In the News

To get a sense of just how big these trends are, consider that the worldwide mobile worker population is set to increase to 1.19 billion in 2013, accounting for 34.9% of the worldwide workforce, according to IDC. And Gartner predicts that worldwide cloud revenues will more than double between 2010 and 2014.

However, the fundamental premise of cloud services--ubiquitous access to the Internet--poses several risks for companies that don't properly manage access for their mobile workforce. Not because access to the Internet isn't readily available, but because once mobile workers are outside the four walls of the enterprise, IT has little to no control or visibility into how they get connected. This raises two issues: 1) You can't manage network access and connectivity to cloud resources for mobile workers as you do for office workers; 2) You're counting on your mobile workers to manually manage their own network access and connectivity. Leaving this up to end-users is risky business.

What is simple for an office worker sitting at her desk is a significant stumbling block to effective cloud service delivery in the mobile environment. Connectivity in the mobile environment is dynamic, requiring constant decision making and manual reconfiguration as end-users move between different locations trying to reconnect to the best available network whenever they arrive in a new place. For an office worker, this is as simple as plugging in a LAN cable when in the office, but mobile workers are faced with a whole other degree of complexity that dramatically affects access to and performance of cloud-based applications. In addition to various LAN, wi-fi and mobile broadband networking technologies to choose from, a single location may also offer multitudes of LAN or wi-fi access points. To compound matters exponentially not all networks are created equal: network performance, the cost of network access and the level of network security all vary tremendously.

When variations in network performance impede or completely interrupt cloud services, business takes a double hit: frustrated end-users lose productivity and IT gets swamped with support calls. On average this can cost an enterprise about $3,000 per mobile worker per year.

In addition to the costs stemming from users selecting networks with poor performance, the choice of connectivity to networks with a higher access cost also has a significant impact on the enterprise. The expense is unlikely to be part of the end-user's decision in choosing LAN, wi-fi or 3G, but the cheapest mode of connectivity is a choice that weighs on IT. For example, use of a corporate 3G plan when working in the U.S., but leveraging free or paid wi-fi networks when traveling abroad in order to avoid exorbitant 3G roaming charges.

Finally, leaving network connectivity up to non-technical end-users has data security implications. Once outside the controlled environment of the corporate network, unmanaged public wired and wireless networks pose a serious risk. Encryption of traffic over networks may be weak or nonexistent, and rogue access points aimed at stealing data or distributing malicious files can later compromise corporate networks.

To get ahead of these issues and succeed where many will fail, recognize that end-user driven connectivity is a quagmire of risk and expense. Consider a fundamental shift to policy driven connectivity: Plan ahead, define your policies and automate their enforcement. Policy-driven connectivity fills the void in visibility and control created when mobile workers move outside the corporate network and fend for themselves. By controlling the choice of access, the enterprise also controls the costs and security issues while optimizing performance.

Giovanni Forte is CEO of Trellia, a provider of mobile policy management.

Less