In my Looking beyond mobile device management, I introduced this as topic that will be part of the new Mobile Sense thought leadership series. The ‘Looking beyond Mobile Device Management’ whitepaper, published by Philippe Winthrop of the Enterprise Mobility Foundation is the basis for this discussion. We started talking about Enterprise Mobility Management. Now, let’s take a deeper look at some of the key aspects of EMM.
Mobile Inventory/Asset Management: Understanding what devices are accessing corporate information is a core capability that every company needs in order to wrap their heads around their mobile users. Insight into the most basic information on all mobile devices, including which devices are connecting into corporate systems, is critical.
Mobile Security: When I talk to IT teams from our customers and partners, I consistently hear that security is the #1 driver for a mobility management solution. This aspect of an overall EMM solution addresses anti-virus, anti-malware, authentication, encryption, etc. to ensure information loss prevention.
Mobile Application Management: As apps increasingly become a critical aspect of many companies’ mobility strategies, managing those applications also increases in importance. The ability to add, remove or update custom or third party applications in a centralized fashion (such as a corporate app store) will smooth mobile rollouts and ease the user experience. Additionally, organizations will want to ensure that there are security measures in place at the application level.
Wireless Expense Management: As we talk about adopting a BYOD model, the ability to track and manage telecom/wireless expense management (TEM/WEM) data is becoming increasingly important. It is important to be pro-active in management of wireless carrier expenses, as well as the inter-departmental chargebacks for both individually and corporate liable devices.
And finally, Philippe also includes mobile operations management and mobile help desk as important aspects to address the ongoing health of a mobile network and support infrastructure.
You’ll notice that the above categories of EMM don’t include the traditional Mobile Device Management. So what is MDM?
According to Philippe, “Mobile device management should be considered – in its purest form – to be specifically managing the physical mobile device as a means for IT departments to ensure that the hardware is performing in line with its expected specifications and configurations.” Philippe goes on to describe that this is separate from ensuring the proper and expected performance of any single application or the network the devices may be connected to.
Specifically, mobile device management is part of mobile lifecycle management, which includes (like most other IT hardware lifecycles) the procurement, operations, retirement and replacement of mobile devices. Mobile device management should hence be considered the operations component of the mobile hardware lifecycle.
So now I’ve explained the difference between MDM and EMM. In the final installment of this Mobile Sense series, I’ll share some of Philippe’s recommendations to you on this topic.
If you want to continue the discussion, registration is now available for the webcast on this topic being help on September 7th at 1pm. During this webcast, Philippe Winthrop and I will discuss thoughts on the topic, share a brief discussion on how Afaria addressing EMM and MDM and do a live Q&A session.
