As Mobile World Congress 2017 begins in Barcelona, the Mobile Workforce Strategies (MWS) team has selected its highlights so far from the show’s major themes and implications in the area of enterprise mobility.
To help evolve the mobile phone into an enterprise-connected device, Cisco and Ericsson showcased a demo of their new joint Collaboration Mobile Convergence (CMC) solution on Day 1 of MWC, combining Cisco's enterprise collaboration service platform with Ericsson's VoLTE communications solutions. Strategy Analytics expects the interest in VoLTE technology to continue to rise. Wireless operators around the world are deploying VoLTE and offering a range of multi-media services such as video over mobile, and plenty of smartphones now support VoLTE too. The advantages for operators are well established: cost-effective, easy-to-manage networks that are more efficient for delivering voice services than their traditional, circuit-switched network counterparts, and there are plenty of advantages for enterprises, too. The solution will be available to Service Provider and Enterprise customers by end of calendar year 2017.
Figure 1 –Collaboration Mobile Convergence (CMC) powered by Cisco and Ericsson
Source: Cisco & Ericsson
Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy Book, available in 10.6-inch and 12-inch models, which caters to productive on-the-go professionals. For enterprise-grade performance, built on the Windows 10 operating system, the Galaxy Book offers the full desktop Microsoft Office experience. It also features a keyboard that is larger and more tactile with discernible keys so users can comfortably type just as they would on a traditional computing device. According to Strategy Analytics’ latest Global Business Tablet Forecast Update Q4 2016 and Global Business Tablet Quarterly Tracking Q4 2016, year 2016 has been a tough year for the worldwide business tablet market. Overall, despite its sequential decline in shipments and revenue, Android vendors such as Samsung have really stepped up their enterprise push by working with Microsoft to pre-load Office onto their newest Tablets and putting a renewed focus on Samsung's Knox security solution.
Figure 2 – Samsung Galaxy Book at MWC 2017
Source: Samsung
Cisco and Samsung announced they will deliver endpoint visibility and data intelligence to business customers via Samsung Knox, Cisco AnyConnect and Cisco Stealthwatch solutions. Samsung Knox entered the market in 2013 and continues to evolve to protect enterprises and their data, while providing employees with the productivity needs of BYOD. Cisco’s security on the device enables enterprises and service providers to extend visibility and device-level protection to offer a robust mobile device platform for the enterprise. Strategy Analytics expects strong adoption of mobile security solutions in highly regulated industries, such as financial services, government and healthcare, which have stringent privacy and security regulations to protect sensitive information. The proliferation of mobile devices accessing enterprise networks requires investment in mobile security technologies to protect the device, content, applications, and data resident on the device as well as the core network.
Figure 3 –Samsung and Cisco team up to bring Knox to the AnyConnect enterprise VPN app
Source: Samsung
Apple and SAP will release a tool aimed at helping developers build iPhone apps for big businesses. The software tool, to be released on March 30, is designed to let developers easily feed data between SAP's software systems and Apple's iOS mobile platform. Last May Apple announced its collaboration with SAP to provide enterprises with productivity apps by integrating Apple’s iOS and SAP’s HANA cloud platform. The SAP partnership will also give iOS developers a new way to gain revenue, and business apps would represent new territory for many of these developers. With growth in iPhone sales losing steam, we have seen Apple’s ambitions in the enterprise from its partnership with Cisco and IBM. In addition, Apple also made a deal with Cisco to optimize iOS devices and apps on Cisco networks, and it also partnered with Deloitte & Touche to encourage more businesses to build iOS applications.
Please stay tuned and come back for more enterprise mobility related highlights tomorrow. For IoT blog, please click here.