Gartner CIO survey highlights importance of a mobile workforce

Gartner’s technology and business priorities survey of leading CIO’s highlights the importance of mobile technology in an increasingly global economy, and the need for executives to travel internationally in search of new markets and potential customers.

Craig Lowe, execMobile founder, says that of the CIOs who were interviewed regarding the top ten technology priorities, mobile technologies was placed second, cloud computing third and collaboration forth.

When looking at the business priorities, the number one priority was increasing enterprise growth, with reducing enterprise cost coming in at three. Other noteworthy priorities in the top ten include: attracting and retaining new customers, improving efficiency, attracting and retaining the workforce and expanding into new markets and geographies.

“These business priorities are likely to raise the need for international travel by corporate executives and their management. The technology priorities of mobile technologies, cloud computing, collaboration technologies and security support this view.”

“Together these priorities lead to new ways of working for the mobile workforce and the increasing importance of cloud connectivity means that the price of international data connectivity becomes an important issue for all corporates,” he says.

With the standard international mobile broadband data rate being over R100 000 per GB of data, corporates are compelled to look for other connectivity alternatives for the employees to be online while they travel abroad.

Current market conditions driving these priorities are highlighted in the 2013 iPass/MobileIron Mobile Enterprise Report; 68 percent of IT managers believed their mobility costs would go up over the next 12 months, more than half (55 percent) of IT managers are using Wi-Fi connectivity apps for work purposes (Wi-Fi apps were the most widely used out of 10 different types of enterprise mobility apps) and most importantly, 55 percent of the companies surveyed reported some form of security issue over the past year.

Wi-Fi hotspots can be a serious security threat because it is very easy to spoof a Wi-Fi hotspot’s name, which tricks users into joining the wrong hotspot. The controller of the spoofed hotspot can then access any user name and passwords entered by users into their devices while connected to the hotspot.

Lowe says execMobile’s PocketWifi device circumvents these problems because it creates a secure hotspot, protected by a password, to which the business traveler can connect up to five devices or people to. More importantly, it offers convenience and increased efficiency, offering personal secure internet connectivity to the mobile workforce.

Importantly, execMobile’s data rates offer savings of up to 94% percent on mobile data roaming rates, thereby completely eliminating data roaming “Bill Shock” and reducing enterprise connectivity costs when abroad.

“By using our mobile broadband solution which has a price per GB that is less than a tenth of the mobile broadband international data rate, corporates are able to ensure their employees are securely connected from wherever they are and that the cost of connectivity can reduced significantly and be managed centrally by the company. This enables corporates to meet their primary goal of reducing barriers to growth while reducing costs,” he says.