Reduce Business Risk by Deploying EMM Solutions with Conditional Access Capabilities

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#EMM solutions that deliver conditional access to desired services like email, storage and #cloud services motivate #BYOD #mobile users to enroll.

Let’s face it, your BYOD employees aren’t too thrilled about installing an EMM app, agent or container on their device. It feels like an intrusion on one of your most personal possessions and breeds mistrust. That said, the BYOD world is all about gives and gets. Unless your company enforces a corporate-liable policy and buys every employee a smartphone, a compromise must be made to ensure the security of corporate data. This is where the use of the carrot comes into play.

While the BYOD trend was initially about allowing employees to use their mobile devices for work, the trend has shifted. Now you encourage your employees to use their devices because it makes them more productive anywhere, anytime. Whether your company is just allowing or actually encouraging employees to use their devices for work, you have to overcome the “hassle factor” and suspicions of company spying that deters them from EMM enrollment.

First, your Mobile COE must perform exhaustive due diligence to select the most unobtrusive EMM package available with the fewest steps to install that still meets your company’s needs. Next, this system must prohibit access to the systems, apps and data employees want most until they enroll. Some packages even limit access via MAM functionality. Anyway, if you want email, you have to enroll. If you want to access SharePoint, you have to enroll. You get the idea. Gives and gets.

Reduce risk to your business by restricting corporate system access to only those devices enrolled in an EMM solution. What is your company doing to prevent unmanaged devices from accessing sensitive data?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click here to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Reduce Corporate Expenses by Configuring Devices and Delivering Apps to Users with MDM

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When you’re ready to deploy #apps or provision Wi-Fi, certificates, VPN or email to #mobile devices, get an #EMM solution to provide #MDM.

With the basics of device-level security and policy enforcement covered by Exchange ActiveSync, you’re ready to take the next step in providing value to your employees. Extending access to PIM, delivering apps to devices and provisioning functionality over the air was the reason the earliest mobile device management (MDM) packages were built. I should know since I co-founded the first cloud-based MDM company back in 2003. The space has broadened significantly and is now referred to as enterprise mobility management (EMM) with an evolving set of features. The MDM component of EMM delivers:

  • Support for the most widely used mobile operating systems
  • Software lifecycle management that deploys, upgrades and retires apps
  • Operating system configuration management that enforces the IT policies applied to devices, monitors compliance and provides auditing
  • Simplifies users’ lives by provisioning pre-configured settings for email, VPN, Wi-Fi and certificates via profiles
  • Asset management and usage of devices and apps
  • Telecom expense management
  • Service management and remote helpdesk support capabilities
  • Scalability to support hundreds of thousands of devices

Reduce your expenses and improve user productivity by remotely configuring devices and delivering apps to users without needing additional support staff. What is your organization doing do help employees configure their mobile devices and get the apps they need?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click here to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Reduce Company Expenses and Enforce Mobile Security with Exchange Active Sync

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If you don’t have an Enterprise Mobility Management #EMM solution, start with Exchange Active Sync to enforce #mobile device policies and #security.

Baby steps. While you might not say Microsoft Exchange Server in the same breath as enterprise mobility management, this product has managed more devices than any other system over the last decade. Since most enterprises already use Active Directory for identity coupled with Exchange Server on-premises or via Office 365 in the cloud for email, calendar and contacts, this is a simple way to get started. A protocol called Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) that dates back to the Pocket PC and is used by virtually every mobile operating system to allow the magic to happen.

So what does this have to do with managing devices? Well, EAS helps secure smartphones and tablets via policy enforcement. This allows you to require PINs and passwords, device and storage card encryption, remote wipe for lost or stolen phones, and S/MIME email encryption, to name a few. It also lets you disable features like a phone’s camera, removable storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SMS and others. If you’ve worked in the public sector, this probably rings a bell.

If you think managing your mobile devices via Exchange ActiveSync is unorthodox, remember this was the only way to manage iPhones until iOS 4 and Android until version 2.2 was released. I think EAS facilitated the BYOD movement more than any other factor.

