload settings define a collection of individual settings for certain purpose, such as VPN settings. Polices can be created for the iPhone that comply with other mobile phone security policies, including: passcode requirements; Wi-Fi settings; application and hardware restrictions; email, calendar, and directory settings; and, credential settings. More from this white paper here>>

Mobile Social Networking: The New Ecosystem

Social networking and the next generation of handheld devices will improve business decision-making through efficient, unified communications and location awareness. Business Anywhere, Anytime • By Paul Gillin When interactivity is combined with unified communications and location awareness, next-generation social networks will have significant business value. Unified communications integrates the wide variety of voice, data, video and collaboration tools that business professionals use today into a single environment. This can dramatically improve the speed of decision-making by connecting collaborators quickly, regardless of their location. In nightclubs, railroad stations and city squares across Germany today, people are striking up conversations with total strangers based upon invitations received on their cell phones. The connections are made by aka-aki Networks, a new mobile social networking service. Users download a free application that alerts them when another aka-aki member is within range and interested in meeting. People can read one another’s profiles before deciding whether to strike up a conversation. Aka-aki is one of an emerging class of Internet applications that is extending online social networks to mobile devices. The market opportunity for these applications is enticing. There are 3.3 billion mobile communications devices in use around the world today, yet only a tiny percentage of them are participating in the social networking craze that has swept the wired world. Social networks have caught on because they make it easy for people to stay connected to large numbers of friends and acquaintances. Social networks have been the talk of the Internet since early 2007, when Facebook began its rapid growth and specialized social networks began to blossom. There are now more than 2,500 social networks online, according to the Go2Web20.net directory. They serve everyone from dog lovers to doctors. Some are beginning to tap the underserved mobile market. For example, more than 1 million BlackBerry® smartphone users have downloaded the recently released Facebook client application to their BlackBerry® smartphones. Research firm eMarketer forecasts that the mobile social networking market will grow from 82 million users in 2007 to more than 800 million worldwide by 2012. Informa Telecoms recently reported that approximately 50 million people already use portable devices for social networking activities ranging from chatting to multimedia sharing. It expects that number to quintuple over the next five years. The trend is especially pronounced in Europe and the Pacific Rim, where PC penetration is lower than in the U.S. For example, a quarter of all mobile phone subscribers in the UK use their portable device for social networking-related activities, according to Nielsen Mobile. The trend can be expected to spread into business applications of social networks, a market that Forrester Research expects will account for $4.6 billion in annual spending by 2012. Technology Drivers Portable devices have been getting smaller and more powerful for years, but technology breakthroughs are enabling new applications to emerge. Chief among these is location awareness, a feature that enables users to meet new people or find colleagues nearby. It is likely to spur a new generation of mobile services as the capability moves to the mass market. About 15% of smartphones today come equipped with support for the satellite-based global positioning system (GPS), according to Kevin Burden, director of mobile devices at ABI Research. However, GPS-enabled phones, like the camera phones that preceded them, will rapidly go mainstream. “Social networks will get to a new level once the network knows your location and the location of people you’re interacting with,” Burden says. “I can’t think of any feature more important to build into a mobile phone.” While all cell phones are required by law to support rudimentary location awareness, the GPS network offers far more precision than the cell-tower triangulation techniques used in standard cell phones. GPS makes it possible to pinpoint a device to within a few feet. Once users are able to label – or “geotag” – their messages and images with location information, interesting new applications emerge. For example, mashups built on platforms like Google Maps and Google Earth will make it possible for groups of devicetoting individuals to assemble a rich tapestry of images in near real-time. Business applications of location-aware devices include fleet logistics, field sales coordination, and knowledge management and mapping. Once businesses have a handle on the location of their assets and employees, social networking tools can be used to connect people in virtual teams for project management, brainstorming and on-location customer service. Some companies are already using internal social networks to create knowledge maps of their employee skill sets and are combining them with unified communications to enable rapid access. Using this model, employees can quickly tap into organizational expertise as needed. These internal social networks will have great value as businesses become more geographically distributed. Users will maintain rich profiles of their own skills on internal websites and make themselves available to share their expertise as needed. As a result, businesses will become more flexible and efficient. “The 20th century fully evolved the concept of the home office employee, but now we are envisioning the mobile worker where location anywhere, for that matter, is secondary to getting the job done,” says David Heit, director of enterprise product management, of Research In Motion. Vendors, recognizing that their tools need to work as well for the mobile professional as for the desk-bound, are designing and building their tools with, and for, mobility usage from the start. For example, when the BlackBerry® Client for IBM® Lotus® Connections was announced, it was deemed a core deliverable in the design of the Lotus Connections software release. Many vendors are opting for the benefits of a full client approach rather than a browser interface. A mobile client offers the advantages of offline access, tolerance for the intermittent connectivity that one is