2 DIGITALIRELAND INSIGHT Thursday 24 March 2011


Mobile Business Contents


2 Rise of the mobile worker The past few years has seen amazing new mobile technologies change the way we live and work


3 Keeping connected We find out the broadband options available to today’s home and mobile worker


4 The biggest thing to happen to work since email


Unified communications means that no matter what device you carry, you can manage your work


8 The flexible working experience How do flexible workers stay productive outside of the structured office environment?


9 Why Irish bosses should embrace


flexible working We set out the reasons why flexible working can be good for both bosses and employees


10 Devices for mobile workers What are the latest smartphones, tablets and laptops to help you work while out and about?


11 Videoconferencing on the move We look at how this more personal way of communicating online can help maintain work connections


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The rise and rise of the mobile worker


A revolution in mobile networks will result in agile businesses equipping their workforces with the latest smartphones and tablet technology to work faster and better, writes JOHN KENNEDY


I


T’S incredible when you think about it. For those of us old enough to re- member, when the Commodore 64 home computer came out in Janu- ary 1981 – that’s 30 years ago – it


was called the 64 because it had 64KB of memory. Today, your average smart- phone – take the HTC Desire, the Nexus S from Google or Apple’s iPhone 4 – is on average 1,000 times faster with 8,000 times more memory. Only three years ago Apple launched


the App Store, which now has over 10 million apps, and rivals like Google’s Android Market are catching up fast. Worldwide mobile application store downloads are forecast to reach 17.7 bil- lion downloads this year – up 117pc on the 8.2 billion downloads last year, ac- cording to Gartner. The analyst firm predicts that revenues from the sale of apps, as well as advertising, will reach US$15bn by the end of 2011. Five years ago the average home or business would have been challenged to receive 1Mbps worth of broadband. To- day 21Mbps speeds are possible on parts of O2’s network over mobile broadband, most providers are capable of 14Mbps in 99pc of the country, while cable broad- band provider UPC is capable of up to 100Mbps services on its cable network. In just one year since Apple launched


its iPad tablet computer, IDC predicts that some 50 million media tablet de- vices will ship in 2011. Some 10.1 million tablet computers shipped in Q4 of last year – double the number that shipped in Q3, says IDC. Apple’s iPad share came down from 93pc to 73pc, with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab a distant but only competi- tor, with 17pc of the world market. All of these developments, occurring


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at breathtaking speed, are set to funda- mentally transform the working world. For the average worker, being equipped with a smartphone pretty much means they can bring their office with them where ever they go and potentially even accomplish a lot more. I have seen with my own eyes a data centre provider pro- vision a whole cluster of cloud comput- ing servers via his iPad from a confer- ence on the other side of the city. “There is a huge data wave hitting us


right now,” says Telefónica O2 Ireland CEO, Stephen Shurrock. “Businesses and consumers are consuming a lot more data. “This will bring about exciting new


developments such as mobile wallets enabled by new technologies like Near Field Communications. “This is all being enabled by the pow-


er of the mobile network and very soon the next generation of mobile services, enabled by Long Term Evolution or 4G, will mean faster speeds and better qual- ity bandwidth on devices infinitely more powerful than anything we’ve used at our desks or carried before.” Shurrock has a point. With the latest


Stephen Shurrock, 02 Ireland


generation iPad 2 and new tablet devices like the Motorola Xoom and HTC Flyer coming with dual-core processors, and smartphones powered by even quad core processors before the end of the year, the ability to carry out mission critical work tasks from anywhere is very real. For example, the latest version of busi-


ness software player Sage’s customer re- lationship management (CRM) technol- ogy built at Sage’s International CRM Centre of Excellence in Dublin – Sage CRM v7.1 – is aimed at enabling busi- nesses to choose how, where and when they want to manage relationships – on Twitter, on the iPhone or on LinkedIn. With Twitter and LinkedIn integra-


tion, as well as mobile deployment and an optimised iPhone experience, the new solution also gives 24-hour access to business-critical information regard- less of location, enabling businesses to operate in the way they want. “Whether in the office or on the move,


we believe software should make it easi- er for people to do business and our lat- est version of Sage CRM builds on this commitment by giving customers the flexibility, reliability, security and sup- port to connect services and view their customer data in a way that best suits their needs now and in the future,” ex- plains Erin McCann, commercial prod- uct manager at Sage Ireland.


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