Following the holidays, just about everybody who can come up with a plausible excuse for owning a mobile computing device probably has one by now. The next challenge is figuring out what IT organizations can do with all those devices beyond simply allowing employees to access their email.
Arguably, what has to happen next is a re-engineering of business processes that takes into account the fact that most employees are continuously connected to a corporate network. In fact, one of the primary reasons that EMC in 2012 acquired Syncplicity, a provider of file transfer software, says Jeff Schultz, chief marketing officer for EMC’s Syncplicity business unit, is to lay the foundation for extending business processes out to mobile computing devices.
Rather than simply competing with any number of providers of file transfer services, Schultz says the goal is really synchronization of files being accessed using multiple types of devices. Organizations will need to not only be able to share files, but also decide who gets priority access to what kinds of information — all of which will require the ability to attach policies to specific files, says Schultz.
As part of that effort, Schultz says EMC will look to tightly integrate Syncplicity with its Documentum suite of document management applications, which in time should lead to a number of new workflow management offerings aimed at specific vertical industries.
Ultimately, Schultz says the need to push content out to mobile computing devices as part of an extended business process is going to drive a Mobile 2.0 phenomenon across the enterprise. Only then does mobile computing become a major business IT issue that goes beyond merely giving somebody access to their email using a mobile computing device that more likely than not is not going to have a significant impact on the business.
