Craig Lowe, execMobile founder, said that of the CIOs who were interviewed regarding the Top 10 technology priorities, mobile technologies was placed second, cloud computing third and collaboration fourth.
When looking at the business priorities, the number one priority was increasing enterprise growth, with reducing enterprise cost coming in at three. Other noteworthy priorities in the Top 10 include: attracting and retaining new customers, improving efficiency, attracting and retaining the workforce and expanding into new markets and geographies.
"These business priorities are likely to raise the need for international travel by corporate executives and their management. The technology priorities of mobile technologies, cloud computing, collaboration technologies and security support this view.
"Together these priorities lead to new ways of working for the mobile workforce and the increasing importance of cloud connectivity means that the price of international data connectivity becomes an important issue for all corporates," he said.
With the standard international mobile broadband data rate being over R100,000 per GB of data, corporates are compelled to look for other connectivity alternatives for the employees to be online while they travel abroad.
Current market conditions driving these priorities are highlighted in the 2013 iPass/MobileIron Mobile Enterprise Report: 68% of IT managers believed their mobility costs would go up over the next 12 months, more than half (55%) of IT managers are using Wi-Fi connectivity apps for work purposes (Wi-Fi apps were the most widely used out of 10 different types of enterprise mobility apps) and, most importantly, 55% of the companies surveyed reported some form of security issue over the past year.
Wi-Fi hot spots can be a serious security threat because it is very easy to spoof a Wi-Fi hot spot's name, which tricks users into joining the wrong hot spot. The controller of the spoofed hot spot can then access any user name and passwords entered by users into their devices while connected to the hot spot.
Lowe said that execMobile's PocketWifi device circumvents these problems because it creates a secure hot spot, protected by a password, to which the business traveller can connect up to five devices or people. More importantly, it offers convenience and increased efficiency, offering personal secure Internet connectivity to the mobile workforce.
Importantly, execMobile's data rates offer savings of up to 94% on mobile data roaming rates, thereby completely eliminating data roaming "Bill Shock" and reducing enterprise connectivity costs when abroad.
"By using our mobile broadband solution, which has a price per GB that is less than one-tenth of the mobile broadband international data rate, corporates are able to ensure that their employees are securely connected from wherever they are and that the cost of connectivity can reduced significantly and be managed centrally by the company. This enables corporates to meet their primary goal of reducing barriers to growth while reducing costs," he said.
