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CALCULATING YOUR INVESTMENT IN ENTERPRISE MOBILITY
WHITEPAPER
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE COST OF MOBILITY: HOW LONG IS YOUR PIECE OF STRING?.............................. 3
STEP ONE: PRIORITIZING WHAT TO BUILD AND HOW................................................. 4
STEP TWO: CULTIVATING A NEW MINDSET.................................................................. 5
STEP THREE: EVALUATING DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS ................................................ 6
STEP FOUR: CONSIDERING BACK ENDS AND FRONT ENDS ....................................... 7
STEP FIVE: DEPLOYING AND MANAGING APPS .......................................................... 9
BREAKING DOWN THE COST COMPONENTS OF MOBILITY........................................ 10
EXAMPLE OF A FIELD SALES MOBILE APP PROJECT ............................................... 13
FINAL THOUGHTS...................................................................................................... 14
GET IN TOUCH............................................................................................................ 14
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THE COST OF MOBILITY: HOW LONG IS YOUR PIECE OF STRING?
Enterprise mobility is maturing. To date, most organizations have deployed some form of
initiative, often in sporadic projects or by buying prefab applications, to solve common business
challenges such as expense management or customer relationship management (CRM).
Organizations further along the maturity scale are moving away from the basic “we need to
build an app” mindset and are looking in earnest for return on their investment (ROI) by creating
business value or decreasing costs. But many are struggling to win support for mobile app
development due to the difficulty in quantifying the lifetime costs and benefits of enterprise
apps when building the business case.
WHAT DOES IT COST TO BUILD AND MAINTAIN AN APP?
Just as “house” could mean a hut with a tin roof or a Jacobethan manor like Downton Abbey,
trying to work out the exact cost of an app is full of uncertainty. For example, a small custom
app might have only a handful of screens, such as a simple information app with minimal
functionality. A medium app might be comprised of six to 10 screens to meet the requirements of
the specific use case or business process that is being mobilized. Large or complex custom apps
typically have numerous features and more sophisticated functionality, with multiple screens,
click points, and integrations to back-end systems or services.
Every organization is unique in terms of its use case, resources, mobile maturity, legacy infra-
structure, and development processes. As such, there is no one-size-fits-all way to calculate the
cost of mobile apps. But we do know two things for certain: 1) There is an opportunity cost of
doing nothing, whether that is lost revenues or falling behind competitors; and 2) Building apps
tactically is generally more expensive as it does not take advantage of efficiency gained though
the centralized sharing of resources, practices, governance, and code.
GETTING STARTED WITH CONFIDENCE
In the face of known unknowns, the key is to reduce the cost of mobility over time with a
development approach based on prebuilt components, processes, tests, and templates. This
results in faster and more reliable delivery of applications and updates, which ultimately
translates into achieving ROI sooner.
This whitepaper offers practical advice and an indicative scenario to help you win support for
your mobile app initiatives.
There is an opportunity cost of doing nothing,
whether that is lost revenues or falling
behind competitors. And building apps
tactically is always more expensive.
CALCULATING YOUR INVESTMENT IN ENTERPRISE MOBILITY
WHITEPAPER
4redhat.com WHITEPAPER Calculating your investment in enterprise mobility
STEP ONE: PRIORITIZING WHAT TO BUILD AND HOW
It is easy to be seduced by the myth of the “killer app” — the next big thing that will transform your
industry or life-as-we-know-it. But it is indeed a myth — to build sustainable value you need to take
an open-ended approach to enterprise mobility.
If you are looking to develop a custom app (or buying off-the-shelf apps), the key is to identify your
business priorities. Resist the temptation to take a technology-first approach and trying to figure
out where you can apply mobility to your business or industry.
Instead, you need to ensure your mobile strategy is aligned to your business goals, so that whatever
you build will make a real impact. Here is how:
1. Identify your three most pressing business objectives. These might be revenue growth, a new
product launch, improved productivity, cost reduction, better customer engagement, or
reduced response times.
2. Get a handle on your business ecosystem. This includes employees, customers, suppliers, channel
partners, and anyone else with which your company has significant dealings. Try to determine
how this ecosystem developed and what typical interactions look like today.