likely to encounter when relying on a browser-based interface, as well as full integration with other local applications. Wireless networks are also getting faster. As handheld devices increasingly become the preferred Web on-ramp for mobile users, people are seeking to duplicate their desktop experience as closely as possible. Screen size will always be a limitation of mobile devices, but technology solutions are emerging, such as devices that project screen images on a wall or sheet of paper. Trust Equation While experts differ on whether users will ever trade in their PCs for mobile devices, there is ample evidence of demand for mobile social network features. One reason: people trust information from their peers. A recent study by the Society for New Communications Research found that nearly three in four consumers agreed with the statement, “I choose companies/brands based on others’ customer care experiences shared online.” A late 2007 Nielsen survey found that consumers listed “other consumers” as their most trusted source of information, far ahead of mainstream media. Peer reviews are seen as being more genuine than opinions delivered by businesses or even the mainstream media, particularly when a person already has a relationship with the reviewer. But even when a prior relationship doesn’t exist, peers are perceived to be more credible because they have little cause for bias. Social networks such as Yelp and ThisNext, which combine reviews from many sources, benefit from the “wisdom of crowds” effect. That wisdom can apply to enterprise decision-making as well. Corporations can tap into customer conversations on public or private, branded social networks to discern attitudes and buying intentions. By facilitating peer interaction and recommendations, businesses can also quickly build credibility and “buzz” faster than they would with expensive advertising campaigns. This helps with branding and marketing campaigns. Emerging Applications The mobile social networking market has been energized by Twitter, a service that enables members to exchange short messages among users and groups of their “followers.” Twitter’s immediacy and its effectiveness at eliciting rapid response has earned it a cult following. Users find that they can get answers to complex questions delivered to their cell phones in a matter of minutes. Other services have sprung up to build on Twitter’s foundation. Utterz, Bluepulse, Mocospace, Zingku, Jaiku and Pownce offer additional features like multimedia and group calendaring. Now a new breed of application is emerging that leverages location awareness for rich new functionality. For example, Loopt enables members to track their friends on a map and share text messages or plan meetings based upon proximity. Gypsii has similar features and also includes photo and video-sharing. Helio sells location-aware cell phones and related social network services. These services add value to the social network experience in the following ways: Immediacy – Users can get answers to their questions or report on important events in minutes. In addition to tapping existing online reference sources over the mobile Web, members can leverage the wisdom of crowds to get answers when they really need them. Mobility also enables people to document their observations and thoughts immediately. Relevance – Social networks deliver knowledge from trusted sources in a person’s circle of friends. Location awareness makes it possible to target queries and messages to people within a defined geographic area, enabling groups of people to share experiences virtually. Brevity – In social networks, this is often a virtue. Brief messages delivered by a mobile device are easier for others to absorb and respond to. This enables a more interactive and vibrant conversation. Retrieval – Facts and conversations can be archived and retrieved later by participants or others, creating a kind of real-time archive of a social interaction. Business Value and ROI When interactivity is combined with unified communications and location awareness, next-generation social networks will have significant business value. Business Value and ROI When interactivity is combined with unified communications and location awareness, next-generation social networks will have significant business value. Unified communications integrates the wide variety of voice, data, video and collaboration tools that business professionals use today into a single environment. This can dramatically improve the speed of decision-making by connecting collaborators quickly, regardless of their location. Social networking technology is so new that ROI models are only just emerging. While hard dollar numbers are scarce, early adopters are focusing on the following metrics and reporting positive early results: Customer support savings – When customers solve problems or answer questions by consulting online databases or one another, they save on company support costs. Technology vendors learned long ago that by building databases of advice contributed by customers, they could slash support costs by up to half. Mobility promises to make this information easier to obtain and to disseminate to a wider variety of markets. Logistical efficiency – By building a database of employee skills and matching it to location information, businesses can more quickly deploy the right resources to their customers on a timely basis. This leads to cost savings and revenue opportunities that would have previously been missed. Reduced training expenses – With some 80 million Americans expected to reach retirement age over the next 15 years, knowledge preservation is becoming a critical issue. Social networks enable employees to populate their own profiles and make it easy for businesses to capture interactions between employees and customers into a kind of corporate memory. Marketing benefits – Word-of-mouth marketing is the most credible and cost-efficient form of promotion. Businesses that make it easy for their customers to recommend products and services to their peers can reap great benefit from the resulting “buzz.” Participants can also leverage the tools that are most appropriate to the task at hand to enable a decision. For example, a group may initiate a discussion by text message and then move quickly to a voice or video conference supplemented by a shared whiteboard. Unified communications also authenticates users for secure communications. “I can link my device directly to a PBX,” says RIM’s Heit. “Mobilizing corporate resources such as this needs to be, and can be, done in a trusted and secure manner.” This is an example of a social network in action. Many businesses are implementing