Mobile Mastery

Texas Instruments CIO Brian Bonner shares his strategy for managing mobile and wireless devices

By
Fri, July 06, 2007

CIO — Texas Instruments CIO Brian Bonner has a unique perspective on how mobile-device proliferation affects business operations and IT. That's because TI has some 31,000 employees around the globe, including in Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Oslo, Tel Aviv and Berlin. In an e-mail exchange, Bonner discussed the benefits and drawbacks of mobility, the cultural and geographic differences between the United States and Asia, and the fate of the laptop.

CIO: How does the huge number of mobile users affect device management inside your company?

Bonner: We realized early on that we needed to limit the number of device choices, corporate rate plans, centralized billing and chargebacks. This allowed us to manage costs and provide effective device support. We are using market-leading mobile middleware solutions that do an adequate job of device management as they evolve.

In what ways does the sheer number of mobile workers affect business and IT plans?

Mobile e-mail devices at TI are expected to double in the next three years due mostly to international adoption. This will drive increased focus on cost management. Also, we expect location-aware applications to grow as the number of GPS-enabled devices grows. The first will be maps and driving directions. We will probably need to start supporting an application in the next couple of years.

We expect employees worldwide to start figuring out how to do mobile entertainment on company devices. We'll need to set some sort of policy if that activity starts costing the company. We already have workflow approval projects in planning now, and we can expect more in the future.

As people become more mobile and rely less on a laptop PC, they will want to collaborate more with mobile devices. Mobile IM is probably the beginning, but online meetings will someday be on mobile devices. In fact, TI created its next-generation OMAP 3 architecture specifically for both of these trends, to enable even cooler mobile entertainment features—integrating features such as standalone digital cameras, gaming consoles, MP3 players and camcorders—while also enabling mobile workforce productivity, such as access to databases, spreadsheets, presentations, Web browsing and downloading, videoconferencing and e-mail.

We are a global business, so collaboration application use is becoming quite critical and is growing rapidly as a demand among our own global employees.

What benefits do you see emerging?

Mobile device management strengths and capabilities will start emerging in PC management solutions. For example, the ability to remotely erase a laptop, now emerging in the PC management space, first emerged in mobile device management.

Continue Reading

Virtualization and cloud are driving new requirements for data center network performance, VM support, automation and simplified orchestration. This paper outlines Extreme Networks® open fabric approach to high speed, low latency networks for modern data centers.
The evolution of the network to provide the intelligence needed to address user, device and application mobility is underway. In this white paper, Extreme Networks® outlines the five phases required to bring mobility into the network.
Individuals and businesses alike are embracing the digital revolution. Social networks and digital devices are being used to engage government, businesses and civil society, as well as friends and family.
Whether you need to build a business case for a UC system, or are ready to select a new solution, this white paper offers a thorough, side-by-side comparison of ShoreTel and Avaya offerings to help you make informed decisions.
Compared with Cisco products, ShoreTel UC can offer numerous advantages, including streamlined deployment and management, easier scalability, and a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
This must-read publication features independent research from Gartner, providing a wealth of information around best in breed Unified Communication systems. 12 Unified Communications vendor ratings, along with their strengths and cautions, are provided.
Join us for this live web event where featured Forrester Research principal analyst, Art Schoeller and Interactive Intelligence senior vice president, Joe Staples will discuss these topics and help you be ready to take the best advantage of the upcoming year and the contribution your contact center can make to the success of your business.
Tune into this insightful webinar to see Riverbed Technology product marketing manager Joe Ghory present the facts on how you can ensure consistent performance wherever workers connect, get the most out of limited connectivity, and accomplish more by eliminating round trips and slow latency.
As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Resource Center