Ojas Rege, VP of Strategy at MobileIron

With 2013 behind us, it’s time to look ahead to see what’s in store for mobile IT and the financial services industry throughout 2014.

When it comes to the future of mobile in business you can rely on the fact that change is inevitable. As financial services begin transforming into Mobile First organisations, they are starting to embrace mobile as their primary computing platform. A “mobile first” approach has many benefits, but it can also can create a number of issues for the IT department if the projects are not fully understood and considered.

The use of mobile within financial services changed rapidly in 2013. We saw the increase of mobile devices being used to improve the customer experience, and we saw companies improving the employee experience by delivering mobile applications, tablets, and smartphones for internal use.

So what will 2014 have in store?

Taking a look into my crystal ball, here are my top six predictions for mobile IT within financial services throughout 2014.

The Mobile Minority will become the Mobile Majority
Mobile will go from being a technology that touches only 15% of employees in an organisation to being the platform used by the majority of workers. During 2014, more than 60% of a company’s employees will access business data on a mobile device.

Privacy will be the top CIO concern for BYOD
BYOD is here to stay, and traditionally the top concern for the CIO was security. In 2014, the top concern will shift to privacy, because of the evolving legal environment around personal data and the simple fact that an acceptable approach to privacy is essential for user adoption.

Our MobileIron Trust Gap survey in June 2013 showed that 70% of employees don’t trust their employer with personal data. The survey results also highlighted massive confusion among employees about what data on their personal mobile devices their employer monitors. In 2014, privacy will capture CIO mindshare and become the single most important driver of BYOD success or failure.

BYOD will catalyse rapid BlackBerry migration
For years, BlackBerry dominated the enterprise mobile phone market. Happy with the way it worked Blackberry was very popular. However, in 2013 we saw the demise of Blackberry.

In 2014, the financial services industry will actively adopt BYOD as a means to migrate off BlackBerry. A recent Gartner report urged all companies using BlackBerry to take action in the next six months by considering alternatives and then implementing them. Financial services is one of the industries most affected by this recommendation given its strong historical adoption of BlackBerry. Now, the industry is being forced to move quickly. However, companies cannot afford to buy every employee a new replacement device, and CIOs are realising that BYOD enables them to migrate off BlackBerry fast and cost-effectively since many of their employees already have alternative personal devices they would like to use for work.

Saying “no” to the personal cloud will no longer be an option
Application blacklists will fail, and IT will be forced to accept that employees cannot work without access to personal cloud productivity services. More and more business documents will be stored in the personal cloud and IT will have to prioritise making consumer services secure for enterprise use.

iOS will be recognised as the most secure operating system in the enterprise
The sandboxed architecture and management model of iOS will make it the most secure operating system in the enterprise. Traditional Windows suffers DLL Hell, where any app can compromise the entire system. BlackBerry was the pinnacle of security but users no longer want to use it. Android has seen big steps forward with Samsung KNOX but is still massively fragmented globally. Windows Phone is adopting the sandboxed model but is early in its evolution. IT will recognise that enterprise security is enabled by a combination of OS architecture, strong management tools, and best-of-breed user experience. This is a model that iOS supports today and toward which ALL enterprise operating systems are moving.

Barack Obama and David Cameron will migrate off BlackBerry
The highest profile BlackBerry users in the world will adopt a new device in 2014. The question is which one will it be?

2014 will be an exciting year for mobile IT. Only in the last year, have CIOs prioritised putting together a mobility strategy so they are at an early stage of development and learning on this topic. And mobile is changing more quickly than any other technology they’ve seen before. It is essential for financial services to be one step ahead of users by understanding mobile trends within the workplace and implementing a coherent mobile device management policy. Not only will this, ensure that financial services are complying to regulations and keeping their data secure, but most importantly, it will enable them to give employees the great user experience they want and need to be productive.

About the Author:

Ojas Rege, Vice President of Strategy at MobileIron

As Vice President of Strategy, Ojas is responsible for aligning product development and corporate strategy. Prior to joining MobileIron, Ojas was Vice President of Global Mobile Products at Yahoo!, responsible for Yahoo’s mobile search, email, messaging, and content services. The team delivered SMS, mobile web, and client applications for phones, and built extensive platforms to deal with the daunting global fragmentation of mobile technology.

Ojas started in mobile in 2000 as Vice President of Product Marketing at AvantGo, one of the first software developers for Palm and PocketPC handhelds. AvantGo was purchased by Sybase iAnywhere Solutions in 2003. Before AvantGo, Ojas managed the online video gaming team at Acclaim Entertainment, spent several years with Boston Consulting Group, and started his career in 1988 as VAX/VMS product line manager at Oracle. Ojas is also a Board Chair for Pact, a non-profit in Oakland California that provides adoption services for children of color and their parents. Ojas has a BS/MS in Computer Engineering from M.I.T. and an MBA from Stanford. You can follow Ojas on Twitter at @orege.