I’ve worked with enterprise technologies exclusively for more than a decade and have watched as cloud apps took the enterprise by storm, giving businesses more flexibility and power than ever before. Now, enterprise mobile is taking a page from enterprise cloud’s play book – but with a twist.
Obviously, mobile technology is less expensive, more accessible, and easier to use in many ways than cloud technology, and that makes it attractive to the enterprise. But what may not be so obvious regarding the allure of mobile for the enterprise is the degree to which it will democratize the use of technology for businesses in underserved sectors and far-flung locations.
There are more than 3 billion people globally who work in some capacity. Yet only 20 percent of them have ever had access to technology to help them perform their jobs more effectively. That leaves 2.5 billion workers not being supported by technology today. Some of them are in industries like construction, an $8 trillion a year space that spends less than 1 percent of its revenue on IT. Others are in manufacturing, the world’s fourth-largest industry with 40 million workers globally — it spends less than 2 percent of revenue on IT.