Mobile middle man

Innovation isn't a term restricted to describing only new technology developments; it's also applicable to new kinds of business models, and for many corporate enterprises, integrating mobile capabilities into existing business processes can be a big challenge.

As a former executive at Sprint PCS, Jay Highley often was on the front line of the mobile industry's battle to introduce nascent services such as mobile data and devices such as PDAs into enterprise environments. But some of the challenges for carriers like Sprint in those days were that many enterprises didn't have a cohesive mobile strategy, lacked basic knowledge about how mobile fit in with current business processes, and were burdened with chaotic situations in which employees often brought devices and solutions into the enterprise IT environment without corporate input.

For the most part, all of those challenges still exist. “For enterprises, mobile is a beast that encroached from the outside,” said Highley, now CEO of Integrated Mobile, which helps corporations manage their mobile strategies and policies. “The enterprises have struggled with end-user support, and devices run wild in their networks. We've seen some enterprises paying the bills for fifteen or twenty devices that aren't in their service. They've tried to get their arms around the problem with spreadsheets, but they need more than that.”

Highley added that although mobile carriers have come a long way in providing enterprise-focused devices and applications, they are short on services and tools to help enterprises overcome growing pains.

Columbus, Ohio-based Integrated Mobile addresses those growing pains by providing assistance with development of policies to guide enterprise mobile usage; asset tracking and management to deal with the issue of rogue devices introduced by individual users and the replacement of lost or stolen devices; management of billing and invoices from multiple carriers into a single touch-point; and depth of end-user support that taxed IT departments might not be able to provide.

Those services fill a gap between what an enterprise can do and what mobile carriers provide as part of their own services. Highley's company isn't the only one aware of this opportunity. Firms like Asentinel, Rivermine and Traq Wireless also fill that gap, but Highley said Integrated Mobile is trying to go broader by using IT philosophies like Six Sigma.

The company also is looking to avoid a potential conflict with carriers by mining the contacts and experiences of executives like Highley to get business with the help of carriers. “We're very carrier-friendly,” he said. “Our view is if a carrier is trying to sell into an enterprise and that client is having problems, the carrier can bring us in as a competitive advantage.”