Multi-device Management Systems – be it for small or large businesses – is gaining popularity, as we speak. We covered a lot on BYOD and how it’s slowly inching itself into the IT technology requirements for most businesses today. As such, IT departments have yet another technology wave to tackle with while employees and businesses have more options to smoothen business operations.
While the movement is on, most companies are yet to catch on. In a Ponemon Study conducted recently, most companies surveyed did worry about the inherent risk with BYOD but at least 39% of these companies have taken the new BYOD trend into their wings complete with mobile security policies, BYOD policies, and mobile device management.
For most others, this lax approach already caused data breaches and other avoidable security risks. Which evidently calls for a sort of push for question BYOD use for an organization, making better BYOD policies, and the rise of MDM (Mobile Data Management) as a solution, of course.
Mobile Data Management isn’t new, at all. In fact, Blackberry besotted companies have long been using such management applications from as far back as 2007. Where it took a momentum of its own is when the likes of iPhone – later joined by tablets such as iPads and many others – since 2010. While Blackberry Enterprise Systems (BES) have been proprietary and ran on closed architecture, MDMs today are mostly cross-platform and more flexible in implementation.
What MDMs do really?
Multi-platform MDM technology helps IT departments of various businesses to gain control, visibility, and management of both corporate owned and privately owned mobile devices. When trends such as BYOD surface, MDMs also take on the challenge of plicy compliance, data security, data access, and data management. MDMs also help with lifecycle management by automating device enrollments, de-enrollments, auto-swipe, data control – all of this is independent of the device ownership.
MDMs authenticate user-enrollment, user sessions, group access, and much more. They make it possible for businesses to scale up support for mobile use within businesses.
MDMs are big on security too. They remotely configure dative device settings in line with respective business policies, encrypt data, enable cloud access, help businesses deploy VPN access, or perhaps enable remote Wi-Fi for users.
Choosing the right MDM isn’t about technology, it’s about your business
Most of clients tend to start making decisions starting with technology, vendors, applications or solutions. While there isn’t anything wrong with that, it makes more sense to start with your needs first and then go about choosing MDM vendors. What are your business needs? Do you really need BYOD or can you do with corporate-owned, controlled, mobile device management? Assuming that you do need a Mobile Device Management solution, what do you expect from such a solution? Can your MDM solution provide basic use with security, policy compliance, data control, etc.?
There’s plenty of research, too many questions, and unlimited options. How are you going about it?
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