Booming Worldwide Mobile Enterprise Application Market offers Opportunity for Enterprise Applications Vendors

9:26 am - December 16th, 2006

The mobile employee is opening new opportunities for mobile enterprise application (MEA) providers worldwide as they demand more solutions for a expanding set of needs. Research firm IDC has released a study reviewing the expanding need and booming market for mobile enterprise applications. According to the study, the mobile reached and IDC forecasts that the market will grow enterprise application market will grow from $1.2 billion in 2005 to $3.5 billion in 2010, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23%.

As such, the study notes that the entry into mobile enterprise applications is no longer limited to MEA providers, but that enterprise applications vendors must consider and include in their applications portfolio to a greater or lesser extent. For success, IDC recommends vendors realign their understanding of the user experience in the context of mobile enterprise applications. The value to the user will be increased by what is not visible to them by virtue of the behind-the-scenes automation.

“Vendors and organizations alike must recognize that MEA’s are not just about mobilizing a particular application, but rather delivering a set of composite applications based on the mobile workers business processes,” said Stephen Drake, program director of IDC’s Mobile Enterprise research. “Recognizing this, the underlying platform infrastructure plays a critical role in the delivery of such MEA’s. Vendors must continue to enhance their platform or otherwise look to support other existing platforms. Organizations should seek out suppliers that offer a robust underlying infrastructure to support the applications and provide enterprise-grade scalability for future expansion.”

“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’s CRM applications research. “The current trend in enterprise applications is to ‘mobilize’ 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.”

IDCâ€™s study identified several factors that are driving and impacting this emerging market:
Â· Varying requirements for application functionality and data based on employee role and time criticality;
Â· Ability for carriers, device manufacturers, ISVs, and systems integrators to provide packaged solutions to end-user organizations;
Â· Sophistication of organizations as it relates to mobility, and;
Â· Horizontal deployments across organizations that drive collaborative, customer relationship management (CRM) applications.

More information and a copy of the study is available at idc.com