Gartner: Organizations Must Master 2 Dimensions of Mobility

With the convergence of devices, bots, things and people, organizations will need to master two dimensions of mobility, according to Gartner.

CIOs and IT leaders will need to excel at mainstream mobility and to prepare for the post-app era.

"The future of mobile will provide ubiquitous services delivered anywhere, by any person or thing, to any person or thing," said David Willis, VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. "While users are constantly looking for new and compelling app experiences, the importance of apps in delivering services will diminish and the emergence of virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and bots will replace some of the functions performed by apps today. Alternative approaches to interaction and service delivery will arise, and code will move from traditional mobile devices and apps to the cloud."

Mobile Becomes "Business As Usual"

"The mobile landscape has changed dramatically during the past few years; mobile is no longer a novel technology, but business as usual, for most organizations," said Willis.

In 2016, Gartner forecasts the shipment of 2.37 billion devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones), and that 293 million wearables will be sold in the same year. In 2017, Gartner estimates that 2.38 billion devices will be shipped and 342 million wearables will be sold.

"The proliferation of mobile devices means that phones, tablets, laptops and wearables are now omnipresent within the business environment, reinventing the way people interact and work," he added.

Today's tech users are smart and savvy, demanding better features and experiences. The traditional forms of bring your own (that is, devices and applications) will continue to grow, making bring your own device and bring your own application the norm for the majority of organizations. "Moreover, the arrival of wearables and bring your own "thing" (such as smart kettles, smart power sockets or smart light bulbs) in the workplace will introduce new interaction techniques and new platforms, diluting the need for specific mobile app experiences," said Mr. Willis.

Much of the innovation in the mobile space isn't taking place inside the smartphones themselves, but in the things that communicate with them. Gartner predicts that by 2018, 25 percent of new mobile apps will talk to Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Most IoT devices that talk to smartphones do so via an app or the browser. "Through 2018, the app will be the preferred mechanism, because it provides a better experience and allows more sophisticated interactions and data analysis, with low-level networking and background processing," said Willis.

However, the current dominance of apps is challenged by several trends that, together, Gartner labels the "post-app era".

"As new technologies grow in importance as a way to control and interact with things, app interfaces will fade," he added.

Prepare for the Post-App Era Today

New ways to interact with things will deliver pervasive services, and emerging technologies — such as artificial intelligence, natural-language processing and bots integrated into messaging apps,open new opportunities to interact with users seamlessly.

A number of global players are enabling businesses and consumers to "chat" with users on their messaging platform evolving APIs and services so that developers can create their own bots. This concept allows users to chat with organizations to get information, answer questions and transact through messaging or VPAs.

"This means that instead of going into a system and filling out complicated forms with checkboxes, users can ask a bot a question, and it will answer or negotiate on our behalf, based on rules and knowledge in the system," said Willis. "It will then move to those systems that allow interactions with customers — from marketing to sales."

"Apps are not going away and code isn't vanishing," he continued. "The post-app era means that there will be more data and code in the cloud and less on the device, thanks to the continuous improvement of cellular network performance."

"The post-app era will be an evolving process through 2020 and beyond," concluded Willis. "It has, however, already begun, and organizations should prepare for it by being agile and tactical, planning for new skills, assessing the new opportunities created by the post-app era, and developing a digital business strategy that integrates many different technologies."

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

How AI Agents Are Reshaping DataOps for the Always-On Enterprise

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

AI Deepfakes: Rethinking Trust in the Workplace

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Nine in Ten Enterprises Plan Cloud Data Repatriation amid Rising Cloud Costs and Data Sovereignty Mandates

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Why ITOps Need Right-Sized AI, Not Bigger Models

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

The End of Reactive DevOps: AI-Driven Observability for Zero-Defect Digital Systems

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

5 Takeaways from the Observability Forecast for Media and Entertainment

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Why Moving Off the Cloud Is the Easy Part and What Comes Next Is Where Things Get Hard

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast - Episode 24: Network Observability Tool Sprawl

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

Capacity Isn't a Guess: Observability-Driven Sizing for On-Prem Databases

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...

5 Security Principles Every Entrepreneur Should Apply to Leadership

When most people think about cybersecurity, they picture firewalls, encryption, and access controls — technical tools designed to protect systems and data. But beneath the technology lies a deeper set of principles about trust, decision-making, and resilience ... The best leaders don't eliminate risk. They manage it intelligently. And in many ways, cybersecurity offers a surprisingly useful playbook for doing exactly that ...