unified communications today, but the added dimension of location can enrich the value of the application. For example, consider how a logistics management company could apply these technologies. A client manager might initiate a virtual meeting with field-level supervisors and delivery personnel over a conference bridge. If the client was shipping an unusually large or delicate product, specifications and images could be transmitted to participants in near real-time. If the client needed to make a sudden rush shipment, the appropriate field units could be identified based on proximity and dispatched to the client’s location armed with all the necessary details. Members of the team could even be tracked for billing purposes. Computerworld recently wrote about a logistics application involving J.B. Hunt Transport Services’ use of global positioning systems to deliver the latest installment in the Harry Potter book series for a successful, timed nationwide release. Technology Evolution Much of the technology needed to enable the kinds of applications described above already exists. Processors and memory have sufficient capacity to handle all but the most taxing tasks. “My current BlackBerry® smartphone is more powerful than my PC of just a few short years ago,” notes RIM’s Heit. Network bandwidth is evolving more slowly due to equipment incompatibilities and a lack of carrier standards in the U.S. However, progress is being made in those areas and the goal of universal, interchangeable network access looks increasingly achievable. Location awareness is already standard on high-end handsets and should quickly spread to the mainstream market as chip prices decline. Technology Evolution Technology Evolution Much of the technology needed to enable the kinds of applications described above already exists. Processors and memory have sufficient capacity to handle all but the most taxing tasks. “My current BlackBerry® smartphone is more powerful than my PC of just a few short years ago,” notes RIM’s Heit. Network bandwidth is evolving more slowly due to equipment incompatibilities and a lack of carrier standards in the U.S. However, progress is being made in those areas and the goal of universal, interchangeable network access looks increasingly achievable. Location awareness is already standard on high-end handsets and should quickly spread to the mainstream market as chip prices decline. The challenges are in the areas of displays and input, where the handheld form factor presents some structural barriers. Displays have improved greatly in recent years, but a handheld device will never match the quality of a desktop monitor. “No matter how good you make a browser on a phone, it’s never going to deliver a PC experience,” says ABI’s Burden. “You can’t make the screen any larger, but you can make viewing space larger.” Handheld input using hard and “soft” keypads has evolved to the point that some skilled users can achieve speeds of 20 words per minute. The best hope for improvement in data input is voice recognition. This feature has long been used in mobile devices for a limited instruction set, but with commercial PC-based voice recognition products approaching 99% accuracy after training, it’s likely that this technology will be viable in mobile devices before long. Devices will also offer more support for rich media. Cameras, which were once a high-end luxury in cell phones, are a standard feature today. In fact, some new handheld devices are shipping with two cameras so that one can be trained on the speaker while another records a scene. Full-motion video will also be standard within a few years. This will enable individuals to become, in effect, video producers, with social networks supporting live video feeds. Envisioning the Future The one unchanging truth of information technology is that disruptive change manifests itself in unanticipated ways. It is likely that the changes that will result from the spread of mobile social networks aren’t even imaginable today. Within a few years, billions of people worldwide will carry handheld devices that are capable of capturing full-motion video and transmitting those images in near real-time to friends and institutions. Our concept of event “coverage,” which has been shaped by decades of network television, will change. Sporting events, political rallies, business meetings, community festivities and every other kind of social gathering will be documented by participants and observers. The sounds and images that they capture will be collected and disseminated by media organizations that specialize in leveraging the power of loosely organized communities. Events that never would have been documented in the past – ranging from Little League games to presentations by corporate executives – will be captured as digital sounds and images, and saved to servers for others to share. Powerful software will enable organizations to stitch together images captured by multiple mobile devices into a kind of three-dimensional tapestry of unprecedented richness. The concept of an online map will evolve into a virtual world that is constantly updated by contributions from observers. These collages will be overlaid on an ongoing conversation among colleagues, vendors, temporary acquaintances and total strangers who come together to share their perspectives on their situation and their surroundings. For businesses, the applications are exciting. An auto manufacturer, for example, could combine images uploaded by field service technicians to quickly identify possible defects and make production changes more quickly. A retailer could check on the quality of store promotions by viewing images or videos sent by on-site personnel. Businesses will be the most enthusiastic adopters of mobile social networks. They will build knowledge maps on a foundation of expertise contributed by employees and business partners, and enriched by data captured from projects, experiences and observations of others. Workforces will grow more distributed as the network replaces the office as the lifeline of information. Logistics will become more efficient, and group interactions faster and more flexible. We will come to expect information to be at our fingertips – in the literal sense – more so than we already do. Regardless of where information comes from, the mobile social networks of the future will give users nearly unlimited choice over how they choose to share and consume information. The ecosystem that develops around the next generation of handheld devices will make applications that once seemed fantastic a part of everyday life. << >> Paul Gillin is an author and consultant specializing in social media.

