Small cells in transition to opex-based operations
As more people use their mobile devices in the workplace, there is an opportunity for the mobile operators to offer cloud and mobile managed services to enterprise IT to ease the management of corporate and mobile solutions as customers move from a majority capital expense-based to operating expense-based business operations.
To understand the critical success factors for this evolution, in May through June of 2015, iGR fielded a Web-based survey sponsored by Cisco, Intel and SpiderCloud of enterprise IT managers working for companies with 500 employees or more who are familiar with their corporation’s mobile deployments.
The survey focused on:
• Current level of mobile use in the enterprise and how those services are supported.
• Mobile management functions currently provided by the enterprise IT department and those that are outsourced, to whom they are outsourced and why.
• The survey examined the following functions: unified communications; mobile device management; mobile and PBX integration; Web filtering; firewall services; policy services; Wi-Fi-as-a-service; and context/location services.
• Which mobile management functions and cloud services the IT department plans to outsource or would like outsourced and why.
• Critical success factors for outsourced mobile management functions and cloud services and why.
• Benefits from an outsourced cloud model for the IT manager and why.
• Anticipated future use of mobile solutions in the enterprise and future cloud services that will be needed.
The survey found:
• There was strong interest from enterprises of all sizes in all of the mobile management functions tested.
• Enterprises that had deployed their own Wi-Fi solutions were especially interested in having Wi-Fi managed as a service.
• In companies with 500-1,000 employees, there was very strong interest in having mobile device management, mobile and PBX integration, Web filtering, firewall services and policy services offered as managed services.
• Among larger companies, the main driver for using managed cloud services is to reduce costs.
• One of the major critical success factors for deploying mobile management services as a cloud solution is the ability for the enterprise to retain control of its employees, devices and environment. The mobile cloud provider’s solution must enable: Direct control of enterprise mobile devices regardless of where the equipment/software actually sits (data center, enterprise private cloud on-premise, etc.); security and enforcement of policies; the ability for the enterprise to develop the expertise without the hassle of dealing with physical hardware; easy support, monitoring/maintenance of devices.
• Awareness of enterprise small cells was very strong among the survey respondents. IGR believes that ground up education is no longer required and that the enterprise is now primed for wide-scale deployment of enterprise small cells to meet in-building communication needs.
• In addition, interest in having enterprise small cells offered as a secured managed service was strong with enterprise IT managers wishing to retain control of the solution and environment.
This new survey shows that while enterprise small cells have been discussed for some time by the industry, the enterprise customer is ready for small cell-as-a-service solutions to be deployed. The main driver for offering cloud-based and mobile managed services is to reduce capital expense in the corporation. Provided the enterprise IT managers feel that they are retaining control of their environments, and the solution is secure, the opportunities for mobile managed services are significant.
Iain Gillott, founder and president of iGR, is an acknowledged wireless and mobile industry authority and an accomplished presenter. Gillott has been involved in the wireless industry, as both a vendor and analyst, for more than 20 years. The company was founded in 2000 as iGillottResearch in order to provide in-depth market analysis and data focused exclusively on the wireless and mobile industry. Before founding iGR, Gillott was a group VP in IDC’s telecommunications practice, managing IDC’s worldwide research on wireless and mobile communications and Internet access, telecom brands, residential and small business telecommunications and telecom billing services. Prior to joining IDC, Gillott was in various technical roles and a proposal manager at EDS (now Hewlett-Packard), responsible for preparing new business proposals to wireless and mobile operators.
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