3. Identify your most valuable source of insight and inspiration. This is often your team, whether
your goal is to understand where current processes break down, or you are trying to find
opportunities to justify mobile investment. And often, the best sources of innovation come
from the people who know your business best — employees and end users.
4. Identify user groups with high mobile potential. Look at each user profile, and with some form of
scoring process, determine how each user can impact a given business objective and how mobile
they are (i.e., how much time do or could they spend away from a fixed location). User groups
with high scores in both these areas can be prioritized as having high mobile potential.
5. Figure out how mobile capabilities can solve challenges or improve interactions. Select three
of these high-potential users and determine what a typical day in their life looks like. This might
include work-shadowing to understand their pain points or conducting surveys and focus groups.
Use these insights to figure out how mobile capabilities can solve their challenges or improve
their interactions.
6. Determine whether off-the-shelf apps already exist to solve existing problems. If so, what is
wrong with them or why don’t they currently meet your users’ needs? There is no point in
reinventing the wheel. If you are satisfied that existing or off-the-shelf apps do not cover at
least 80% of your business requirements or workflow, define what can be built and whether
that calls for custom development.
7. Identify your definitive mobility priorities. Assess the technical complexity involved and refine
your list once more, so that you are left with the opportunities that are the easiest and cheapest
to build and which add the most business value.
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STEP TWO: CULTIVATING A NEW MINDSET
If your organization is like most, you are probably finding that a growing proportion of technology
spending is coming from the business, outside of your consolidated IT budget. According to IDC, in
North America in 2015 58% of enterprise IT projects were funded by lines of business.1
The problem arises when business units turn to “shadow IT” to build apps. Why do they do it?
Because they can. It is easy to access applications or services with the wave of a credit card and get
productive quickly without having to wait for IT support.2 The challenge for your IT team is to help
the business become more agile and respond faster to changing needs without losing strategic focus
and governance.
What is needed is a new way of working, founded on three ways of thinking that challenge convention:
PRODUCT LIFE CYCLES, NOT PROJECTS
Remember, you are not developing a one-off app. You are embarking on a journey of continuous
product development and enhancement, based on a clear vision and roadmap. That means prioritiz-
ing features or capabilities ranked by value and technical complexity, and learning as you go about
what works and what to do differently next time. The aim is to get to market as quickly as possible to
realize value as early as possible. Encouraging or expanding a DevOps culture, rather than a segre-
gated approach to development and deployment, can help to increase your velocity.
COLLABORATION, NOT NEGOTIATION
It is all very well having a strategy, but it counts for naught without the ability to execute. Consider
how your relationship with lines of business either empowers or impedes you in rapidly fulfilling your
strategic vision. Collaboration maintains momentum, while negotiation typically suffocates your
team’s ability to accomplish anything. Successful collaboration is about creating an environment
that will achieve ongoing value, rather than adhering rigidly to a specific scope, which will ultimately
lead to a poor user experience and higher chance of failure. Remember, lines of business can be your
greatest accomplice or obstacle when rolling out new initiatives, so aim to make them your ally.
GOVERNANCE, NOT AUTOCRACY
It is not surprising that some folks will feel uncertain about an open scope that is focused on
embracing change — delivering value rather than delivering something specific. You can address
these concerns by putting a governance framework in place, the more prescriptive, the better.
Every product or release is a business investment proposition, so you need to give people the tools
to make the necessary decisions. You can bring a business mindset to application delivery by being
clear about the proposed value of a new app or release, evaluating how your existing mobile
portfolio as a whole is already performing, and holding your delivery team accountable for results.
1 IDC. Technology Purchases Funded by Line of Business Budgets Are Approaching Parity with IT-Funded Purchases. August 2015.
2 CIO. CIOs vastly underestimate extent of shadow IT.
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STEP THREE: EVALUATING DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS
There are multiple approaches to app development, depending on your organization, use case,
mobile maturity, app complexity, and volume of users.
• Off-the-shelf apps enable you to get to market quickly with a low level of customization
(if any) required.
