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Enterprise Mobile Adoption - Where Are You on the Path to Productivity?

A Deeper Look at What’s Driving Mobile App Adoption by the Enterprise Workforce
Mike Marks
Riverbed

Enterprise mobility is one of the top trends of 2014. Mobile occupied the top two spots on Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014. Accenture mentions in its Mobility Insights Report 2014 that 77% of surveyed enterprise leaders consider mobility among their top five priorities for the coming year, and 43% say the technology is in the top two. Enterprises are clearly implementing and scaling their mobile adoption strategies, with 40% of enterprise employees relying on mobile devices to get their job done, according to the recently published Mobile Playbook.

Enterprise Mobile Adoption – Beyond the Headlines

There's no doubt that mobility is among the highest of enterprise IT priorities. The question is "for what purpose?" What strategic goals do enterprises have for their mobility initiatives? And how do those strategic goals differ for consumer-facing mobile apps (like banking, travel, or retail) and workforce mobile apps (like productivity apps, ERP, or CRM)?

While it's clear that consumer-facing mobile apps drive increased customer satisfaction and revenue, the strategic drivers for rolling out mobile to the enterprise workforce may be less obvious. So, we asked the question during a recent webcast with our enterprise audience. Here are the poll results.


Rolling out mobile devices to the workforce is not done to keep employees happy. It is done to improve workforce productivity. Raising workforce productivity has a secondary impact on customer satisfaction, when mobile drives faster execution of critical business activities, like processing an insurance claim or looking up a patient record.

The Path to Workforce Productivity – Beyond Devices and Apps

Developments in the Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) market reflect the current state of mobile management in most enterprises. Just as the leaders in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for EMM Suites have evolved their solutions from Mobile Device Management to Mobile App Management, enterprises have moved beyond simply providing mobile devices to their workforce, or supporting BYOD initiatives. Many have also deployed secure mobile productivity apps, like secure email, secure web browsing, and file synchronization and sharing.

But enterprises also recognize that deploying mobile devices or secure email to their workforce does not represent a successful mobile strategy. According to the poll results from our webcast, the vast majority of enterprises recognize that actually measuring and improving mobile workforce productivity is the best representation of success.


Augmenting EMM with Mobile End User Experience Monitoring

Developing, provisioning, configuring, inventorying, and securing devices, apps, and content are necessary first steps for enterprise mobility initiatives. However, by themselves, they don't enable enterprises to improve workforce productivity. Doing so requires enterprises to augment the device and app analytics available from their EMM suites with analytics that indicate the quality of the mobile end user experience.

Accenture's Mobile Insights Report reflects this need. 85% of surveyed enterprise leaders also say that a "lack of formal metrics to measure effectiveness" is a key challenge to achieving their mobility goals.

Mike Marks is VP of Product Marketing at Riverbed

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Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

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Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

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Enterprise Mobile Adoption - Where Are You on the Path to Productivity?

A Deeper Look at What’s Driving Mobile App Adoption by the Enterprise Workforce
Mike Marks
Riverbed

Enterprise mobility is one of the top trends of 2014. Mobile occupied the top two spots on Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014. Accenture mentions in its Mobility Insights Report 2014 that 77% of surveyed enterprise leaders consider mobility among their top five priorities for the coming year, and 43% say the technology is in the top two. Enterprises are clearly implementing and scaling their mobile adoption strategies, with 40% of enterprise employees relying on mobile devices to get their job done, according to the recently published Mobile Playbook.

Enterprise Mobile Adoption – Beyond the Headlines

There's no doubt that mobility is among the highest of enterprise IT priorities. The question is "for what purpose?" What strategic goals do enterprises have for their mobility initiatives? And how do those strategic goals differ for consumer-facing mobile apps (like banking, travel, or retail) and workforce mobile apps (like productivity apps, ERP, or CRM)?

While it's clear that consumer-facing mobile apps drive increased customer satisfaction and revenue, the strategic drivers for rolling out mobile to the enterprise workforce may be less obvious. So, we asked the question during a recent webcast with our enterprise audience. Here are the poll results.


Rolling out mobile devices to the workforce is not done to keep employees happy. It is done to improve workforce productivity. Raising workforce productivity has a secondary impact on customer satisfaction, when mobile drives faster execution of critical business activities, like processing an insurance claim or looking up a patient record.

The Path to Workforce Productivity – Beyond Devices and Apps

Developments in the Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) market reflect the current state of mobile management in most enterprises. Just as the leaders in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for EMM Suites have evolved their solutions from Mobile Device Management to Mobile App Management, enterprises have moved beyond simply providing mobile devices to their workforce, or supporting BYOD initiatives. Many have also deployed secure mobile productivity apps, like secure email, secure web browsing, and file synchronization and sharing.

But enterprises also recognize that deploying mobile devices or secure email to their workforce does not represent a successful mobile strategy. According to the poll results from our webcast, the vast majority of enterprises recognize that actually measuring and improving mobile workforce productivity is the best representation of success.


Augmenting EMM with Mobile End User Experience Monitoring

Developing, provisioning, configuring, inventorying, and securing devices, apps, and content are necessary first steps for enterprise mobility initiatives. However, by themselves, they don't enable enterprises to improve workforce productivity. Doing so requires enterprises to augment the device and app analytics available from their EMM suites with analytics that indicate the quality of the mobile end user experience.

Accenture's Mobile Insights Report reflects this need. 85% of surveyed enterprise leaders also say that a "lack of formal metrics to measure effectiveness" is a key challenge to achieving their mobility goals.

Mike Marks is VP of Product Marketing at Riverbed

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...