Gartner: Organizations Must Master 2 Dimensions of Mobility

With the convergence of devices, bots, things and people, organizations will need to master two dimensions of mobility, according to Gartner.

CIOs and IT leaders will need to excel at mainstream mobility and to prepare for the post-app era.

"The future of mobile will provide ubiquitous services delivered anywhere, by any person or thing, to any person or thing," said David Willis, VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. "While users are constantly looking for new and compelling app experiences, the importance of apps in delivering services will diminish and the emergence of virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and bots will replace some of the functions performed by apps today. Alternative approaches to interaction and service delivery will arise, and code will move from traditional mobile devices and apps to the cloud."

Mobile Becomes "Business As Usual"

"The mobile landscape has changed dramatically during the past few years; mobile is no longer a novel technology, but business as usual, for most organizations," said Willis.

In 2016, Gartner forecasts the shipment of 2.37 billion devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones), and that 293 million wearables will be sold in the same year. In 2017, Gartner estimates that 2.38 billion devices will be shipped and 342 million wearables will be sold.

"The proliferation of mobile devices means that phones, tablets, laptops and wearables are now omnipresent within the business environment, reinventing the way people interact and work," he added.

Today's tech users are smart and savvy, demanding better features and experiences. The traditional forms of bring your own (that is, devices and applications) will continue to grow, making bring your own device and bring your own application the norm for the majority of organizations. "Moreover, the arrival of wearables and bring your own "thing" (such as smart kettles, smart power sockets or smart light bulbs) in the workplace will introduce new interaction techniques and new platforms, diluting the need for specific mobile app experiences," said Mr. Willis.

Much of the innovation in the mobile space isn't taking place inside the smartphones themselves, but in the things that communicate with them. Gartner predicts that by 2018, 25 percent of new mobile apps will talk to Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Most IoT devices that talk to smartphones do so via an app or the browser. "Through 2018, the app will be the preferred mechanism, because it provides a better experience and allows more sophisticated interactions and data analysis, with low-level networking and background processing," said Willis.

However, the current dominance of apps is challenged by several trends that, together, Gartner labels the "post-app era".

"As new technologies grow in importance as a way to control and interact with things, app interfaces will fade," he added.

Prepare for the Post-App Era Today

New ways to interact with things will deliver pervasive services, and emerging technologies — such as artificial intelligence, natural-language processing and bots integrated into messaging apps,open new opportunities to interact with users seamlessly.

A number of global players are enabling businesses and consumers to "chat" with users on their messaging platform evolving APIs and services so that developers can create their own bots. This concept allows users to chat with organizations to get information, answer questions and transact through messaging or VPAs.

"This means that instead of going into a system and filling out complicated forms with checkboxes, users can ask a bot a question, and it will answer or negotiate on our behalf, based on rules and knowledge in the system," said Willis. "It will then move to those systems that allow interactions with customers — from marketing to sales."

"Apps are not going away and code isn't vanishing," he continued. "The post-app era means that there will be more data and code in the cloud and less on the device, thanks to the continuous improvement of cellular network performance."

"The post-app era will be an evolving process through 2020 and beyond," concluded Willis. "It has, however, already begun, and organizations should prepare for it by being agile and tactical, planning for new skills, assessing the new opportunities created by the post-app era, and developing a digital business strategy that integrates many different technologies."

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

How AI Agents Are Reshaping DataOps for the Always-On Enterprise

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

AI Deepfakes: Rethinking Trust in the Workplace

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Nine in Ten Enterprises Plan Cloud Data Repatriation amid Rising Cloud Costs and Data Sovereignty Mandates

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Why ITOps Need Right-Sized AI, Not Bigger Models

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

The End of Reactive DevOps: AI-Driven Observability for Zero-Defect Digital Systems

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

5 Takeaways from the Observability Forecast for Media and Entertainment

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Why Moving Off the Cloud Is the Easy Part and What Comes Next Is Where Things Get Hard

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast - Episode 24: Network Observability Tool Sprawl

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

Capacity Isn't a Guess: Observability-Driven Sizing for On-Prem Databases

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...

5 Security Principles Every Entrepreneur Should Apply to Leadership

When most people think about cybersecurity, they picture firewalls, encryption, and access controls — technical tools designed to protect systems and data. But beneath the technology lies a deeper set of principles about trust, decision-making, and resilience ... The best leaders don't eliminate risk. They manage it intelligently. And in many ways, cybersecurity offers a surprisingly useful playbook for doing exactly that ...