Looking for a job in Enterprise Computing still shows that many corporates are looking to ensure that they’re able to react to a SmartPhone / Tablet / Cloudy world with a suitable level of technology—and maybe even a suitable mindset that launches a mobile client at the same time as the desktop client, or even before.

Which is the wrong mindset. The nice easy world of a decade long XP implementation has gone — and isn’t coming back. Which is frankly awesome, as it was rubbish and acted as a huge anchor to many companies’ IT — and beyond; inhibiting Business change, costing money, disillusioning users. IT departments were left with rigid vertically integrated stacks that resemembled a logical Jenga—every change feared for the possibility that it’s the one that brings the whole edifice crashing down.

What does Mobile First computing mean? What is a robust, scalable, secure, flexible architecture in 2014? Not a big vertically integrated stack, that’s for sure. The attributes of a mobile architecture—loose coupling, abstracted layers, untrusted clients, unbound authentication—are actually the ones that serve a desktop world that sees Windows 8.1 support last only a few months before being deprectated in favour of Windows 8.1 update 1. Mobile First isn’t the model. There should only be one architecture for mobile and desktop—and it isn’t the old desktop model.

How easy is this to achieve? How does a corporate go from its Big Iron legacy SAP estate to this brave new world? By now there are probably a few mobile apps that have made it through the investment process (Director expenses on iPads seem to be a favourite…) It’s simple to write—repeat the process. There doesn’t need to be a big bang implementation, but use Netweaver and its ilk to start to bypass the vertical stack. Until one day the stack is no longer required, and there’s an architecture in place that supports anything and everything. Even desktops.