With mobility now firmly embedded in the enterprise psyche, there isn’t a single IT department that isn’t under pressure from users who want to access corporate data from their mobile devices.
Organizations are increasingly adopting mobile technology to drive productivity and garner employee engagement. At the same time, the speed at which new technology is being introduced, particularly in the mobile domain, is making hefty demands on IT.
Research firm IDC estimates that by 2020, mobile workers will account for 72 percent of the US workforce alone. "Mobility has become synonymous with productivity both inside and outside the workplace, and the mass adoption of mobile technology in the United States has cultivated an environment where workers expect to leverage mobile technology at work," says Bryan Bassett, research analyst, mobile enterprise device solutions at IDC.
With this surge in mobile technology in the workplace, Mobile Device Management (MDM) has evolved to Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), which analyst firm Gartner refers to as the “glue that connects mobile devices to their enterprise infrastructure”. EMM adds to MDM – mobile application management (MAM) and content management (MCM) to additionally secure corporate content.
With an increase in mobility comes challenges. Organizations must carefully balance security, privacy and costs with user expectations. This is where EMM comes in. EMM ecosystems, when integrated with customer IT infrastructures, allow devices and corporate content to be secured, whilst enforcing corporate access policies around compliant hardware and authorized apps. This does not matter if the organization is using customer data centers, cloud services or a hybrid of the both.
The importance of integration to EMM
The EMM solution needs to be central to the enterprise IT strategy with strong integration capabilities to cope with innovations in mobile IT components coming down the pipeline such as Network Access Control or Malware and Threat Prevention.
To achieve this, organizations require a partner that not only fully understands their IT architecture and business needs but has very strong integration expertise to make the transition as smooth as possible.
Orange Business’ Device Management Premium (DMP), for example, is a key differentiator, which enables mobile IT, whilst protecting the organization. Orange Business’ Business VPN secures the communication between the EMM platform and customer IT components (Active Directory and Kerberos servers, on-prem Exchange and certificate authority etc ) so that customers aren’t left exposed on the Internet. DMP is OS and carrier agnostic. It can also help organizations better manage costs by billing per active device (or per user), per month. With its mobile IT portfolio and global service management, Orange Business is the ideal partner for a managed EMM solution.
Global chemicals company Solvay, for example, is using Orange’s MDM solution, based on the MobileIron platform to manage 7,500 mobile devices, providing control over its mobile and BYOD strategy. The solution is managed and hosted in the Orange Business Cloud for more flexibility and increased security.
Going forward
Microsoft is also helping change the rules. We are seeing a unification of mobile and PC management with the move across to Windows 10, which is a game changer in managing PCs and mobile devices. By providing a unified set of EMM APIs merged in Windows 10, IT can manage Windows 10 devices through a chosen EMM provider.
A massive growth in connected mobile or distributed devices and the need to manage them and their data is propelling the EMM market. As Phil Hochmuth, Program Director for Enterprise Mobility at IDC points out, EMM platforms are changing from device management tools to unified end-user computing management platforms, crossing frontiers from mobile devices and apps to PCs. "As mobility grows in the enterprise, EMM solutions will become centralized control points for how employees and devices connect to enterprise data and IT resources,” he concludes.
To find out more about BYOD and COPE (Corporate-Owned, Personally Enabled) strategies Click here To find out why you should use Orange Business for mobility click here
