Mobile Integrators Focus on CRM

Integration in the mobile computing space will grow steadily in the next few years, according to a new Yankee Group report, "Systems Integrators Creep into Enterprise Mobile Computing." The integrators that will garner the greatest share of revenue are those engaged in mobility projects today that have identified specific mobile technologies or horizontal applications, such as SFA, logistics, or telemetry, as areas of focus for the near future. "Mobility projects still tend to be more mobile than wireless," Andrew Efstathiou, technology management strategies program manager at Yankee Group, said in a statement. "While some projects incorporate either a wireless wide-area or WLAN component, reliance on always-connected wireless communication is a rarity. Instead, wireless is used to occasionally connect to corporate servers for purposes of synchronization, or to facilitate real-time alerting and messaging." The Yankee Group's analysis incorporated integrators' experience in mobile computing, the number and depth of their mobility engagements, their organizational structures and focus on mobile computing, and whether they had developed core mobile and wireless technologies to complement their professional services and integration capabilities. "Integrators can deliver significant value to enterprises by providing education about mobile solutions, such as cost justification," Efstathiou said. "Companies without experience in wireless computing have difficulty constructing a total cost of ownership analysis, especially the components of TCO related to application and device management. Integrators have discovered that creating even a straw-man business case for mobile projects is immensely helpful to enterprises. Another educational need involves quality of service and application persistence over multiple networks or where there is intermittent coverage."