As 2012 comes to a close, it's human nature to look back at the year that was and to look ahead to 2013. That's exactly what the Enterprise Device Alliance did with its annual enterprise mobility survey. Now in its third year, the survey asks IT departments a range of about their current mobility policies, areas of concern, the tools and strategies that they are using to manage mobile solutions in their organizations, and their plans for next year.
One of the major themes uncovered by the survey this year is that many organizations have distinct concerns about mobile security, but haven't adopted a serious approach to mobile management. One reason is that many IT professionals are simply overwhelmed by sheer number of tools on the market.
Let's start with a quick recap of some of the key data points in this area.
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86% of organizations surveyed say they support BYOD policies
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Security and the prospect of lost/stolen devices are the top concerns when it comes mobile devices with 65% of organizations reporting security in general as a concern and 59% saying that lost devices are a major concern
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Despite the fact that 93% of organizations report tablets being used, only 58% have those tablets under some type of mobile management system - a number that has stayed the same since last year's survey
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About half of all organizations expect mobility to place greater demands on IT (see the graph below) while the vast majority expect IT staffing to remain unchanged - forcing their departments to work harder (and ideally smarter) to meet the additional workload.
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MDM solutions are used at only 38% or organizations - just an 11 point increase from last year despite the fact that last year 21% of organizations said they planned to implement MDM in 2012
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22% say they expect to adopt MDM in 2013
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18% have no plans to implement MDM and 21% are unsure if they will move towards MDM or not
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The majority of organizations are using multiple mobile management tools
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40% use three different sets of tools
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5% use six different sets of tools
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The average organization uses at least two sets mobile management tools​
Exchange ActiveSync and tools that authenticate against Active Directory are the most common mobile management tools, with MDM ranking third. Free solutions like Apple's iPhone Configuration Utility that don't scale well and that are typically used by organizations as a stop-gap measure are used almost as frequently as MDM.
All of this data points to a couple of conclusions.
