Enterprise Mobility in my European Customer Tour

Monday, October 25th, 2010 Kevin Murray, VP, Product Marketing

On a recent visit to Europe, I had the pleasure of talking directly to iPass customers on a Customer Advisory tour. I visited customers in London, Frankfurt and Paris – all-in-all chatting with about 10 different large enterprise customers.

There were some consistent themes:

• Free Wi-Fi is not as big in Europe as it is in North America (and Asia, they reported)
• Windows 7 is taking awhile to get out, with most organizations using 2011 to evaluate; as a result, XP SP3 is still the OS of choice in these organizations
• Macs are not penetrating the large enterprise as quickly as we might think
• Smartphones are interesting, and most are supporting iPhones and kicking the tires on Android

Free Wi-Fi
Free Wi-Fi is increasing in the US as quickly as you can say “Starbucks” but it simply is not moving as fast in Europe. Customers attribute this to fragmented provider strategies and many looking to cling to these day-pass dollars. Although slow to adopt, most agreed that it would happen eventually, just not fast enough.

Windows 7
It doesn’t matter how hard Microsoft tries, customers are going to move to a new operating system when they darn well please. One customer is moving to Windows 7 soon, though mostly because they reported Microsoft was making it difficult to renew licenses on Windows XP, providing that added push over the cliff for them. (Ouch!)

Others merely stated they just were not convinced they could do it without significant pain. So, to minimize that pain, they want to test as much as possible, determine their standard image and then roll out. I’m sure this is not what they want to hear in Redmond, but this sentiment was fairly consistent throughout. XP SP3 remains the top dog, and Microsoft has made it clear that they won’t be adding any enhancements to XP, which had ruffled some feathers with one customer in a big way.

Macs – Where Are They?
With the meteoric rise of Apple’s “i-devices,” the Mac has benefited greatly, drafting off the big rig as effectively as a road bike. But we asked our Council customers and they reported very small pockets – not enough to outright manage them, so they just “tolerate” them. So where are they all going?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Smartphones – Are iPhone and Android Taking Over Yet?
The short answer is “no” — at least, not in the enterprise yet. While corporate policy varied on whether they support these devices, or even pay for them, it is clear that only the minority had committed to managing them.

There was still a high incidence of Blackberry as the standard, and the sense was that it would be awhile before iPhone or Android displaced the Blackberry as the standard. Why? Well, because the BES Server (“Blackberry Enterprise Server”) is considered more secure since it is a relatively isolated/protected environment.

It was understood, however, that Android has an advantage (in the enterprise) for a couple of reasons: 1) It has true multi-tasking and can run apps in the background, making it easier for Android devices to be managed like other enterprise devices, and 2) Google seems more willing to build features specifically to meet the needs of the enterprise, unlike Apple. Tough news for Apple – but the way they’re going, they may not need the enterprise.

So that was the tour – we learned a lot, and are planning a round with North America in the coming months. Stay tuned for updates, and please feel free to comment on this post.

Tags: Android, Apple, Customers, Europe, iPhone, Microsoft