Australia dropped to fifth place in enterprise mobility maturity in 2016 in the Asia/Pacific region, according to a newly published report.
According to IDC, benchmarked against regional peers, around half of Australian enterprises are at a nascent stage of mobility maturity and only 1 in 15 firms are using mobility as a competitive differentiator and an enabler for new business models.
And, in comparison to its Asian neighbours' mobility maturity, IDC says Australia has slipped in relative terms against them.
According to IDC, there are a few Australian organisations that are advanced in their mobility journeys, with dedicated platforms and architectures for mobile to be a primary mode of usage.
{loadposition peter}The analyst firm also says most mobile use cases are isolated, unco-ordinated initiatives implemented in silos without the necessary coordination between IT and lines of business (LOBs), “with a lot to be desired from Australian businesses”.
"As enterprises continue to fine-tune their mobile computing experience, integration with the extended business application ecosystem is inevitable,” says IDC's senior research manager Sabharinath Bala.
“The enterprise mobility ecosystem continues to expand beyond mobile devices and mobile enterprise applications as organisations create newer, unconventional use cases, such as smart devices, wearables, connected vehicles, and mobile-enabled machine-to-machine communication.
"Australian businesses become more concerned with mobile applications: their procurement, development, and management as they move up the maturity ladder. As they move further up the scale, their concerns converge on a holistic approach to the mobility of their IT systems and the role of mobility in business strategy."
Bala says enterprise mobile strategy needs augment other 3rd Platform pillars, especially cloud and analytics, with the Internet of Things effectively extending the business value of enterprise mobility.
“It's critical to futureproof the roadmap by including provisions for the production deployments related to wearables, and augmented reality," he concluded.