August 4, 2012
By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View/ UC
Strategies Expert
The mobile world is getting misdirected about the real role of mobile devices that end users are gobbbling up these days. It’s unfortunate that the mobile devices got
associated with the label “smart.” It made it easy to think that "smart" mobile devices would do every thing, even though the
“smarts” were really based in software somewhere else in the network. Including
“phone” in the label merely highlighted the fact that traditional voice telephony
capabilities were accessible and integrated with other forms of communication
and information (text, video, pictures,
etc.).
As a result of this "smartphone" labeling, the traditional
telephony carriers have continued their dominance of wired network access into
the wireless world and the many mobile devices and “apps” that end users will
exploit for both business and personal needs. This, in turn has had a ripple
effect on business organizations with the need to support BYOD policies, a
variety of “mobile apps” for different types of end users, using various
devices, supplied by various service providers and carriers. What a mess!
Mobility is also causing traditional online business
process applications to move from the desktop to handheld, mobile device form
factors and be supported by a variety of mobile Operating Systems. The
combination of devices, mobile operating systems, integration with a variety of
business and communication applications has created a complex and impossible
challenge for organizational IT to support as they used to with restrictive,
premise-based technologies.
Mobile devices cannot be treated like traditional desktop PCs
Mobile
end users, whether business users or consumers, want access to both
communication applications and information that are flexible enough for their
different needs while mobile. Thus, they want selective access via different
modalities of contact and different choices of user interface media (visual,
voice, touch, etc.). The control of such interfaces, as well as the basic
information for securing the identity and authorization of the end user to
access information and applications, are really all that must be stored in a
mobile device; all the rest of the “smarts” will be provided by a variety of
different applications that can be stored in public and private wireless
networks, better known these days as “clouds.”
We
should have learned our lesson about using ‘dumb” devices back in the early
days of he Internet, when end users could access a variety of online,
interactive “time-shared” mainframe
computer applications with simple “dumb” teletype terminals. Along came the PC
which made “sharing” anything unnecessary, just take responsibility for
controlling and supporting individual PC users needs locally. Now we can get
back to selectively managing, controlling access, and maintaining application
software for both business and communication applications for all types of end
users (mobile or desktop) in a centralized and responsive manner. Just make
those endpoint devices as “dumb” as
possible, with very “thin” software clients that provide network access to the
“smart” software applications in the wireless public and private “clouds.”
I
have suggested changing the name of “smart phones” to “app phones,” to reflect
the new role of telephony as just part of UC-enabled access to mobile
communication and business applications. Just a thought!
This
topic will be discussed at length in an upcoming UC Strategies podcast
discussion this week on this site,
so stay tuned!
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