One of the great revolutions in manufacturing of the past decades is just-in-time inventory management. The basic idea is to provision only what is needed for a certain level of operation and to put in place a number of management functions that will trigger the provisioning of inventory. This is one the key elements that allowed the manufacturing of goods to contain production costs. We have been trying to adapt the concept to IT for years with little success. But a combination of the latest technologies is finally bringing the concept to a working level. IT operations often faces unpredictable workloads or large variations of workloads during peak periods. Typically, the solution is to over-provision infrastructure capacity and use a number of potential corrective measures: load balancing, traffic shaping, fast reconfiguration and provisioning of servers, etc.

Among critical industrial processes, IT is probably the only one where control and management come as an afterthought. Blame it on product vendors or on immature clients, but it seems that IT management always takes a second seat to application functionalities.

IT operation is seen as a purely tactical activity, but this should not occult the need for a management strategy.  Acquiring products on a whim and hastily putting together an ad hoc process to use them is a recipe for chaos. When infrastructure management, which is supposed to bring order and control in IT, leads the way to anarchy, a meltdown is a forgone conclusion.

Most infrastructure management products present a high level of usefulness and innovation. One should be, however, conscious of the vendor’s limitations. Vendors spend a lot of time talking about the mythical customer needs, while most of them have no experience of IT operations. Consequently, their horizon is limited to the technology they have, and that tree does hide the forest. Clients should carefully select products for the role they play in the overall infrastructure management strategy, not solely on the basis of immediate relief. As the world of IT Operations is becoming more complex every day, the value of an IT management product lies not only with its capability to resolve an immediate issue, but also in its ability to participate future management solutions. The tactical and strategic constraints should not be mutually exclusive.

Each year, Forrester analysts field over 20,000 inquiries on a variety of topics, which provide insight into the key issues and challenges facing our clients in a variety of roles, including CIOs, enterprise architects, vendor strategists, and marketing professionals. Forrester defines enterprise mobility as the ability of an enterprise to communicate with suppliers, partners, employees, assets, and customers irrespective of location. During 2009, analysts fielded nearly 700 inquiries related to enterprise mobility issues, jumping from 550+ inquiries in 2008 and 360+ inquiries in 2007. What are these inquiries asking about? The key focus of these inquiries is on mobile applications, mobile devices, and mobile employee segmentation.

Questions about mobile applications accounted for over 20% of all enterprise mobility inquiries in 2009. The  majority of these application inquiries were focused on vertical applications, including fleet management solutions in the transportation industry that enable more efficient, real-time routing of vehicles. Today, email and calendaring mobile applications are mainstream in most enterprises, so many companies are broadening their mobile application initiatives to address the needs of particular types of line-of-business workers in their industry (e.g., retail, healthcare, transportation, financial services.) We expect continued growth in the number of mobile application inquiries during the coming year.

Enterprises are deploying a wide range of horizontal and vertical mobile applications. Results from Forrester’s 2010 Network and Telecom survey of IT decision makers at North America and European firms show that horizontal mobile applications such wireless email, have been implemented or are being implemented by 86% of firms, and calendaring and personal information management applications have been deployed by 68% of firms. The next wave of mobile application deployment is focused on meeting the needs of line of business (LOB) workers such as sales force and field service professionals, or industry-specific requirements such as inventory management applications in retail, or location-based applications in the transportation arena. Survey data shows a persistent level of application implementation and planned deployment among 14% – 19% of enterprises for mobile sales force, field service and emergency response applications.  We expect this mobile LOB application deployment to gain momentum in 2010.

The methods enterprises use to acquire and develop these mobile applications vary widely. Homegrown or in-house mobile application development is commonly used by 40% of North American and European enterprises. Approximately 30% of all enterprise organizations use a local, regional, or national external developer for mobile application development requirements. North American enterprises are significantly more likely to purchase mobile applications from a mobile service provider portal site or from a mobile application store. Between 24% and 29% of North American enterprises use these two types of mobile application development approaches, compared with only 11% to 15% of European firms.