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Mobile Workforce Report: Rise of the Mobilocracy

By | December 9, 2010, 4:05am PST

Summary: The iPass Mobile Workforce Report issued yesterday covered five trends from 2010 and five predictions for 2011. They all seem valid to me, based on my experiences and discussions.

Much of the excitement we see in the technology world is related to mobile products, services and applications. iPass just released their latest Mobile Workforce Report that covers the year 2010 in review and includes five predictions for 2010. They stated that the “era of the corporate mobilocracy has begun” and based on site traffic, questions, and personal experiences I would fully agree.

I encourage you to read the full report for all the details, but in summary here are their top five mobile workforce trends from 2010:

  1. There is a data security, cost, and employee productivity imbalance.
  2. We are moving toward an increasingly hyper-connected workforce.
  3. The post-PC era is here.
  4. The technical chasm is multi-generational and global.
  5. Multi-mobile rules the day.

I work for a small engineering consulting company and have seen many of these in my daily life. People are bringing their own devices to work and the IT department is having to play catch up to make sure that corporate security is not compromised.

As a writer here on ZDNet covering the mobile world, I was encouraged to see I am not as odd as I thought I was carrying a couple of mobile devices every day.

iPass also posted their top five predictions for 2011 and beyond and these include:

  1. Mobilocracy will rise.
  2. Companies will adopt a “bring your own mobile device” policy.
  3. Security will get a makeover.
  4. The trivialization of place will increase.
  5. There will be a redefinition of social boundaries.

I have a tough time with applying the last prediction, but I am making a conscious effort to limit my connected times so I don’t let my enjoyment of information on mobile rule my world.

What do you think about these trends and predictions?

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Topics

Matthew Miller started using a Pilot 1000 in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since.

Disclosure

Matthew Miller

Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadget freak at all other times. He purchases his own devices and then sells them on eBay or Craigslist to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as “long term loaner units” this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.

Biography

Matthew Miller

Matthew Miller started using a mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He is a co-host with GigaOM's Kevin Tofel on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and an author of three Wiley Companion series books. Matthew started using mobile devices with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 125 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, iOS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone operating systems. His current collection includes an HTC Radar 4G, Dell Venue Pro, Apple iPad 2, HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nokia N9, Apple iPhone 4S, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".
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RE: iPass issues Mobile Workforce Report with 2010 trends and 2011 predictions
tomlin21-24319035676893835085146735905770 11th Oct
Your site transpires to become described in an document ahead of to go to. Excellent content you could possibly have right here. I'll mulberry bags move by still once again.
First off, what do you mean by "security will get a makeover"? How exactly? I'm curious.

I find your statment of number 5 interesting. My sister just had twins. I went to the hospital yesterday and took some pictures with my 8MP Droid X and said to them, "I'll put these on Facebook so you can see them."

My brother-in-law said, "Please don't. I'm asking people not to post pictures of my children on the web."

I don't fully understand his reasoning, but I gather he just doesn't want creepy acquaintances of his or just anyone perusing through photos of his newborns. I guess I can see his concerns. What's interesting about this scenario is that -- let's just say 25-years ago -- you wouldn't have been able to share pictures of your newborn(s) with the world as easily. Now, it's a few clicks and you're there. What social boundaries have we redefined? I think this issue is fairly significant.
"Companies will adopt a ?bring your own mobile device? policy"

Some companies will, and some companies won't. The more heavily regulated the industry the less likely that the lawyers will allow that. For my own company it was explored and rejected for security and compliance reasons.
The companies that get on the tech train fast will prosper. Those that don't will be playing follow the leader.
In your first para I think you mean "predictions for 2011" ...

Had a meeting with a Check Point acquaintance today. Very interesting in that employees bringing new mobile devices to work are driving IT to figure out ways to address the related security issues for iOS4 and Android devices. CheckPoint has a new module to address this via their iOS4 and Android apps. Bottom line: IT no longer rules re employee hardware platforms but only for managing policy decisions re enterprise data access.

(Note that BlackBerry's inherent security does not drive any business for Check Point.)
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RE: iPass issues Mobile Workforce Report with 2010 trends and 2011 predictions
tomlin21-24319035676893835085146735905770 11th Oct
Your site transpires to become described in an document ahead of to go to. Excellent content you could possibly have right here. I'll mulberry bags move by still once again.

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