• Custom app development is appropriate if the requirement is highly specific, built to support
the core business operation, and where native functionality and user experience are essential.
In this case apps are built from scratch
• Mobile application platforms are highly suited to organizations with a large number of custom
or semi-custom app projects in the pipeline, where the reuse of application programming
interfaces (APIs), infrastructure support, and centralized control makes sense.
To determine which best fits your scenario, you need to consider both your organizational goals
and the end-user community.
THE BUSINESS
Consider whether the app is core to the business or a competitive differentiator. Off-the-shelf apps
are built for a wide range of use cases and work well for ancillary functions — common procedures
or administrative activities — where your existing business processes can be tweaked to align to the
software. However, they may potentially expose the organization to security breaches. Therefore,
apply robust mobile device management (MDM) as a mobile security best practice. In addition,
mobile application management (MAM) should be used to deliver, lock down, control, and secure
these apps and limit how corporate data can be shared.
A custom build created around a specific requirement can be mapped exactly to your unique
business processes. It can also create opportunities to rethink or enhance current practices with
features such as GPS or image capture, or help you stand out from your competitors. But resist
the temptation to incorporate additional or unnecessary functions, which may elongate processes
or impact the app’s performance. Custom apps incorporate key workflows, which are effectively
the intellectual property of your business — providing operational value, differentiation or profit
opportunities that you can not get from off-the-shelf apps.
THE END USER
Nowadays, people are so familiar with technology in their everyday lives that, if your app’s UX
does not live up to expectations, employees will not use it even if it is mandated. Custom apps
put the user at the heart of the concept, aligning business and technical requirements with their
needs, wants, and expectations, such as usability and performance. This is vital, because user
engagement facilitates onboarding and sustained adoption. Off-the-shelf apps may not be suffi-
ciently intuitive, or may be overly complicated by unwanted functionality.
It is also important to consider future user numbers — the licensing costs for an off-the-shelf app will
increase in line with the user base, whereas the incremental costs associated with the growth of a
custom app are generally confined to scaling up the underlying infrastructure. Off-the-shelf apps
give businesses the benefit of a very simple operating expenses (OpEx) model. For custom apps, it
can be difficult to estimate the demand and subsequent load on IT infrastructure, which is why
organizations are increasingly turning to cloud-based platforms that are easily reconfigured to
manage fluctuating demand.
FEATURES THAT CAN AFFECT THE COST OF FRONT-END APP DEVELOPMENT:
• Login
• Social login
• Active directory integration
for single sign-on
• Navigation
• Personalized enterprise
dashboard
• User analytics collection
• Integrated maps/geolocation
• Interactive gallery of
enterprise content
• Barcode capture
• Workflow based on
business logic
• Number of screens
• Multiple language support
• Integration of SharePoint
Library
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STEP FOUR: CONSIDERING BACK ENDS AND FRONT ENDS
ALWAYS START AT THE BACK
Almost any conceivable mobile app will need to connect to your enterprise systems of record to
pull in relevant data, often in real time. So, it is important to optimize back-end systems for mobile
access, as the efficiency gains tend to multiply over time. Lines of business have a voracious
appetite for mobile apps, so a sensible, usable approach to integration will minimize the overhead
of each initiative.
Poorly planned data and application integration are among the top reasons enterprise apps fail,
take longer than planned to develop, or do not deliver what users need. So, it is crucial to identify
up front what your app will need to integrate with. This can be a thorny issue, as the data may be
distributed across several back-end systems from on-premise packaged applications, cloud data
or custom applications that the developer may be unfamiliar with.
USING APIS
APIs aid in integration and interoperability by defining exactly how an app will interact with the
rest of the software world — saving time and resources and minimizing complex, unstructured code.
A successful API layer will make or break the mobile experience, so as your single biggest depen-
dency, it needs to be given equal weighting to the quality of app development itself.
APIs should be lightweight, as the larger the file transfer payload between your app and the API,
the slower the refresh rate and the poorer the user experience. Check that the downstream systems
the API will interface with can handle the volume of work your app will deliver. And make sure your
API is expandable, so it can accommodate the different functionality and release roadmaps of con-
nected devices on an open-ended basis.
