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AndreasMuno
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

Mobile communication has penetrated this world like no other technology. It is impressive. It is amazing. And the adoption of mobile is creating a difference in business, society, and our personal realm.


Proliferation of Users

How does the use change the way this technology is adopted and brought into business? First, it is important to understand how people adopt or assimilate mobile. Check this graphic.

The darker colors show the digital natives—or people who have grown up with digital technology. This map illustrates the global proliferation of digital natives,  ages 15-24, with 5+ years of usage experience with mobile devices. See the size of this group? Not only is the map full of digital natives, these users are becoming the proponents of that change in many countries worldwide—affecting society and business with their consumption, values and behavior.

Penetration rates are increasing all over the world—in some instances they have risen over 100 percent. In Africa (below) this shows more than 100 percent, because an individual will have more than 1 device with more than 1 subscription (source: United Nations). This includes countries like Gabon, Seychelles, Botswana, South Africa, Mauritius, and Namibia.

Asia has a similar situation, with percentage of users exceeding 100 percent, e.g. in Macao and Hong Kong, China; the Maldives, Singapore, Viet Nam, Malaysia. This is shown below.


SAP CMI research indicates that the global market for mobile applications is probably around $8.7 billion through the year 2017. 6.8 billion of the world’s 7.1 billion population have access to mobile communication today, one third of which already use mobile broadband.


This market, and user group saturation, show ample opportunity for increasing business. Those business opportunities organize into user types. Let’s look closer. There are different types of users business may want to engage with via mobile applications: Their own employees, business partners like e.g. suppliers, or temp staff, and their consumers.

Businesses have been adopting mobility at unprecedented speed—serving the employee, the partner and the consumer. They expose employees to applications to make them more productive than ever. They are expanding access to mobile applications and access to their networks to business partners,
as well as consumers.


Protect the Data


The explosion of mobile adoption, the expansion of markets and uses, and the fast pace of mobile technology rollout, businesses need to pay attention to the infrastructure as much as to the enablement of users, business processes, and business goals.

Within the list of infrastructure concerns, data security is a critical one.

This is an enormous  enterprise challenge, as more and more threats to the enterprise network and to the data that flows through the network
surface on a regular basis. A common data security threat is from malware that tries to access the user's mobile devices through rooting and jail breaking techniques, which exploit vulnerabilities of the devices to access the network if not caught.

Malicious applications can infiltrate business networks: They may redirect content users retrieve from their enterprise network onto their mobile device to storage sites outside of the corporate network, so competitors may get access to trade secrets. The mobile user may not even be aware his or her device had been compromised.

There is a strong need for IT to prevent compromised  mobile devices from accessing the business network, and for protecting communication channels of mobile apps so they cannot be misused by rogue providers.

Protect the Devices


Data runs on and through devices. So, device security is important to security.

The traditional way to look at mobile device management loss is two ways, physical and theft.

Physical loss is just that - the phone is destroyed or disabled. People forget their mobile devices on top of a cab or their car. If it gets smashed, it is just a material loss.

Theft is another way that data can be compromised. Theft can be intentional, targeted theft, or casual theft—like
some who finds a phone or iPad, and has a mindset to use the data for personal gain.

Take a situation where a guy leaves his corporate cell phone on a table in a café. If someone else finds it, and if there is sensitive business data on the mobile device, the IT department better has a mechanism that helps to remove sensitive content or makes sure access by unauthorized users is prevented. In any theft situation IT should be able to swipe the content of that device (upon notification) so no corporate data will remain on that device.

The New World of Mobile Users


With massive security concerns, IT organizations know they have to do something to keep enterprise data safe.

With new generations of users entering the workforce, like the so-called Millenials, born in the 1980s and 90s, as "mobile natives", IT has to adapt to their expectations of convenience of mobile access at work as they do in their private life. Millenials want the convenience of using their own devices for work and they are used to self-services from app stores to get what they need. These new users expect the same type of consumer-grade access and convenience in the business world, as well.
Therefore, IT will have to cater to these new users and their requirements while making sure the security is in compliance with regulations and corporate policies to keep the network, the content and devices safe. The slide, below, shows IT's conundrum in a world of security threats, user requirements and cost consciousness:

Don’t blame the complexity on the users. Mobile users move easily between the two worlds, corporate and private - yet ahead of IT. That’s because their adoption of mobile is nearly immediate, while IT must review the technologies, consider the options, identify all the costs and risks, to select the best alternative, and implement it. Of course there can be a time lag. The question is: How much of a lag can the business tolerate?

From a cost perspective, it is cost prohibitive to address the individual needs of the user (sometimes 10,000’s) and their security. IT needs a way to protect the network and assets, as well as the corporate reputation, while administering a holistic security solution. The total cost of ownership must be taken into consideration.

As IT wants to close the gap between user adoption, security requirements, and the deployment of security solutions, as fast as feasibly possible, the mobile security team feels the pressure to deliver. The good thing is that SAP has a mobile security solution that deploys quickly.

It is a rapid-deployment solution.

The SAP Mobile Secure Rapid Deployment Solution


The solution from SAP for mobile security supports three important IT topics:

  • Compliant access
  • BYOD strategy
  • Deployment options


SAP Mobile Secure rapid-deployment solution deploys in days or weeks, and allows the organization to give compliant access to corporate data, securely. It supports the strategy for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), not only to employees but also to business partners, and in some situations, to the organization’s consumers. Consumers can get access and get information or applications with connections to the enterprise network when they are secure. You can give that kind of security to customers, partners and employees.


There are affordable options to deploy on premise, in the cloud, or in hybrid scenarios that fit into SAP’s overall mobility and security model. As you can see, in the Mobile Secure block, there are three categories that you can configure for your organization: content management, device management, and app management.

The Rapid-Deployment Solution (lower left block) indicates that SAP has a rapid-deployment solution for Mobile Secure, which means that SAP gets customers live in a pretty short time frame, at predictable cost. It joins a full mobility portfolio of solutions that include numerous rapid-deployment solutions.

Stay tuned for the 2nd part of this 2 part mini-series on mobile trends and security, next week, same place.

For more information on Mobile Security and the RDS, check out these

Resources, sources and links:

SAP.com

SAP rapid-deployment solutions (RDS) on sap.com, RDS on SAP Service Marketplace

SAP Press: Rapid Deployment of SAP Solutions

SAP CMI (Competitive and Market Intelligence)

SAP News, Blog by Lindsey LaManna on "Millenials: The Next Great Generation", referencing a keynote speech of SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott

ITU/ICT, International Telecommunication Union/Information and Communication Technologies

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