Mobile Computing, Mobile Devices, Enterprise Mobility

Mobile computing

Today with the proliferation of a new generation of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and PDAs, the emphasis is increasingly shifting to mobile and multi-device user experience, mobile social computing, next generation mobile solutions, mobile cloud services and infrastructure. Information that is readily available on a personal device anywhere, anytime has been the driving vision of mobile computing for the past two decades.

Mobile computing has three aspects: mobile communication, mobile hardware, and mobile software. The first aspect addresses communication issues in ad-hoc and infrastructure networks as well as communication properties, protocols, data formats and concrete technologies. The second aspect is on the hardware, e.g., mobile devices or device components. The third aspect deals with the characteristics and requirements of mobile applications.

Rugged Mobile devices and PDAs are used in field service and workforce management applications. They are particularly useful for field service engineers recording work in the field, communicating information back to an office environment -sending and receiving invoices, ordering parts. They are commonly used in parcel delivery with couriers using these devices to scan barcodes and record signatures as proof of delivery.

Innovations in wireless technology, energy-efficient portable hardware and adaptive software, has enabled a massive growth in the use of these devises for businesses across the enterprise or for personal and social use. These devices are now so versatile that employees are using smartphones for business applications (BYOD –Bring Your Own Device)

This phrase has become widely adopted to refer to employees who bring their own computing devices – such as smartphones, laptops and PDAs – to the workplace for use and connectivity on the corporate network.

BYOD Security - Employees using personal smartphones and mobile devices at work, pose a security risk. Many corporations that allow employees to use their own mobile devices at work implement a BYOD security policy that clearly outlines the company's position and governance policy to ensure network security is not compromised by employees using their own devices at work.

Email and Web access is a reality that is experienced by millions of users worldwide through their smartphones and tablets. Hot spot access points for Wi-Fi connection are becoming more prevalent and widespread, even in London`s underground network.

Cloud computing is evolving as a new paradigm of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. The confluence of hardware virtualization, cloud and mobile computing drives the new era of mobile cloud computing. Platforms such as android, iOS, Windows 7 erodes the power of computing platforms like Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS and is creating cross platform app centric environment in which end-users and in particular the consumer marketplace will drive developments in business computing. There are endless possibilities that can be brought about with the mobile cloud in the near future.