Mobile Forms and Applications Blog

The mobile cloud and the enterprise tablet invasion both became big stories in 2011. Get ready for an explosive combination of the two in 2012.

The mobile cloud: From consumer entertainment to enterprise data

Juniper Research recently released a forecast about “the growing market for consumer cloud mobility services, generating revenues reaching almost $6.5 billion per annum by 2016”. ABI Research earlier predicted that “more than 240 million businesses will use cloud services through mobile devices by 2015.”

More than 240 million businesses will use cloud services through mobile devices by 2015 according to ABI ResearchWhile Juniper expects the great bulk of mobile cloud services to be in the area of acquiring, storing and consuming music and videos, this tsunami of mobile cloud adoption in the consumer space will in turn serve to soften the ground for enterprise initiatives.

That’s how the consumerization of IT works — once people become accustomed to anytime, anywhere availability of entertainment, they start expecting business business data connections to be equally ubiquitous.

Mobile cloud is a disruptive force in the enterprise

The expectation for mobile devices to connect directly to business data in the cloud is a disruptive force. It underpins the BYOD (bring your own device) movement, which compels IT departments to make increasingly complex decisions about which devices to allow on corporate systems and how to manage them. It leads to ideas like the enterprise app store, where employees can shop for apps created or approved by the company.

35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget by 2015, according to GartnerIn large enterprises the mobile cloud accelerates the decentralization of IT budgets and decision making from the CIO to the business unit level, as business teams increasingly invent their own solutions (“citizen developers“) and IT takes a more secondary and distributed role (“collaboration evangelists?”). A recent Gartner report forecasts that by 2015, 35% of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget. How much of that is because so much departmental business will be conducted in the cloud on mobile devices? Likely a lot of it.

Meanwhile in the SMB realm the mobile cloud has a flattening effect, as even the smallest businesses discover they can achieve significant mobility goals without significant IT resources. From Google Docs to Office Live, from Box.com to SharePoint 365, a whole panoply of cloud-based options have arisen to give the little guy a leg up on mobile productivity. No wonder the use of cloud services in SMB is skyrocketing: “Cloud services are now used by 46 percent of SMBs, a significant rise over the 28 percent that reported using cloud services in the first half of 2011 and the 14 percent that reported doing so mid-year 2010,” according to a recent Spiceworks survey.

Tablets in business: Beyond iPads in the executive suite

The arrival of tablet devices in the business environment has been a much-discussed trend this year — how it happened, what IT should do about it, and where it will lead. At their annual ITxpo symposium,  Gartner analysts tagged this the #1 strategic technology trend for 2012. Fully half of SMB companies have already deployed tablet devices or plan to in the next six months, according to Spiceworks

Gartner forecasts that media tablet sales will top 63 million units in 2011 and grow to over 300 million in the next four years. By 2016 they expect more than 900 million tablets will be in the hands of users. Meanwhile JP Morgan raised its forecast to 99 million tablet shipments in 2012 and over 132 million in 2013.

These tablets are increasingly finding their way into the enterprise. A recent survey of 1200 IT professionals in companies under a thousand employees found that fully half of SMB companies have either already deployed tablet devices or plan to within the next six months.

Enterprises are responding to the popularity of tablets by shifting their priorities from PC development projects to mobile app development projects. According to Gartner, by 2015 mobile app development projects will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1.

iPad still leads the pack, but Android tablets are also coming in around the edges. Even the very consumer-oriented Kindle Fire is sparking interest in business apps.

Cloud + Tablet: The perfect formula for enterprise mobility in 2012

What we see first hand every day at Formotus is the way these two technology trends intertwine and reinforce each other. Here’s a story that we run into all the time:

A company comes to us wanting to replace paper forms and clipboards with iPads and Android tablets. Often the company is doing inspections, data collection, or field service dispatch. The driving force is the appeal of the tablet: long battery life, large touch screen, built in connectivity, camera, GPS, and cool factor. But then the company hits the next question: where to store the electronic form data? If they don’t already have a suitable data storage system, cloud storage becomes a very appealing choice, whether that’s Box.com or SharePoint 365. Especially for small companies, the tablet often leads to the cloud.

The cloud provides tablets with the one critical feature they don’t otherwise have: data storage that is large in scale and safe from damage or theft. But the mobile cloud is about much more than just data storage. Tablets have the cloud in their DNA — what is an app store, after all, but a cloud-based application delivery system?

Moreover the cloud — which used to be about applications running in browsers — is now about hybrid applications that run natively on mobile devices but use services from the cloud. Forrester defines this as the App Internet: “specialized local apps running in conjunction with cloud-based services”, which it sees as “ushering in the next generation of mobile computing.”

Where Formotus fits

At Formotus we like to think we’re at the forefront of the App Internet helping to usher in this next generation of mobile computing.

Formotus is an example of a native app that runs in tight conjunction with cloud-based services. We only have one app for each platform, but it is a highly customizable client app that can become many things when provisioned by our cloud services. We provide a cloud console that enables companies to design, deploy and manage their own XML-based business forms on devices. Customers store their own data wherever they want — often in the cloud — and our platform enables them to create the connection between their devices and their data.

And when it comes to what kind of devices companies want to use, there’s little doubt that iPads and Android tablets are the big attractions.