Verma also believes scalability is one of the challenges facing enterprise mobility. "At the moment deployments are not extensive and IT managers want to know how to scale-up while ensuring that the environment is manageable," she said.

Kong said there's always a conflict between control on the one hand and enabling new functions. "IT managers need to help with automated policy tools to secure and manage effectively without holding back users," he noted.

Usability

Manageability and scalability become moot if users aren't making use of their mobile devices. "It is not necessarily easy for end-users to get to grips with mobile applications-the user experience must be positive," said Lam. "The quality of the device (both hardware and software) plays a crucial role in this."

CLP's experience with mobile applications supports this perspective. "The way users interact with mobile applications is different," said Blumberg. "A mobile trial we did about two years ago showed that managing expectations as far as the device screen, size, weight, usability, battery performance and so on was far more challenging than the technology itself."