Design and Deploy your own iPhone and iPad Application

Finally, you have that phone-sized or pad sized gadget where you can browse the internet on hours, play music or watch videos wherever you are, take pictures anytime and share all of these whenever you want. Your new toy is as lovely as its manufacturer has promised with its multi-touch screen, downloading ability that is faster than a personal computer and automatic switch of view from portrait to landscape depending on how you handle it. But, while exploring the widgets installed, don’t you wish to personalize it more by designing and deploying your own application? There is of course the choice of paying iPhone or iPad application programmers to do the job as you specify. You just have to be financially prepared as this entails paying thousands of dollars that many would probably choose to buy ready-made applications rather than customizing their own. Appcraft.org is a website that offers a wide variety of downloadable applications. Each product has reviews which may serve as your guide if the app will be beneficial to you or not. Anyway, it may seem that to design and deploy your own application is possible only in your dreams especially if you are not versed with SQLite database and other programming-related software, let alone know how to use them. However, this is not just a dream anymore with AppWizard. This is a website distinguished as an iPad and iPhone app creator. It allows its users to build their dream application then modify it as needed 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. The site does not leave their clients to discover the simple way of creating their own app. It will assist with every step of the designing process from the colors you will use to the name and icon you prefer. It even provides the choice to develop applications entirely from scratch or turn a regular website into an iPhone app. Note that the iPhone apps you created through this wizard is compatible to your iPad as iPhone apps or you can open them through iPad Safari. Moreover, AppWizard will not leave you after perfecting your application. It will let you install your app and make sure it runs just the way you like it, or deploy it in technical terms. It will host your app and monitor it with its dedicated server. AppWizard will also assist you in launching your work in AppStore using their Apple Account or you could pay an additional fee for it to be published in your very own Apple Account. Whether your work will be available for free or with a free depends on you. Using this iPhone app creator is as easy as click, drag and drop with a minimal price that is incomparable to hiring programmer firms. Another reason for this choice is that it allows clients to subscribe for the creation only or up until they want to. Long term users though are free to edit their products as they wish.

