TMCnews Featured Article
April 08, 2013
HP Enables a New Approach to MDM
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Any enterprise today that doesn’t have an opinion on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) may be behind the times. For those who may not support BYOD today, we are here to tell you that its introduction may be inevitable.
To help companies get a better handle on this concept, HP has introduced HP Enterprise Cloud Services Mobility. Mobile device management (MDM), whether devices are employee owned or not, is critical in today’s mobile economy. This latest addition for HP expands its Converged Cloud portfolio.
Services offered through HP Enterprise Cloud Services Mobility include an enterprise store, file storage, granular policies and support of a wide range of mobile platforms. Maintenance of the mobile infrastructure takes place atop HP’s VPC (virtual private cloud) offering. Customers won’t have an on-premise option if they prefer to contain everything within their own data centers.
Users can readily download applications from a secure storefront, synchronize files between mobile devices and the HP cloud infrastructure and more. Admins can easily scale cloud file storage to match their internal needs, although local storage is not available. To support MDM, mobile data is always encrypted, whether at rest or in transit.
Management Essentials, a key component within HP’s offering, extends cloud-based management for mobile devices and applications. This MDM solution ensures mobile security and native-application management by way of centrally configured and supported policies. Over-the-air provisioning is included, as well as certificate-based enforcement of all policies and administrative lockdown controls.
Another component of the platform, Cloud File Management, enables users to easily sync, store and even share data securely by way of the cloud. All data is accessible across all devices, and offline access to all folders and files is also enabled. A Local Storage feature provides access for IT to store data in the HP cloud locations or on-premise.
In the quest to accept mobile trends as they relate to the enterprise, corporations continue to explore different avenues. It can be difficult to trust a third party with the management and maintenance of mission-critical platforms. On the other hand, is mobility something to embrace without assistance from a provider who has already weathered the storm?
HP positions the solution in support of its MDM efforts and as a way to ensure the enterprise can lower costs while still protecting information, applications, users and even the network. Security will be top of mind for those considering the platform and HP will have to demonstrate the robustness of its offering.
More likely than not, the data centers at play here are more secure than those currently used by a number of companies making the move to mobility, putting more value in the third party approach.
Edited by Ashley Caputo
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