Reduce expenses and risk to your company by enforcing security policies on your mobile devices using the capabilities found in an email server you probably already own. What basic steps has your organization taken to enforce mobile security on smartphones and tablets?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click here to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Mobile Strategies for Business is Now Available

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I’m pleased to announce that my newest #book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform Your Business” is now available. #mobile

Mobile Strategies for Business is the first book to clearly explain how executives can digitally transform their organization through a simple, step-by-step process.

The mobile tidal wave has permanently transformed the consumer world and now it’s washing up on the shores of the enterprise. This drives the need for an enterprise mobile strategy to mobilize existing applicationsmodernize infrastructuresbuild new apps for employees and customers, and bring order to your environment via enterprise mobility management. Mobile Strategies for Business guides you through this transformation and drives positive outcomes including reducing expensesimproving employee productivityincreasing revenueboosting user engagement and reducing risk.

Based on the top 50 most important enterprise mobility concepts spanning four major topic areas, Mobile Strategies for Business is the first book to clearly explain how to digitally transform your business through a simple, step-by-step process.

You’ll learn how to address the following organizational challenges:

  • How to transform IT infrastructures that are wholly unprepared to deliver on the promise of Mobile and IoT for employees and customers. Learn how to enhance performance, scalability, bandwidth and security to support today’s mobile and cloud workloads.
  • How to reconcile the convergence of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon and the need to keep corporate data secure. Learn how to support the flexible work styles of your mobile employees while keeping everything safe.
  • How to migrate the millions of out-of-date, insecure and unsupported desktop and Web 1.0 apps that currently run global business to run on modern mobile platforms. Learn how to unchain your line of business apps and web sites from the desktop and move them to the mobile devices your employees actually use.
  • How to rapidly build mobile enterprise apps that run on any platform and work with data from any backend system. Learn how to mobile-enable your existing systems and data to empower your mobile employees and reach out to your mobile customers.
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Mobile Strategies for Business is a project plan and an implementation guide allowing your organization to digitally transform so it can ride the mobile wave to employee and customer success. Along the way, it builds a future-looking foundation that prepares your organization for successive technology tidal waves that will impact your business, workforce and customers.

What is your organization doing define and execute on a mobile strategy? It’s time to empower your mobile workforce.

Click to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Windows Mobile Provisioner

Mobile Provisioner: Data Connections

In the Spring of 2006, I created a Mobile Device Management (MDM) package for Microsoft called Windows Mobile Provisioner.  It was used by Microsoft IT (MSIT) to rapidly provision and manage Windows Mobile devices / smartphones for our employees in the years before we developed and shipped System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008.  I drew on my experience in designing, developing, shipping, marketing, and selling the NetPerceptor MDM package for the cloud (Level 3) back in 2003 with my co-founder Darren.  Of course, OMA DM and CSPs made creating an MDM system much easier in 2006.

Windows Mobile Provisioner fully integrated with Active Directory to allow the management of policies, settings, and over-the-air (OTA) software distribution based on Microsoft users and groups.  As you might imagine, there was a Management and Reporting dashboard as well as a mobile client for user self-service.

The first image below shows the client app where a user could rapidly configure Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) from a single screen:

Mobile Provisioner: Exchange Settings

The second image below shows the client app’s ability to configure the data connections for different mobile operators globally:

Mobile Provisioner: Data Connections

The last image below shows how the client app allowed users to change the themes of their smartphone:

Mobile Provisioner: Device Themes

Of course, my MDM solution sent health metrics as well as device and app inventory to the server for analysis.  Administrators could push out patches, anti-virus definitions, ROM packages, and other software to selected devices.  Apps could also be remotely uninstalled.  In addition to the features described in the images above, the rich client app that accompanied the MDM agent gave users the ability to view and download apps, ring tones, and other content made available to users and groups via Active Directory security. I certainly hope the MDM solution your company is using “at least” does all the stuff I just mentioned from a long time ago.

It was a great experience being an early pioneer in the Mobile Device Management (MDM) space; and the first to do it in the cloud at the beginning of the 21st century.  Back then, I could count all the MDM competitors on my two hands.  Fast-forward to 2012, I think there’s over 100 different players in this space.  The majority of them are indistinguishable from each other as they all target the identical MDM APIs exposed by iOS and Android.  As usual, differentiation will be invented by marketers.

Good Times,

Rob

Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany