[Posted by Michele Pelino]

We are all familiar with the story – mobility is hot and is taking root within firms of all sizes. Why? Mobility solutions improve employee productivity and efficiencies. However, the down economic environment has changed corporate priorities. It is no surprise that our data shows that cost cutting activities for telecom data center, and servers dominate initiatives for the next year. See the report: Demand Insights: Enterprise Mobility 2009 for more information. 

But, there is another story. We found that nearly 35% of companies identify offering more mobility support including deploying mobile applications and mobile devices as a critical or high priority for their companies in the coming year. This is not shabby during these difficult economic times.

Why the continued focus on mobility? A key reason is the productivity enhancements for mobile workers and for the growing number of “mobile wannabe” employees.
 
- Productivity enhancements for line of business employees focus on mobile workers who are away from their desk often. These employees include sales professionals, field service professionals, and logistics personnel.

- Firms are also starting to focus on improving the productivity of “mobile wannabe” employees such as administrative assistants or finance professionals, who do not work away from their desks, but they want to access business-oriented applications through their personal mobile devices. Examples of these applications include: expense tracking, PDF document reader applications, and staff or time approval applications. There is a complex ecosystem of vendors working on developing the mobile devices, applications, and solutions to address the needs of mobile wannabes, which makes it difficult for companies to navigate through. 

How is your organization addressing the needs of the “mobile wannabe” segment?