FIRST-TIME INTEGRATION
For first-time integration to a back-end system, you will need to create APIs from scratch. The cost
of this development is largely a factor of complexity. Fortunately, this upfront investment is often
what enables long-term effort and cost savings as mobile projects grow. Use this differentiation as
a guideline:
• Light integration — has no access to data from internal systems, integrate with a third-party
service such as social, push, messaging, and simple APIs that deliver publicly-available data
(e.g., weather forecasts).
• Moderate integration — take advantage of publicly-available APIs or common connectors
(e.g., through open source community projects such as Node.js modules) to create integration
to sources such as single sign-on, Salesforce.com, or mobile device management platforms.
• Complex integration — systems, such as ERP and CRM, that usually have preexisting APIs,
but may be more complex in nature than open systems.
• Highly complex integration — large-scale legacy back-end systems requiring sophisticated APIs
(e.g., full integration with SAP modules), will require complex coding.
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REUSING AN EXISTING INTEGRATION
Just as with a first-time integration, the effort and cost of reusing an existing integration is commen-
surate to the complexity of the integration. Rather than point-to-point integration for each individual
app, a platform approach allows for a single integration that can be discovered and reused, reducing
time and effort. If an API or connector has already been developed to connect an enterprise system
to a previous app, it can also be used for a subsequent app. For custom development, it will take con-
siderably more effort to recode the integration than using a mobile application platform where the
business logic is already available.
FRONT-END DEVELOPMENT: MORE THAN JUST A PRETTY INTERFACE
A great user experience demands great front-end development. But if people do not engage with
your app because it looks or feels mediocre, you have wasted your money, no matter how much
functionality you have crammed into it.
To prevent this scenario, you need to design with the end user in mind — not what your CIO or head
of operations might think they need or want. Knowing what tasks the app will need to perform or
what pain points it will solve will go a long way towards defining the user experience. Start by deter-
mining all of the functionality that is required and how users will navigate or interact with your app
(not forgetting to take into account different form factors and devices or OS features).
Front-end design is a specialist role that requires a blend of art and science, so apps should be
developed from the front end by a dedicated designer. Of course, great mobile app design goes
beyond simple appearances — it is about creating a fluid user experience by taking into account the
user’s emotional or transactional responses. If coders get started creating functionality too early,
it can be hard to deliver an engaging interface.
You can save yourself from potentially costly mistakes by creating prototypes to test designs
and usability before going into development. Engage your user community early, listen to their
detailed qualitative feedback, and fine tune accordingly. This may take several iterations, but will
pay dividends.
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STEP FIVE: DEPLOYING AND MANAGING APPS
The work required to run and manage an app starts before deployment and runs continuously until
the app is retired from service. Before launching your enterprise apps, consider who will manage
them and how — from creating the runbook to ongoing maintenance. Will you need an enterprise app
store or catalog to make approved corporate mobile apps and upgrades available to employees and
business partners? What resources will be needed for iterations throughout the apps’ life cycle, and
how will you push regular updates to end users? What risks can you anticipate that will demand the
ability to remotely lock down, control, and secure corporate data?
You need to choose the most suitable MDM and/or MAM solutions to help you secure, simplify, and
strengthen strategies and security policies for mobile application development. MDM solutions are
designed to give you total control over, and assurance of, the security of employees’ devices. They
offer a detailed level of management of the device’s functionality, from app data and distribution to
device firmware and configuration settings. A MAM solution enables you to control the provisioning,
updating, and removal of mobile applications via an enterprise app store, which is made available
on all employee devices.
If you opt for a platform approach, the mobile enterprise application platform serves not only as
your development environment, but also as a management tool for enterprise apps. Mobile applica-
tion management provides an extra layer of security on top of mobile device management. Making
use of established standards and policies, a platform approach will centralize and automate much
of the activity involved in provisioning, updating, and removing mobile apps and monitoring their
performance and usage. A platform approach will also enable data from managed apps to be wiped
remotely. You can alleviate much of the administrative effort by managing and updating code from
the cloud, and taking advantage of business logic, storage, credentials management, caching, and
analytics to unleash the full potential of your enterprise apps.
