How IT Can Better Equip the Mobile Office

December 5, 2012, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - In Asia Pacific, the typical employee connects on average four personal devices to the corporate IT network each day. There has also been a large increase in the number and type of applications used on these devices. How is this changing the modern workforce?

Citrix recently conducted a study to learn more about mobility — now ranked the second highest priority among CIOs, behind business intelligence and analytics — to better understand business priorities as we make these workplace shifts.

Yaj Malik, Area Vice President, ASEAN, Citrix

What did we learn? In short: IT departments must better support employees who are choosing where, when and how they want to work. The objective of any corporate mobility strategy should be to securely manage corporate data on any device, simplify the management of decentralized applications and improve control over app and data delivery. Yaj Malik, Area Vice President, ASEAN, Citrix, shares five steps to designing a mobility strategy that optimizes for an increasingly dynamic IT environment.

1. Unify cloud apps: A unified content controller approach with a single sign-on can provide the necessary management across a broad array of application types. Centrally managing access to corporate Intranet, web, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and virtualized Windows desktop applications from the cloud is a key strategy for any enterprise. Since most Windows apps are typically designed for use on a keyboard and mouse, the key for these applications is to optimize the user experience for mobile devices.

2. Secure local content on mobile devices: A better approach to device management is through local application and data management, which moves access and security away from the device, putting fine-grain information control back in the hands of IT. For native mobile apps, there are two keys to securing and delivering mobile applications – programming the application for native execution, and providing flexibility for cross-platform development, such as HTML5 apps. For cloud data on mobile devices, this involves encrypting the data files on mobile devices, providing access across all devices, and supporting the ability to wipe the data, if needed.

3.  Control access based on identity: With the proliferation of apps in the enterprise, a key issue is mapping apps to job function. Core to this principle is role-based identity management. Solutions here include support for multiple authentication types, active directory federation, role mapping to appropriate applications and data stores, single sign-on, and ‘active’ identity management to automatically provision and de-provision access to resources.

4.  Control access based on policy: Policies must provide ‘contextually aware’ mobile information access. Key checks and policies need to include location, device type, network, authentication requirements and event-drive access disablement. These policies should then be applied down to the specific application or file to allow or restrict access.

5.  Bring it all together: Once the control steps above have been made, enterprises will then be ready for any app, device, or data. What is left is balancing IT control with an end-user experience built around convenience through an enterprise app store. Key components of any enterprise app store should include a unified storefront for all apps and data, app availability based on role, app request workflows, self-service subscriptions, native app delivery for mobile devices in use, and ‘follow-me’ access to information across devices.

Following these steps will result in freedom for employees to choose their own devices, access the content they need for their jobs and use their apps and data wherever and whenever they choose, while allowing IT to retain control over all corporate apps and data in use by employees.