It is no secret that both business and consumers are using mobile devices. In fact, enterprise mobility is forecasted to grow by 70% in 2011. It is also no secret that mobile device users are actually using applications. The average iPad user has over 60 apps on their device. With carriers doing away with “all you can eat” data plans, what impact will this have on enterprise mobility?

Recently, Virgin Mobilejoined the list of mobile service providers who implement restrictions on wireless data bandwidth. Virgin Mobile notified customers with its unlimited mobile data plans that there would be restrictions on bandwidth once the customer exceeds 5 Gigabits of download bandwidth in a given month. This leaves Sprint as the only wireless carrier that doesn’t currently restrict unlimited data services.

Restrictions such as this will impact enterprise mobility plans in two ways. First, they will cause a rise in the cost of providing mobile applications to workers. Second, they will limit the ability of the enterprise to innovate both for internal and customer-facing applications. Services that include video could become crippled if bandwidth isn’t available. Applications such as video conferencing, video streaming, and application sharing will become increasingly difficult (and expensive) to deliver to mobile workers.

To overcome these restrictions, developers of  mobile enterprise applications for functions such as human capital management, work order management, or inventory management must make sure to build thin apps that only pull new data to the device, data that is absolutely mission critical. Enterprises will need to adopt “smart middleware” that can provision devises not only to the user level, but the application as well. The middleware will need to detect the delta between the data on the users’ device and the actionable mission critical information stored in the back office system. The business need for enterprise mobility will force companies to look for mobile solutions providers that have the capabilities to evolve with the rapidly changing landscape that is mobility. As leaders in enterprise mobility, Smartsoft Mobile Solutions not only offers prepackaged enterprise applications built thin, but the middleware that can reduce bandwidth consumption of a mobile workforce.

For More Information Check Out:

The Battle for the Mobile Wallet is On!

Data Usage Among Android Users is Much Greater than Than of iPhone Users

Tablets: Taking the Business World by Storm

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Tags: AT&T, Enterprise Mobility, Human Capital Management, Mobile App Experts, Mobile Application Design, Mobile Application Development, Mobile Bandwidth Restrictions, Mobile Bandwith Usage, mobile middleware, Mobile Strategy, Smartsoft Mobile, Sprint, Thin Apps, Work Order Management

Posted by: ben.lee, Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 9:12 am.
Categories: Application Development, B2B Mobile, Cloud Based Middleware, Devices, Enterprise Mobility, SAP, Tablets.
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