Assessing the True Costs of Mobile Computing

While mobile computing has clearly been widely embraced, most organizations don't realize the full costs associated with giving employees access to mobile computing inside the typical enterprise. A new survey of 500 IT professionals in the United States conducted by Redshift Research on behalf of Wandera, a provider of mobile device management and security software, finds that the total cost of mobile computing per device is, on average, $1,840—which is about 116 percent more than anticipated. The survey finds that about half those costs are controllable, which creates an opportunity for solution providers across the channel to add value by helping organizations better manage those devices. While those numbers take into account the cost of mobile security, the total cost of a breach can range from $40,000 to $400,000 per incident. That means a security breach can easily wind up eclipsing an organization's entire annual mobile computing budget. Channel Insider examines key takeaways from the study and focuses on factors that should be part of the total cost of ownership (TCO) equation.