5 Mobility Predictions For 2010

Five predictions for what SMBs can expect on the mobility front in the coming year -- from Trust Digital.According to Dan Dearing, VP Marketing at mobile security vendor Trust Digital, 2009 has definitely been an interesting year for SMB mobility.

Dearing marks June 19th, 2009 as a watershed event for business smartphone mobility with the release of the iPhone 3GS. It is the first enterprise app phone and other consumer devices based on Android and WebOS will follow suit.

Here's what Trust Digital is planning for in 2010:

1. Move over Blackberry. The Blackberry monopoloy in the enterprise will become a duopoly with iPhone. The barrier to entry to other consumer devices like Android will be device encryption, so look for Android vendors to bulk up their app phone offerings by year end to compete with iPhone in business markets.

2. Personal devices spread in the workplace (with IT's blessing). Driven by a younger workforce that mix work and play, businesses will promote mobility for all of their employees by opening up mobile access to IT services but share the cost with employees.

3. Businesses eat their own dogfood. SMBs will deploy a variety of applications for both employees and customers. Besides the usual push for employee productivity apps, companies are building consumer apps to reach their customers. Employees in customer facing roles such as Sales need to demonstrate the power of these apps and IT needs to support them.

4. App phone and laptop support converges. IT will begin to treat these devices more like laptops, plugging them into their infrastructure for authentication (PKI) and easy secure access (WiFi/VPN).

5. Mobile security morphs. Security threats for App Phones are a moving target. Today, there is less emphasis on laptop malware threats and more focus on data protection and secure access. That will change in the future as more people adopt app phones and rely on them to manage their life and finances.