Mobile Is A Critical Driver For Business Success

Mobile remains central to business innovation and is now critical to operational success. Recent insights from SOTI highlight that organizations continue to invest heavily in mobile and endpoint technologies, with a shift toward Unified Endpoint Management (UEM). As hybrid work and real-time access become standard, businesses are prioritizing secure, scalable mobility strategies to support a connected and distributed workforce.

Survey Results Reflect the Transformation of Big Business

We spend a lot of time talking about bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, but BYOD is an entry point, not a strategy. SOTI’s survey confirms that if that’s what you’re fixated on, you may not even see the competition as it goes sailing by. Sixty-eight percent of IT decision makers cite mobility as a driver of success—a figure that jumps to 74 percent for companies with a workforce of 1,000 or more.

“Recent trends show that mobility and mobile-first strategies continue to command a significant share of IT budgets. By 2025–2026, organizations are allocating approximately 25–40% of their IT budgets to mobility, endpoint management, and connected workforce technologies. A growing number of enterprises are investing even more often exceeding 40% driven by remote work, BYOD policies, mobile security requirements, and the need for real-time access to enterprise systems.”

That’s a significant spend on something that was barely on the radar just five years ago. However, where IT once had an exclusive hold over which technology made the cut and how it would be used, mobility is being driven not just by IT but also employees and, significantly, consumers in general.

SOTI’s survey reveals that roughly 40 to 50 percent of companies are leveraging mobile platforms to:

• Deliver new products and services
• Drive business process transformation and competitive differentiation
• Extend their ability to engage with customers and partners

This reflects the paradigm shift to a mobile first strategy and what Gartner has described as the mobility iceberg:

“Just below the surface lies a torrent of innovations that includes mobile applications, social media, mobile health, cloud computing, mobile payments, interconnected machines, mobile collaboration, and wireless technologies.”

Security, Integration, and Keeping Pace Are Top Concerns

There’s no question that mobile is transformative, not just in the way we do business but in the way we expect to interact with the world around us—a push that isn’t without its risks and growing pains.
When asked to name their top concerns about EMM, IT executives identified the following as their top three:

• Nearly 7 in 10 are most apprehensive about mobile security, hacking, and malware.
• Forty-seven percent worry about their “ability to keep pace with rapidly changing mobile technologies.”
• Forty-six percent are concerned about integration with enterprise systems.

Mobile security is where the democratization of technology is clearest, explaining why it consistently ranks as a high priority. As the rise of BYOD has shown, if IT doesn’t meet its employees where they are, they’ll find their own way now and apologize later—which does nothing to reduce the threats highlighted by the survey:

• Accidental data exposure
• Phishing
• Outside hackers
• Corporate espionage
• Man-in-the-middle attacks

While some of these threats reflect an intent to do harm, some are a byproduct of the blurred lines between work and personal information and the mobile lifestyle so many workers have adopted. The survey also revealed that IT decision makers are already aware that a majority of their employees:

• Use personal devices to access work data
• Use corporate-issued devices to access public Wi-Fi
• Use consumer cloud storage for work files
• Have forwarded a work document to a personal address
• Have taken a photo of collaborative work

Balancing these risks and rewards takes a thoughtful and collaborative EMM strategy, something SOTI’s survey indicates most enterprise-level organizations currently lack. However, the significant spend already in the pipeline indicates that’s likely to change.
The implications for enterprise mobility are clear: To protect their bottom line, organizations need to take a mobile-first approach to every aspect of their business. To do otherwise will mean nothing less that rapidly being left behind.

Are you taking a mobile first approach? Share with us how in the comments below. If you are unsure where to start comment below and we’ll be happy to share some tips and insights.