Choosing The Right Screen Size

AThe fundamental problems with screen size are power and the size of a person’s hand. Screen size is constantly growing. It is not uncommon to find screens larger than 2.5 inches these days that are capable of displaying a CIF-sized image with high clarity. At least one business handheld now boasts a four-inch screen size with 640x480 VGA resolution. This is nearly four times the resolution of a CIF image; however, it is more likely to be used with downloaded content (loaded into the handheld’s memory via a USB interface to a PC). Going beyond this, the products coming on the market now allow a user to plug an external eight-inch monitor and keyboard into the USB or Bluetooth connections on a Windows® Mobile handheld, greatly increasing the viewable image area and providing a suitable keyboard for real content creation (as opposed to that used for SMS text messages and short emails). Eventually, head-set mounted displays will most likely be available that create high-image resolution in front of the eye.

The Benefits of Mobile Device Deployment

A growing number of small and midsize businesses are finding high-value ways to deploy mobile devices – well beyond phone, voicemail, and Web access. Nine out of ten SMB (Small Medium Bussines) companies enable employees to check email via mobile devices and 64% use mobile devices for remote computing. More than half of SMBs allow employees to access applications and business data via mobile devices. With the hiring of so-called Gen-Y workers, organizations of all sizes can expect to see an exponential increase in the amount of textmessaging, which today is occurring in just two-infive small and midsize companies. Interestingly, texting does not represent a dramatic change in mobile usage, though it may result in fewer calls and fewer emails and thus require further refinements to carrier contracts. Serious text-messaging (and email-capable) devices, such as the RIM Blackberry and T-Mobile Sidekick, do tend to add a cost premium above basic cell phones; however, the added functionality can lead to higher satisfaction – particularly for Gen Y workers who most likely already own such devices. While we're still in the early years of mobile technology deployments, smaller companies are finding that sheer “mobility “ remains the key advantage – rather than more traditional goals such as increased sales or revenue. In fact, only one in four SMBs report that mobile technologies help them boost sales and revenue.

A growing number of small and midsize businesses are finding high-value ways to deploy mobile devices – well beyond phone, voicemail, and Web access. Nine out of ten SMB companies enable employees to check email via mobile devices and 64% use mobile devices for remote computing. More than half of SMBs allow employees to access applications and business data via mobile devices. With the hiring of so-called Gen-Y workers, organizations of all sizes can expect to see an exponential increase in the amount of textmessaging, which today is occurring in just two-infive small and midsize companies. Interestingly, texting does not represent a dramatic change in mobile usage, though it may result in fewer calls and fewer emails and thus require further refinements to carrier contracts. Serious text-messaging (and email-capable) devices, such as the RIM Blackberry and T-Mobile Sidekick, do tend to add a cost premium above basic cell phones; however, the added functionality can lead to higher satisfaction – particularly for Gen Y workers who most likely already own such devices. While we're still in the early years of mobile technology deployments, smaller companies are finding that sheer “mobility “ remains the key advantage – rather than more traditional goals such as increased sales or revenue. In fact, only one in four SMBs report that mobile technologies help them boost sales and revenue.

By far the most widely reported mobility challenge facing SMBs is insufficient battery life, which was cited by 71% of SMB organizations. Workarounds for battery life are increasingly plentiful, but these represent an additional cost that may strike someorganizations as unexpected or burdensome. Security issues remain a key concern for SMBs. Two-fifths of smaller companies find device security to be challenging and nearly a third cite network security as an issue.
A case in point: Nearly 10% of SMBs report that their mobile security has been compromised at least once and 39% believe that even though they've had no incidents reported, their security policies and safeguards need improvement. That makes sense, considering that most smaller organizations still take an ad hoc approach to mobile deployments. Few SMBs have specific security policies and procedures related to mobility. Most rely upon cell phone carriers, for example, to secure mobile communications.
Partly abridged version of the bMighty Research Report

Wireless Technologies Types

There are several different types of wireless technologies. Personal area networks (PANs) enable users to connect everyday devices wirelessly, such as digital cameras to printers, or handheld devices to earpieces. Wireless local area networks (WLANs) act as cable replacements for local area networks and are often referred to as Wi-Fi or 802.11. The third and most common type of wireless technology is the wireless wide area network (WWAN), which enables access through a wireless link that is regional, national, or global. These networks are not restricted to a specific physical location, such as a campus, as is the case with Wi-Fi.