The mobile enterprise software market reached US$1.2bn in 2005 and research firm IDC predicts the market will grow at a rate of 23pc a year to reach US$3.5bn.
According to IDC, the mobile employee is mandating more solutions to answer a broader set of needs, spurring the strong growth of the mobile enterprise application (MEA) market.
“Vendors and organisations alike must recognise that MEAs are not just about mobilising a particular application, but rather delivering a set of composite applications based on the mobile workers business processes,” said Stephen Drake, programme director of IDC Mobile Enterprise research.
“Recognising this, the underlying platform infrastructure plays a critical role in the delivery of such MEAs. Vendors must continue to enhance their platform or otherwise look to support other existing platforms.
Organisations should seek out suppliers that offer a robust underlying infrastructure to support the applications and provide enterprise-grade scalability for future expansion,” Drake said.
Factors driving the MEA market forward, IDC said, include varying requirements for application functionality and data based on employee role and time.
It is also being driven forward by the sophistication of businesses as they exploit mobility, new products and services from device manufacturers and carriers and horizontal deployments across organisations of collaborative software.
“The worldwide growth of cellular networks, the proliferation of handheld devices and a general level of ‘connection’ in individuals’ personal lives are quickly finding their way into the enterprise,” said Mary Wardley, vice-president of IDC customer relationship management (CRM) applications research.
“The current trend in enterprise applications is to ‘mobilise’ the application by giving employees access to salient portions of the application’s content while working in an ‘always available’ mode with various levels of connectivity.”
By John Kennedy
