There were plenty of businesses who had to re-examine their mobility initiatives in 2014. With a sharp increase continuing to be seen in trends like BYOD and rogue IT, it's safe to say that the next year's worth of time is going to be filled with plenty of employees pushing for greater levels of remote access.
According to ITProPortal contributor Ian Barker, researchers at Ovum are expecting the demand for enterprise mobility to significantly increase in the workplace – and IT will need to keep up.
"Up to now, mobility has been driven by the consumer market with employees demanding to use their own devices in the workplace," Barker wrote. "Among Ovum's predictions are that this will continue to lead to a 'mobility mismatch' where employee demand isn't matched by IT department's ability to deliver."
One way that enterprises should consider enabling greater mobility in 2015 is implementing cloud-based fax. The idea behind the fax machine is a solid one that is inherently secure – much more so than email. Emails have their place, but they tend to be inappropriately relied upon due to their mobile nature. Fax machines may not be easily transported in the same way that smartphones can, but by creating software-defined endpoints and making them available in the cloud, it is possible to enjoy all of the benefits faxing can provide with none of the hang-ups.
Part of the mobile ecosystem
Even though it seems like everyone is mobile these days, there is still a lot of confusion regarding what that means in the workplace. Chances are, enterprise mobility is being treated as a single concept rather than a set of moving parts, according to FierceMobileIT contributor David Wheldon. Rather than trying to find or develop one catch-all solution, organizations need to be bringing in different assets that meet several needs. This is where cloud-based fax can be of great value.
It all starts with identifying business practices that have become outdated and inefficient – like faxing. Faxing may seem obsolete, but it is in fact still required by law in many industries that deal with sensitive information. Email has been widely accepted as too risky to trust with internal documents and data, and yet it still sees significant popularity because it can be accessed remotely. The solution here is not to force staffers to remain tethered to aging hardware, but to meet them in the middle.
Cloud-based faxing is document sharing for the modern world. The physical office may have once been a hub for productivity, but consumer technology has redefined what it means to work. Many professionals are opting to work from home, or find themselves traveling around the country for their jobs. Being able to have constant, powerful access to fax capabilities from wherever a person happens to be will ultimately be beneficial for the company they work for.
The future is now
Some organizations might view cloud-based fax as frivolous or ultimately unnecessary. These attitudes, however, are proving to inhibit progress and success. Because smartphones and tablets are continuing to make themselves at home in enterprise settings and their users are becoming more skilled at operating them every day, offices around the world are realizing the massive, untapped potential that they have in modern staffers. Mobility of any kind will be essential for any business to embrace in 2015, and chances are that a great deal of them will do so with cloud-based faxing.
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