Afaria – A New Dimension to Mobile Security

[Former Member]

Mobility creates huge opportunities- like device management, mobile banking, connectivity, MMS, mobile security, Animation etc. Unless a strategy for security and governance for mobile devices is put in a place, we cannot grab these opportunities. Now, the question is where to start this strategy? The best strategy is Device management.

Challenges:

Evolving mobile environment implications have challenges like end to end security governance, application management, data loss prevention and telecom expense. This brings the evolution of new trend called “BYOD” (Bring your own device) because organizations have recognized that mobile devices are crucial to their own success. They have reduced the costs and even employees started to use their personal devices to store, process their employer data and connect to their network. The reason to use their own devices is pretty simple, avoid using multiple devices and desire to use the most update devices that exist to increase efficiency. BYOD model requires managing the device differently than those enterprise owns and controls. Enterprise needs to plan for MDM (Mobile device management) which includes the following,

• Ø Mobile device security
• Ø Establish and formalize mobile policy
• Ø Provision of devices to deploy applications
• Ø Monitor and control compliance.

By this way MDM can reduce the costs and optimize the productivity.

The best MDM solution is Afaria:

SAP Afaria has enormous benefits such as,

• Ø Leverages the core business suite of applications to outfit best run businesses.
• Ø Enterprise mobility is a natural fit to already existing SAP business suite of applications.
• Ø Firm commitment to give best mobile solution in the world.

Why SAP Afaria?

The guiding principles of Afaria make it robust and undisputed leader in MDM solution to any organization. These include the following,

• Ø Self service which is simple and empowers users where appropriate and manage by exception, which reduces the burden on IT.
• Ø Leverages the best in class reporting and analytics tools which minimizes the overall administrative impact
• Ø Can integrate with existing infrastructure, completing the mobile strategy.
• Ø Integration with mobile enterprise application solution(MEAP) i.e. SUP
• Ø Flexible architecture and implementing options, supporting popular models like cloud-based or managed mobility.
• Ø Afaria allows administration to centrally manage, secure and deploy mobile data and applications.

The PPD model of Afaria:

The PPD model of Afaria which is Provision, production and de-commission is the best fit to an enterprise.

1. Provisionà includes the initial setup, deployment etc
2. Productionàenforce policies, compliance activity, logging and monitoring
3. De-commissionà remote lock, remote wipe, and selective wipe. It takes just 1 min to de-commission a device.

No Afaria, No ROI:

Without Afaria the enterprise has no security, no application management and no portal etc. We would be far behind in regards to latest technology and may not grab the untapped areas of technology. The ROI of an organization would not improve and overall the enterprise lacks the ability to grow in a competitive market.

Afaria Achievements:

• Ø Award winning MDM and application management.
• Ø SAP has implemented the largest BYOD program and almost more than 20,000 devices were enabled to use Afaria.
• Ø 100% of SAP sales force has tablets managed by Afaria.
• Ø 92% reduction in provisioning cycle time.
• Ø More than 20,000 SAP employees devices under Afaria management in the initial 2 years(2010-2011)