ENGAGING THE END-USER COMMUNITY
Having involved end users in the development process as much as feasible, it pays to undertake
a controlled initial rollout on a small scale. This way, the app can be tested by employees in their
everyday environment under real working conditions, and their feedback can help any issues to
be resolved before wider deployment. For example, you may discover users need data syncing
capability when they are out of network coverage.
If formal user training is required, your app’s UI is not intuitive enough to scale adoption. Until
people are confident navigating the app, you may wish to consider using overlays. A low-budget
video showing trial users engaging with the app can help to create buzz around the new app and
show how easy it is to use, or how it boosts productivity. Engage advocates across different regions
to promote the benefits of using the app, and also provide basic support.
It is vital to use built-in analytics to understand user behaviour — how, where, when, and why they
use the app — which will inform your product enhancement roadmap on an ongoing basis. This data
can also form the basis of internal communications to promote the app amongst the workforce. In
addition to testing and designing with real-world scenarios, do not forget to provide a channel for
users to raise any issues — this will help to ensure they do not become frustrated and lose interest
or abandon the app altogether.
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BREAKING DOWN THE COST COMPONENTS OF MOBILITY
The main cost components of building an enterprise mobility app can typically be broken down by
phase, components, and variables that influence cost.
PHASE COMPONENTS VARIABLES THAT INFLUENCE COST
Planning
Market/stakeholder research
and discovery
Number/complexity of features
Number of screens
Mobile maturity
Mobile strategy
Preparation of the business case
Change management
Establishment of key
performance indicators (KPIs)
Technology and methodology
selection (e.g., native, hybrid, or
web app, device, and form factor
considerations)
Mobile maturity
Scope definition/documentation
Size/complexity of app
Completeness of vision
Availability of existing documentation,
wireframes, or code
Project length
Design
Wireframe design
Number of features/screens
Complexity of task being solved
Brand requirements
Existing applications
User base
Visual design (e.g. images,
iconography, text hierarchy,
and artistic elements)
Complexity of screens/UI
Number of custom-designed
elements
Flat design
UX designUser input/feedback
Prototype development
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PHASE COMPONENTSVARIABLES THAT INFLUENCE COST
Features
Native device features (e.g., location
awareness, camera, accelerometer)Complexity/newness of features
User engagement features
(e.g., SMS, email, push, social media)
Number of notifications/integrations
Availability of third-party API or tools
User login
Requirements such as “remember
me” or “forgot password?”
Social login
Detailed visual design/
customised animation
Availability of API
Back-end association
Payments
Use of online service or native
solution
Payment processing methods/options
Recurring payments
Sync across devices
Complexity/size of data
Need for custom API
Web services integration
Number of API calls
Front-end services Client-side setup
Size of project
Number of screens/controls
Back-end integration
Level of customization
Back-end services
Data storage
Caching
Business logic
Data sync
On-device or online
Complexity of dataset
Scalability Number of end users
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PHASE COMPONENTSVARIABLES THAT INFLUENCE COST
Back-end integration
Third-party API integration
Established or proprietary API
Developer familiarity with API
Documentation up to date
Access to enterprise dataEstablished or proprietary API
Structure/set up of data
Security
Data encryption
Policy management
Developer access
User management
Size and complexity of dataset
Level of security and encryption
required (e.g., legal or regulatory)
App administrationPerformance management
and analytics
Number of parameters tracked
Complexity of roles and permissions
CMS flexibility
Custom versus standard UI
Number of custom features
Testing Internal, user, and deployment testing
Number and complexity of features
Highly specific use case
Level of security
The widest ranging cost components — depending on whether a project is relatively straightforward
and basic, or highly customized, challenging and time-consuming — are visual design, enabling access
to enterprise data, using a web portal or CMS to manage available content, and testing.
There are additional costs relating to launch, such as runbooks and app distribution, and app
life-cycle management, including updates, support, and maintenance, plus the underlying
infrastructure for hosting and managing code, data storage, and scaling.
