OEM’s stay ahead by becoming Mobile

Mobilising solutions has without a doubt becomes a business necessity that is here to stay. It has also become a priority within the OEM market in the drive to remain competitive and differentiated in a fast changing market that can leverage the cloud to deliver applications. For decades the IT department has issued or is the case still issues its device policy for company employees.

Likewise the OEM industry has and is still creating and designing successful products that are targeted for delivery to customers based on premise client server architecture. This type of architecture still serves a strategic purpose, but I would argue is now blurring as OEM customers look to leverage the cloud to improve efficiency and user agility by gaining access to applications and data whilst on the move.

As Jim Stikeleather, Dell Executive Strategist and Chief Innovation Officer points out ‘People are now seeing that they can do things on their own that they’ve always wanted to do’. The point that Jim is making really brings home, is the impact that us we as users are directly impacting and influencing company IT and the strategy of the company. Within the OEM market, for example companies that create solutions and services for health workers, realise the use of mobile devices provide clear gains to be made for improving productivity and workforce efficiencies. Likewise the hospital administration can gain directly with improving patient management and reducing overall administration costs.

The truth is a purpose built mobile solution for the OEM speciality markets such as police, pilots, field service engineer or healthcare worker involves far more than handing over a tablet with your application loaded on it. What is required is investment, backed with a sound strategy to turn mobility into a revenue making business. Creating a business strategy that is mapped to a technology strategy is the starting point. What comes out is that this strategy potentially transforms the company’s operation on how it deals with its future products and direction.

To illustrate the point, Dell’s investment to transform the company has been all about creating an ‘end to end’ solution services capability combined with its extensive line of products ranging from tablets to enterprise storage. The impact of that change has transformed the internal operations of the company, to enable it to maximise its operation efficiencies to address current customers and future customers dealing with the four big technology drivers mainly , Mobility, Cloud, Security and Big Data.

The extent of mobilisation within industry is pervasive, driven mainly by user demand, but also the OEM industry realisation that developing their own ‘go to market’ mobile solutions will need to be, in many cases, delivered on dedicated purpose built devices that ensures secure access to applications and safe secure access to data whilst on the move. For example, a hospital issues compliant approved tablets for access to patient data whilst attending to patients in environments ranging from a hospital ward to remote patient care in a home.

Dell's Mobile Platform solutions strategyis designed to address a wide range of customers’ BYOD enablement strategies by making it easier to extend and manage mobile access, increase the security of data being accessed remotely and, broaden network access to better support BYOD.

As network performance continues to evolve as newer technologies are introduced, along with the Telco’s industry creating dynamic products the support data roaming services business can transform the business to create new products and solutions. As the cloud edges towards becoming a utility, companies are now able to create mobile BYOD solutions or create dedicated single function solutions that get closer to customers and at the same time create new levels of business intelligence.

The opportunity for OEM’s I believe is they can now explore and develop innovative products and start to create flexible business models that give customers the choice of how they want their solutions delivered. 

Learn more about Dell OEM's mobile offering at http://www.dell.com/oemmobility

About the Author: Anthony Sayers