This is a sponsored post by Dimension Data. Find out about the critical gap that exists in enterprise mobility in its Secure Mobility Survey Report.

Perhaps you have already read all about mobility, and am convinced that its pervasiveness is going to change the face of enterprise IT. This means that you are not just interested in how to manage BYOD devices like smartphones and tablets, but am also looking to actively tap into them to empower your organization to attain its business objectives.

Of course, integrating mobility into your organization in a way to reap benefits is more than just drafting a set of rules, or even proactively managing them to reduce the security risks. To help you along, we outline a number of suggestions to on how mobile devices may be integrated into your business.

[box type=”info” style=”rounded”]Services such as Drobox, SugarSync and Evernote probably ring a bell with all of us. Yet, cloud-based storage and note-taking services are probably high on the “worry list” for CIOs and IT managers around the globe. [/box]

Sign on with business-centric cloud services

Services such as Drobox, SugarSync and Evernote probably ring a bell with all of us. Yet, cloud-based storage and note-taking services are probably high on the “worry list” for CIOs and IT managers around the globe. At stake is how these services allow data to be kept outside the reach of the corporate firewall, and the complete lack of control that the IT department has over them.

Things have evolved a little from earlier days, fortunately. Today, Dropbox for Business, SugarSync for Business and Evernote Business offer the same service with centralized management controls that can be provisioned to employees by system administrators. Moreover, parameters such as storage capacity and permission can be tweaked, and many of these also offer advanced sharing capabilities and detailed audit logs that are especially suited for businesses.

Retrain developers for mobile platforms

To be sure, a competent and experienced programmer should not have too much trouble switching to working on mobile devices, be it from traditional Win 32 client server coding or ASP/PHP/JavaScript programming. Just don’t expect them to pull off mission critical projects right from the get go.

Even so, there is no doubt that some training will greatly speed up the process, allowing them to get up to speed faster on the new APIs and best practices for app creation. In addition, proper training also ensures that developers get the proper knowledge relating to pertinent user interface standards and deployment options.

Optimize Web interface for mobile devices

Finally, do make it a point to optimize existing Web sites and portals for mobile devices. This could range from tweaks such as recognizing the more limited dimensions of a mobile display, to replacing Flash and heavyweight GUI elements with lightweight JavaScript and CSS alternatives. Moreover, more whitespace and careful placement of menus would better serve the needs of users navigating the site using a touchscreen device.

Explore the use of mobile device management solutions

Perhaps inevitably, proper integration of mobile into your business would likely necessitate deploying the proper management tools. Just like traditional system management tools are optimized for managing desktops and laptops, a new generation of mobile device management (MDM) solutions are designed specifically for mobile devices.

They make mobile devices easy to manage remotely, and extend down to the managing and monitoring of individual software aps, including the deploying and updating requisite line-of-business apps. Ultimately, they serve to take the load off the IT department to focus on business-centric tasks that add value to the company.

This is a sponsored post by Dimension Data. Find out about the critical gap that exists in enterprise mobility in its Secure Mobility Survey Report.