Mobile connections enable today's workers

Today's employees are aware of how powerful their mobile devices can be.

The use of mobile devices in the workplace has come a long way in a very short time. It's been barely more than a half-decade since the iPhone made the smartphone into a piece of everyday technology, and the tablet has been popular for an even shorter time. Still, they have come to prominence due to their unparalleled convenience.

Employees are finding these tools exceptionally useful in their home lives and now won't settle for anything less in a professional setting. There is an opportunity here that you can exploit: Develop Web applications that work with mobile devices and all of that convenience can serve your overall business goals.

Today's workforce Mobile Enterprise's Lori Castle recently delved into some of the questions that pertain to contemporary business, specifically how access to smartphones and tablets has changed the performance and expectations of the workforce. Castle spoke to Aruba Networks Product Marketing Vice President Manav Kurana, who explained that IT departments can boost workers' productivity by granting them access to more mobile tools. Kurana's firm recently polled members of the workforce about their familiarity with mobility and found that mobile-friendly workers constitute an entirely new grouping, a generation that considers mobility part of work culture, according to Castle.

Aruba Chief Marketing Officer Ben Gibson explained that either firms become supportive of the mobile work style, or they risk losing touch with today's employees, Castle reported. Each new group of employees has required resources they cannot work without. If you think it is unreasonable or unnecessary to make mobility a key part of the office environment, remember that advanced computing and connectivity have not had particularly long lives in the enterprise, either. Technology changes can happen virtually overnight, and this has occurred so often that it is practically an established pattern.

Development matters Business applications today must suit the mobile landscape. This is where Platform-as-a-Service solutions such as Progress® Pacific™ become vital. As summarized in our brochure, apps today must be prepared to handle the endless flood of new hardware hitting the market. Incompatibility between devices and apps can be deeply problematic. If you invest in the right PaaS, however, your employees can create Web applications that function regardless of the hardware in question. Add the potential for rapid development and updates, and these pieces of software can facilitate strong connections and effective communication between members of your modern, mobile-friendly teams.