How Mobile World Congress see mobile permeating every new innovation

David Barclay, National Practice Manager – Mobility

108,000 attendees, 5,500 CEOs, and 2,300 exhibitors. These may only be top-level statistics, but the numbers don’t lie – Mobile World Congress is the place to be for mobility! In fact, 84% describe Mobile World Congress (MWC) as the most important event in the mobile industry. As the annual mobile mega-event approached, industry leaders, innovators, vendors and customers flocked to the fittingly dubbed Mobile World Capital, Barcelona Spain. Even though most of us Australians had to settle with watching the live stream from home, we couldn’t let the industry flagship event pass by unmentioned.

In today’s connected world the influence of mobile penetrates much further than enterprise mobility. Every emerging innovation is created mobile or has a mobile component; mobile-enabled cities, mobile driven homes, mobile intelligent cars. Mobile is now a part of every new idea, it’s elemental. This, Mobile: The Next Element, was the 2017 Congress theme.

The five key trends covered at the event included:

• Digital Authentication
• VR and Augmentation
• Sustainability for the Industry
• The Evolution of 5G
• The Internet of Things (IoT)

For the Data^#3 network, in particular our relationship with VMware, it’s great to see Digital Authentication at the top of this list and to investigate these latest advancements that will impact enterprise mobility and The Anywhere Workplace.

As a long-standing partner of VMware, it was exciting to see the pivotal role they played at MWC. Their joint booth with Dell covered 1744m2 (hard to miss!) encompassing six demo zones and an on-stand theatre with presentations on every acronym; NFV, SDWAN, IOT, VNF for NFV and Micro-VoLTE and 5G.

In addition, VMware’s CEO, Patrick Gelsinger, participated in a stimulating keynote titled ‘Connecting the Main Event’ where the role of mobile technology in the modern event experience was explored with a focus on the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and the incredible innovation that will be possible thanks to 5G technology. You can watch the keynote presentation here.

VMware was specially recognised for their innovation in the Digital Authentication space, winning a GLOMO award (Global Mobile Award) for Best Mobile Cloud Service or App for VMware Workspace ONE.

VMware Workspace ONE is a simple and secure enterprise platform that delivers and manages any app on any device by integrating identity, application and enterprise mobility management. It enables features of The Anywhere Workplace such as single sign-on, data security, self-service employee onboarding and facilitating BYOD programs.

Another significant and award winning technology VMware showcased at MWC was Network Function Virtualisation (NFV). You’ve probably heard NFV crop up over the last 12 months, it leverages the technologies of IT virtualisation to virtualise entire classes of network functions – bringing together network, Cloud, mobility and IT architectures into a converged common platform. It’s an offering for CSPs and Telcos that is transformative, and the benefits for organisations and end-users are immense. This technology completes VMware’s ‘From Infrastructure to Device’ position and it enables much of the delivery of The Anywhere Workplace.

For our customers, the opportunity to transform business through mobility is now without boundary. With the right vision, you can change how you work (think simplistic consumer-like experiences for enterprise-grade mobility), improve productivity, optimise business processes, gain competitive advantage, reduce TCO and recruit and retain the best staff.

Data^#3 can be your guide on this journey to a digital future.

If you’d like to explore the possibilities that these VMware innovations, and others, are enabling, contact us today.