For every business, nailing down an enterprise mobility strategy is now more important than ever. Say you run a distribution company, having your van drivers scan parcels and collect electronic signatures on their mobile devices is essential.

As mobility permeates all aspects of business processes and transforms how companies operate, many firms are still playing catch-up in terms of updating their IT infrastructure to empower mobile users. With the mobile landscape becoming more complex and less secure, IT teams need to take control of devices as well as the business-related applications, content, and data living on them. In modern workplaces, core enterprise mobility management (EMM) components are now essential for providing this control.

By 2025, IDC research predicts approximately 80 billion devices will be connected to the Internet. While I’m sure this comes as no surprise to anyone involved in enterprise mobility, the growing number of mobile devices, models, platforms and operating system versions is making this job harder to manage and creates ever more complex enterprise mobility management challenges.

In a very short space of time mobile has evolved from being another device for IT to support, to a new way of doing business. One that allows employees to do the same work they can do at their desk, from any location at any time. In the age of flexibility, employees are no longer shackled to their desks, but tethered to their mobile devices.

In many organisations, the IT department is tasked with enterprise mobility management even though IT skills are not specifically required to manage a great many mobility tasks. Everything from creating a BYOD policy, to ordering and provisioning devices, to configuring smartphones, replacing lost or stolen devices, and managing data expenses is hardly the remit of computer science professionals.