In most businesses if you needed to get in touch with someone, you would simply communicate through your laptop with an email, or with your phone. Now it is as easy as using an app on your phone to communicate with someone. Two people working on the same project in different parts of the world are now able to use their smartphones to collaborate on the project. Being able to use an app on your smartphone is convenient for all parties involved when it comes to getting work done and collaborating. IBM has created an online storefront, in which employees throughout IBM are able to download apps that allow them to collaborate with another employee no matter where they are. The store is called Whirlwind, and since it was opened, more than 11,000 employees have taken advantage of it. According to Businessweek,“staff at IBM headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., use the programs for everything from scheduling conference rooms to approving purchase orders, from accessing marketing materials to logging onto the internal social network, Bluepages.”
There is a major shift in the way people do business, and according to Forrester Research, a research company that provides forward-thinking advice to business and technology customers worldwide,” by 2015, about half of the devices on corporate networks will be mobile”. Whether or not people are ready for it, the change to corporate networks using smartphones and mobile devices to do business is going to happen, and it is fast approaching. Even Google is getting involved by creating an internal mobile app store. With this store, employees are able to get the software to be able to do certain tasks for the office.
Using an app on your smartphone appears to be the new way to do business, and while this is more convenient, will it really continue to be beneficial to people. Now in society, we are already constantly glued to our phones, and if we now add a business aspect to smatphones, then there will be no getting people away from their phones. With the creation of the app for the smartphone, it is creating a challenge for company information technology staffs. “In the past, IT departments controlled worker mobile devices, which were mostly limited to BlackBerrys. Now they need to accommodate a broader range of mobile operating systems, including Microsoft's Windows 7, sold by a range of wireless network operators”. IBM limits its apps to BlackBerrys, and Google lets employees pick from a variety of smartphones.
I think that having an app on your smartphone to do business is a great idea, because it is allowing people to work together even when they are on different parts of the world. It is making life more convenient for the parties involved. Also, companies like Apple are making it easier for employee apps to be created on their products like the iPad and the iPhone. While it may be a challenge for a company’s information technology staff, I think it is something that they will be able to handle, because technology is always changing and advancing. Finally, I believe that this will make people’s lives easier, and will increase productivity of employees if they are able to work outside of the office to get things done, instead of being tied down to their computer to get things done.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2010/tc2010111_326784.htm
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?ticker=FORR:US
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