CHAPTER 1

Moving to Mobility

Creating Mobile Urgency—Let's Get started!

This is not just being on the phone anymore. This is now about an extensionof my life. This is an extension of my personality. If you look at the declineof traditional land lines from the carriers, the trends are compelling. Peopleare using this as their primary device. It is functional that way.

—Peter Denagy, Samsung Telecommunications America, Senior Director andGeneral Manager, U.S. Enterprise Mobility Enablement

The world is in the midst of a mobile feeding frenzy. The explosion of wirelessbroadband networks, mobile devices, social networking, cloud computing, and aglobal economy is changing communications and computing at an unprecedentedpace. Organizations of all kinds will find the prospects of lower costs, morelocalized service, and ultra-motivated mobile workers to be exhilarating. Forbusinesses, the stage is set to take advantage of the incredible opportunity toapply new forms of work and technologies that will lead to competitive advantagein their markets. It's not about getting your hands on the latest toy; instead,it's about getting your head wrapped around a corporate mobile strategy thatworks for your organization. How can you exploit mobile technologies to leverageyour business? How do you transition your workforce into a mobile environment inways that competitors cannot easily replicate?

Take out your mobile phone. Yes, it's okay to do so right now. Text the word"MOBIFORCE" to 878787 to register in our Mobile Workforce Registry. When youregister, you will instantly receive a text message with content from usregarding building your mobile workforce. Open the text message, and click onthe link that's provided within the SMS message. Within seconds, you will beconnected to a mobile world of content.

You will find what we call "freemiums" like this in each chapter of the book.Just look for icons similar to what you see here and then experience what mobileworkers throughout the world now have access to—globally available, usefulknowledge that can be accessed and applied immediately.

THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT—THIS BOOK!

C level executives (CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and other top corporate officers) need torethink their businesses from the perspective of a mobile workforce environment.How can products or services be differentiated with mobile technologies? Arethere cost advantages? Can business cycle times be reduced? Customer serviceimproved? How can your workforce be transitioned so workers excel in a mobileenvironment? How will you sustain that new paradigm? A robust mobile technologyinfrastructure is foundational, but, ultimately, achieving competitive advantagewill depend upon your people, not your technology.

Let's begin by exploring the current mobile ecosystem and why it's so importantto rethink what you are doing and how you might push forward with a new mobilestrategy.

UNPLUGGED: BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE MOBILE TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT

It is almost impossible to overstate the mobile revolution. The ability tocommunicate quickly, to receive and send information at a moment's notice, andto collaborate on urgent company issues easily from anywhere in the world isessential in today's business environment. The Internet surrounds us like theoxygen we breathe, saturating our personal and professional space. Having thecapacity to connect 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (24/7) is now an expectation,just as is turning on a radio and assuming music will emerge, or flippingthrough channels on your digital TV with your remote. It's always on. You arewithin reach of a mobile network from a mobile carrier or local Wi-Fi hot spotjust about anywhere you go. The Internet has become a lifeline for all of us.Moving at the speed of life, we expect technology to keep up with us,with the consequence that we too are "always on." When we finally sit down witha tasty cup of java or at our favorite deli, we know we can connect with ourcompany, our employees, our partners, and our personal network of contacts.

Always-on broadband connections set us free, but they also create a new set ofbusiness rules and business expectations. In the last five minutes, how manytimes has your mobile device alerted you of incoming e-mails, a personal textmessage, a Twitter message, or a news alert? We now expect information to be,literally, at our fingertips at all times. Instant information is pushed at usfrom everywhere on a global scale. Some people consider this to be an intrusion,a total interruption of their focus. Others recognize the unlimitedopportunities inherent in mobile technology, mobile applications, and mobilemanagement strategies that can be leveraged to achieve sustainable competitiveadvantage.

Connections alone don't solve the total puzzle. It takes an ocean of technologyand supporting hardware to connect the dots. Technology needs to be managed,monitored, updated, and easily used. The better the solution, the less trainingand information technology (IT) support users need. Technology today can beimplemented at every organizational level and for almost every business processneeded.

Technology controls the Internet and the massive amounts of communicationflowing from city to city, country to country, and even from globe to globe. Andit just keeps getting better. How? Well, for one, technology seems to have takenon human characteristics. It's friendlier than ever before. It's smart enough towork in the ways we think and behave. It anticipates our desires. It's proactiveenough to stay just a bit in front of our needs by delivering information almostimmediately, with more relevance, with content more targeted to what weneed—sometimes even before we know we need it. And it does all thisanywhere and anytime through the mobile devices we hold in our hands.

You can't help but observe the growth of Twitter racing over the planet with abillion "tweets" per month, or the hundreds of millions of LinkedIn memberssharing professional career information, or the millions of digital books beingdownloaded through Amazon...