With the explosion of mobile devices being introduced to corporate networks, more and more companies by the minute are realizing the importance of having an efficient mobile device management strategy in place.
Recently, a guide published by Australia-based independent telecoms analyst firm Ovum highlighted the fact that businesses are moving away from BlackBerry (News - Alert) devices and the rise of the bring your own device phenomenon is helping to make mobile device management one of the hottest markets for enterprise IT.
The company’s informative guide offers an accelerated approach for any enterprise to leverage in order to select the right MDM vendor, or for a vendor to competitively benchmark its own capabilities or partnership strategy.
According to the research, CIOs are constantly faced with the challenge of having to manage and secure data, while exploiting the innovation and productivity benefits that embracing major smartphone platforms can deliver.
The technology analyst also reveals that no longer is MDM purely the domain of specialist enterprise mobility vendors. Vendors from different backgrounds are looking to grab clients in this market as it becomes a gateway to a larger enterprise managed mobility industry. However, owing to the limitations of the major OS platforms, some vendors and enterprises are not able to implement consistent remote management and data security strategies.
“Protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of corporate information, is a key concern of the IT department,” explains Richard Absalom, analyst at Ovum (News - Alert), in a press release. “We’re seeing vendors rush to exploit the fact that most organizations do not have the required resources or expertise to simultaneously manage corporate data on multiple platforms. However, the limitations and lack of available APIs on these platforms are often the key factors stopping third-party vendors from providing exactly the same data security features across every OS.”
Further, some interesting data collected by Ovum from major MDM vendors shows that in the workplace, Apple’s (News - Alert) iOS is the preferred platform, with 40 percent of these devices managed on MDM platforms by enterprises. A company that knows this fact all too well is California-based MobileIron. To find out more, click here.
Edited by Jamie Epstein