Mobile is about far more than on-the-go communications. According to Benedict Evans, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz who focuses on mobile tech, mobile is changing enterprise productivity in way that that will remake business processes and workflows. Here’s an overview of the ideas Evans will share in his conference session at Oracle OpenWorld this week.
What does it mean when you say that mobile is the primary screen?
There are a couple of different themes when it comes to how mobile is reshaping technology and connectivity, but the starting point is that mobile is the universal tech product. We will have 4-5 billion iOS and Android devices compared with an installed base of about 1.6 billion PCs. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, 70% of people are under cell coverage—more than have access to the electrical grid or improved water. It’s safe to say that mobile is now becoming the dominant tech ecosystem. Essentially, everybody gets a pocket supercomputer—it’s a massive shift in scale.
How does that make mobile fundamentally different from earlier technology, such as PCs or laptops?
Mobile is not just a subset of computing—it is really the new computing reality, and there are four underlying things that drive this change in productivity: new devices, new software models, new workflows, and a new security landscape. Mobile devices and their operating systems follow in a long line of inventions that start out looking like toys that you can’t use for real work, but end up changing the business landscape.
Where do new workflows come into play?
New tools like mobile devices start by fitting into existing workflows, and then reshaping them. Think about a typical executive that downloads data from a business system, makes a bunch of Excel charts, and then turns those charts into a PowerPoint presentation. He or she may think that a PC, mouse, and keyboard are necessary to get the job done, but actually making a PowerPoint presentation isn’t the job itself—it’s how the job gets done. That VP shouldn’t be doing slides, but instead should be using a live dashboard on a SaaS system, with a chat channel with metrics and real-time audio alerts.
By the way, consumers have already made the switch—for them, smartphones and tablets are the primary methods of accessing the internet. As this new OS model pushes into the enterprise workspace, it will become even more ubiquitous.
So now, mobile isn’t just for when you are away from the PC.
Exactly. Mobile doesn’t really mean mobile. When people check their phones as they are standing next to a PC, it really stands for ubiquity. While we may be used to thinking of mobile internet as limited compared to the PC internet, it’s really the other way around. Mobile has a more complete experience from easy access to location, to easy payment and social platforms. And as mobile becomes the new computing platform, it will remake business processes and productivity. The point is, don’t confuse the workflow with the objective.
So how does security play into this scenario?
We are seeing fundamental changes in the security landscape. On the one hand, threats no longer come from teenagers with viruses on floppy disks, but instead from state actors with highly sophisticated and targeted attacks, or insiders. There’s far more to steal and far more incentive to take it. And on the other hand, they are attacking a far more complex computing ecosystem with more systems, devices, networks, and people. That’s a lot more area that needs to be secured.
How does that contribute to the change?
It is one of three factors that drive change. One is to build a new security stack rather than use what isn’t working. Two, you move to cloud, and the third is that you move to modern, more secure operating systems, which means mobile devices. (And the fact that your data is in the cloud makes it even easier to move to mobile.)
So you have different strands of change. Security, the mobile ecosystem, and mobile operating system will pull us through to this generational shift in how things work far more than the actual form factor of the device will.
See Benedict Evans at the annual Oracle OpenWorld event in San Francisco on Tuesday, October 27.
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