Trouble Ahead: Most Companies Don't Have A Mobile Device Management PlanTrouble Ahead: Most Companies Don't Have A Mobile Device Management Plan

WILL IT MOVE TO 'MUST HAVE'?
Enterprise device management products can be divided into two categories: those, like BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Sybase iAnywhere's Afaria, that encompass device management as a software add-on to an overall mobile software package, and those that offer "mobility management" as a standalone product. Among the latter, Novell's ZENworks line--including ZENworks Handheld Management, to protect data stored on the devices, and Endpoint Security Management, to control the devices themselves--focuses almost exclusively on security. Athena, by Odyssey Software, is an on-device agent that integrates with enterprise management platforms from bigger providers, including Microsoft.

Other systems increasingly abstract the mundane but important tasks of device procurement, replacement, and service plan management. That's the model of Movero Technology, a startup founded in 2003 that offers a managed-mobility interface for IT administrators, Maestro. The interface essentially gives IT departments a buffer between themselves and their carriers, allowing routine tasks like device upgrades, shopping for the best voice and data plans, lost-device replacement, and transferring phones from one employee to another to be handled online, via the Maestro portal.

To do so, they will have to persuade IT directors like Ami, who's among those not actively shopping for an MDM system but who see the need for added visibility and control over devices. Ami has started to add some de facto management to her department's routine deployments. A few weeks ago, LifeLong instituted an "asset acceptance" policy and form for employees issued company devices. "So if that person leaves, at least the HR department will have a copy of this form to say, 'By the way, you have this piece of equipment' as they walk out the door," she says.

That's a decent way of tracking and recovering mobile devices and a step forward for LifeLong, but automation would be more efficient. Right now, Ami is window shopping. At the annual conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, in February, she stopped by the Sprint Nextel booth to ask about device management options. It would be helpful, she says, to have an MDM system that would let her distribute software upgrades over the air, and to recover software assets from employee-owned phones when the person leaves the company.

Getting customers to move from "it'd be helpful" to "we can't live without it" will be the next step for Microsoft, HP, Novell, and the other big players in the MDM arena. More than a quarter of respondents to our survey say they access job-specific and personal-productivity applications on their devices. As more workers move beyond mere e-mail, pressure will grow to manage not only access to applications, but the devices, too.

IT pros must get control over the mobile device proliferation that's happening around them. That means being proactive now or, for those who procrastinate, in emergency mode later.

Photo Illustration by Sek Leung

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