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The maturing mobile industry seems to have finally hit the shores of the Asian region, namely, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. According to IDC’s Enterprise Mobility MaturingScape Benchmark results, many organisations in the region have moved past experimenting on the technology and have deployed basic mobility services. The phone survey conducted by IDC in 2H 2016 on behalf of Red Hat across the three countries in ASEAN, saw 275 senior IT decision makers being interviewed from organizations with 500 or more employees and who have a dedicated IT team focused on mobile.

According to the survey, a number of organisations claim to have a strategy in place around mobility, however quite a few are seen struggling when it comes to actual implementation. Having a clear strategy for adopting mobility and having a well-established value for the business are needed components in order to carve out a strong competitive differentiation in the marketplace.

This is expected to be achieved through the investment plans that are in place or set to expand in the next two years according to the companies interviewed in the survey, seeing 24% plan to spend after 2 years, 19% have the budgets already available and 57% plan to spend within the next 24 months.

Indonesian organizations are most aggressive when it comes to implementing mobile application projects where 1 in 4 have the budget in place and a further 1 in 3 are planning to invest in the next 12 months. Banks are the most advanced among the industries with their mobile application plans where 2 in 5 have a budget already in place.

The report shows nearly half of the organizations in the region have deployed at least 5 custom-built mobile apps where close to 6 out of 10 have plans to deploy the same number over the next 24 months. Highlighting a growing emphasis on mobilizing organizations.

It is apparent that companies are expanding their mobile application footprint therefore a need to manage and integrate the projects requiring robust platform tools and technologies has become necessary.

So far, organizations are leaning more towards outsourcing the development work to an external provider though the difference is a mere 53% to 47%. The number grows significantly in Malaysia where nearly 3 in 5 prefer to use external services. Although there isn’t a right or wrong approach, it is important to note that as size and complexity grow, having internal core competency will eventually become critical and possibly require an investment in skill sets and resources. Malaysian companies would need to address this issue promptly.

Mobile knowledge and skill sets is a challenge across the region. Nearly 50% of organizations have minimal or contracted skills in support of their mobile projects where the challenge faced in Malaysia is the most pronounced. Knowledge on mobile app platforms such as Backend-as-a-service, is also low across the region. Understanding the ins and outs of mobile applications and deploying them from a single platform will be a major challenge around integration with existing systems and securing dataflow.

An overview of the survey of the Mobile Maturity experienced among these 3 countries shows a higher than average move towards workflow mobility. The demand for mobile apps with legacy system integration being a key component, has 76% of the companies interviewed putting budgets in place or plan to invest in mobile app projects within the next 24 months.

However, the area of concern derived from this study is where the mobile application development platform (MAPD) awareness was found wanting. Only 13% currently have some form of platform in their portfolio. Although Indonesia, and Singapore seem to be on board in considering mobility as integral and transformative although investing prudently, Malaysia has been slow to take it in. According to the survey 52% of businesses are still unsure of how mobility will play a role in their business and plan to take it in on an as-needed basis.

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