Enterprise Mobility ranks highly for IT investment in New Zealand.

In 2012, Frost & Sullivan surveyed 96 C level executives/IT managers/IT decision makers about enterprise mobility.

The survey found that a majority of businesses in New Zealand have a favourable view of BYOD, with 72% of businesses supporting BYOD. Within this group, 53% of businesses allow BYOD for all employees and offer full support for devices, with another 19% allowing BYOD for specific departments.

In the report, New Zealand Enterprise Mobility Market 2012, enterprise mobility ranks high in terms of priority compared to other IT investments. More than 21% of businesses rate mobility to be either their top priority, or a very important priority in 2012.

One of the main aspects of enterprise mobility that is attractive to employers and employees alike is The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy. "Allowing employees to use a device of their choice for work by supporting a BYOD strategy is advantageous for organisations. Main benefits include increased productivity, greater employee retention (achieved through enhanced job satisfaction) and cost savings through lower capital and operating costs. However, there are challenges with security and policy" says Anand Balasubramanian, Industry Analyst, Australia & New Zealand ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan.

Andre Clarke, Country Manager, New Zealand, Frost & Sullivan says, "BYOD is still at an early stage of adoption, with "Choose Your Own Device" (CYOD) more common, though BYOD is expected to become the preferred model for endpoints for organizations". Overall, the enterprise mobility market is expected to experience high adoption rates in the next few years, especially amongst medium sized organizations, Clarke elaborated.

"Security risks and increased cost management complexities as a result of non-corporate plans are the top concerns in supporting BYOD. 47% of organisations rate security and data back up as main concerns when implementing a BYOD plan. Finding appropriately skilled IT professionals to manage the increased complexity that comes with supporting multiple platforms and devices is another challenge' explained Clarke.

56% of businesses are in favour of tablet adoption in 2012 and within this group about 32% intend to deploy tablets in 2012, whilst 24% intend to do so in 2013. 72% believe tablets are suitable for videoconferencing.

Balasubramanian mentioned that another key enabling factor for enterprise mobility is the cloud based delivery model for applications. "With applications stored and delivered from the cloud, the endpoint device is largely irrelevant, with access allowed through smartphones, tablet devices or laptops" he said. While players such as Google are offering fully cloud based applications, traditional players such as Microsoft and Cisco are also expected to strengthen their portfolio of cloud based applications.

Balasubramanian says that email is mentioned as the most productive enhancing app by the majority of businesses, whilst a close number cite document and file sharing applications such as Office, OpenOffice, and Google Docs as offering the most productivity benefits for businesses. Videoconferencing comes in third as a productivity tool.

Google, Apple and Microsoft are viewed as the major players for enterprise mobility solutions. For the mobile Operating System (OS) best suited for enterprise use, most businesses prefer Apple's iOS platform followed by Google's Android and then Microsoft.

Despite the dominance and popularity of Apple's iOS based devices, organizations generally prefer the open source models of Google's Android and Microsoft Windows Mobile7 platforms. "While the closed environment of Apple's iOS platform allows greater control and better quality of apps, businesses place greater emphasis on the ability to customise the platform to better suit their requirements. This preference is indicated by 26% of organisations, with only 19% preferring the benefits of greater security and better quality of apps offered by a closed environment (iOS)" said Balasubramanian.

Clarke says that New Zealand businesses are confident of Microsoft being the provider of end-point operating systems in 2015. The majority of businesses consider Microsoft holds enough expertise in desktop applications (Office, Outlook, Lync etc) to remain a major player in the mobile Operating System (OS) segment and expect Microsoft to extend the functionality of its Office/Outlook/SharePoint applications to mobile devices by further strengthening its mobile OS.

Clarke also notes that consumerisation is driving the evolution of mobility in the Enterprise. The advent of smart devices is one of the biggest changes to impact enterprise communications. The use of mobile devices started with the primary objective of email enablement for employees whilst outside the office. The recent advancements in smart devices and the availability of mobile specific applications have made the devices almost as capable as a laptop. Driven by a high level of familiarity, employees are increasingly using the devices for a wide range of communication applications such as email, IM, voice and video calls, productivity applications and enterprise social networking applications.

Optimistic about Google's capabilities as an enterprise player, 45% of businesses indicated that Google has the potential to challenge Microsoft's dominance in the market. This view is largely due to Google steadily strengthening its productivity and collaboration solutions to offer a cloud based alternative to Microsoft's Office suite.