And do not overlook the intangible: time to market can also have a dramatic impact on overall cost,
since the longer it takes to get an app launched, the slower the ROI can be realized.
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EXAMPLE OF A FIELD SALES MOBILE APP PROJECT
APP OBJECTIVE
The mobile app supports field sales personnel in selling a large and diverse range of products,
many of which are complex, requiring sales personnel to educate their clients on the intricacies
of the different products. The app is used to educate and inform prospects and provide a quote
on the spot.
THE BUSINESS CASE
The business case for the mobile app is to replace manual, time-consuming tasks for sales in the
field, where valuable sales momentum can be lost. It provides immediate access to product informa-
tion and a quotation system. It is integrated with back-office systems so that sales reps receive up-
to-date customer, product, and pricing information and customer information can be automatically
updated through the mobile device. Data syncing allows reps to use the app even in the absence of
network coverage.
FRONT-END DEVELOPMENT BACK-END INTEGRATION AND FUNCTIONALITY
• Development of multiple screens (e.g., home,
login, search, forms, quotations, signature)
• Screens to follow specific workflow sequence
• Location capture
• Image capture
• Login and user authentication
• Retrieval of customer data from back-end
systems
• Dropdown menus for populating data fields
• Pre-population of fields where appropriate
• Local/device caching of data for storing drafts
locally and when network connectivity is
unavailable
• Cloud manages data and business logic
between the devices and the back-end systems
and third-party services
• Series of internal APIs (web services) for
access to back-end CRM, quotation, and
claims-processing systems
• Business logic and business rules managed
in the cloud rather than on-device
• Validation of data based on business rules
• Parsing, aggregation, and filtering of data
from back end to return JSON format to the
app/web portal
• Data sync for operating in areas with low
network coverage
• Caching APIs
• Security — LDAP, device encryption
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FINAL THOUGHTS
While companies are often excited by the ROI of deploying an app, building the business case for
a mobile initiative not only involves calculating expected returns, but also the lifetime cost of
maintaining and evolving the mobile product and the underlying infrastructure. Every organi-
zation is unique in terms of its use case, resources, mobile maturity, legacy infrastructure, and
development processes. The overall costs of mobility and the components that make up these
costs will vary from business to business.
If you are aiming to determine the true cost of mobility, you can follow some key steps to
more accurately ascertain the cost of deploying mobile solutions and their expected returns.
It is important to prioritize what to build, based on how your mobile strategy is aligned with
your business goals and how the mobile solutions deliver against your KPIs. Once decisions
have been made about what mobile apps to develop, it is important to consider the app as a
product that will require continuous development and enhancement, based on a clear vision
and roadmap. The associated costs of supporting this continuous development, deployment and
management need to be factored into your calculations.
When choosing your approach to mobile apps, your solution should follow your business
practices, not the other way around. Off-the-shelf apps that already fit your business model
and workflow typically have a lower up-front cost, are less expensive to implement, and can be
deployed rapidly. But you may find that they are encumbered by too many features or require
costly customization, and are burdened by the incremental cost of licensing as your user
base grows. Custom development allows you to create a completely custom app from scratch
almost without limitations on features, capabilities, and user-friendliness. Your business will
have complete ownership of the intellectual property. Alternatively, a mobile application
development platform gives you the tools to rapidly build custom or semi-custom apps using
predefined modules, and accelerate and simplify the back-end integration process by making
back-end services, APIs, and connectors discoverable and reusable.
Costs of integration will nearly always be a consideration, as almost any app will need to
connect to your back-end system to access data or send data back to enterprise systems. It is
important to look at the cost of optimizing back-end systems for mobile access and considering
an architecture that supports greater efficiency of back-end development. Finally, the costs to
deploy and manage mobile apps will require you to choose the most effective mobile manage-
ment systems to help secure, simplify, and strengthen mobile strategies and security policies
for mobile application development.
The transformational impact of mobile on the enterprise is unquestionable. However, to
realize the true potential of deploying mobile solutions, a planned approach to identifying and
prioritizing the business use cases and their value, and measuring these against the total cost
of mobility, will yield sustainable mobile success.
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