Managing the Mobile Enterprise

In the end, analysts and competing software vendors remain skeptical yet respectful of the ability of operators to leverage their strengths — customer relationships and strong device and network expertise — and minimize their weaknesses — favoring their own networks and a lack of IT application-selling experience — to make a mark in the enterprise MDM space.

“When I asked a large, multinational enterprise several years ago about what they thought about getting a managed [device management] service from an operator, they'd say, ‘Great, which of our 162 operators should I get that from?’” said Sybase's Owen. “But with global carriers today getting larger and larger in scale and essentially looking like system integrators, things get a lot more interesting. I don't underestimate their ability at all to be a channel or have a service in the area of enterprise device management.”

WHAT IS ENTERPRISE MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT?

Large corporations deploying large numbers of mobile devices face a handful of very pressing challenges, including:

CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

Setting up and activating any devices with standard corporate applications/network capabilities and deploying them out to the field; also includes ongoing device inventory, diagnostics and upgrade management.

APPLICATION MANAGEMENT

From setting up basic e-mail/calendar synchronization to enabling secure mobile access to proprietary internal applications; also covers requirements for development platforms to create new mobile apps.

SECURITY MANAGEMENT

Ability to secure the device and the information on it, including locking and wiping it if it is stolen; also involves protecting internal network from mobile viruses or rogue apps.