How a mobile-first strategy simplifies IT delivery

Today’s businesses increasingly require mobility, both within company facilities as well as remotely. Quickly fading are the days of wired infrastructure in the form of PBXs and cat5 ethernet ports providing a physical means of control over desk phones and desktop PCs. Employees now need to work anywhere, not only where they can plug in, and often not on corporately-owned devices.

In order to meet expectations and prepare for future demands, many in IT are now adopting a mobile-first strategy. As a result, IT professionals are reframing and simplifying how they deliver reliable, secure connectivity and IT services to the business.

Advances in wireless networks, combined with the power of cloud computing platforms, are helping to spur this revolution in business communications. High-capacity Wi-Fi, enterprise-grade mobile networks, enterprise mobility management (EMM) and cloud-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) platforms all now work in concert to streamline connectivity and communication inside workplaces and beyond.

The Network Imperative

Organizations increasingly rely on Wi-Fi infrastructure to connect endpoints—and the number of endpoints is growing quickly. According to a recent survey by Spiceworks of nearly 1,000 IT pros in the United States, Canada, and the U.K., 43 percent of organizations plan to increase investment in laptops, more than any other end user device.

Kevin Lonergan, Senior Analyst for Infrastructure Solutions at IDC Research, says growing number of endpoints is driving upgrades to new, higher capacity Wi-Fi standard IEEE 802.11ac. According to IDC, 48 percent of organizations have fully transitioned to Wireless AC Wave 1 or 2, while most others partially support AC as they slowly phase out the previous WiFI standard 802.11n. “With a lot of corporations, as they add more laptops, add more endpoints, they need to have faster connectivity,” says Lonergan, “and they need to have the infrastructure that can handle the extra endpoints.”

Managing pervasive Wi-Fi networks has become simpler as well. Forty-two percent of all organizations in Canada now use cloud-based WLAN platforms, according to IDC, especially organizations distributed across many locations. With greater visibility into what applications and devices are in use on the network, as well as more flexible configurations for multiple facilities and even remote workers, IT can more easily provide secure data connectivity.

But a Wi-Fi data network is only one piece of the puzzle. To achieve their comprehensive mobile-first strategies, IT organizations are also turning to enterprise-grade wireless networks to ensure coverage and extend their reach of cloud-based, as-a-service solutions.

Mobile-first Cloud Solutions

Popular and cost-efficient communications and productivity platforms like Skype for Business, Microsoft Office 365, and G Suite by Google Cloud leverage both Wi-Fi and mobile networks, ensuring employees have access to the tools they need, anywhere they need them.

In fact, a mobile-first strategy enables IT to support a broad range of business applications and devices. It’s incumbent on IT to onboard, manage and secure those applications across a wide range of mobile devices. To simplify delivering and now IT maintains critical control over those enterprise applications, organizations often turn to cloud-based EMM platforms and managed services.

Unified Communications, Simplified

Similarly, mobile-first cloud UC&C services remove the complexity of provisioning and management from the IT department. In sharp contrast to premises-based UC&C systems, which often did not sufficiently integrate wireless devices, new solutions like Rogers Unison_TM are deployed in the core of enterprise-grade wireless networks, ensuring a seamless experience across all mobile and fixed devices.

Mobile-ready cloud services relieve IT departments from heavily investing in the upfront cost of purchasing and maintaining new physical hardware. Organizations can significantly reduce infrastructure and, overall, reduce their information and communications technology footprint. Some of these solutions can also lighten the load on IT by offering increased automation, orchestration, provisioning and deployment.

IT’s Evolving Role

Where IT plays a crucial role in this new model is managing the enterprise mobility solutions, but increasingly they can do so via online portals. With less wired infrastructure and fewer devices like desktop phones to manage, IT staff are freed up to develop policies, implement procedures to secure the devices and the business information on them and oversee their proper usage.

In many ways, adopting a comprehensive mobile-first, cloud-enabled strategy is the culmination of a transition that IT departments have been making for years. With this shift, enterprise connectivity has changed forever. By reducing the burden of managing legacy wireline infrastructure, forward-looking IT organizations are seizing the opportunity to fully embrace a new service-oriented mission.