AT&T Smartphones Get Smarter w/ Microsoft MDM

AT&T (News - Alert) Inc. is announcing that the Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 (MDM) is now available to business customers who use smartphones running Windows Mobile 6.1

 

In conjunction, AT&T also announced the availability of the MDM Early Adopter QuickStart Program, developed cooperatively by AT&T and Enterprise Mobile and designed to assist AT&T customers with deploying the Microsoft mobility solution.

 

“Quite simply, Mobile Device Manager (News - Alert) will allow our corporate customers to get significantly more value from their Windows Mobile phone deployments,” said Michael Woodward, vice president, business voice/data and wireless products for AT&T’s wireless operation. “Through Mobile Device Manager, our customers’ mobile employees now have access to a greater degree of information through their smartphones to make them even more productive, while also providing at the IT level the security and device management capabilities that our customers require.”

 

MDM is an enterprise-grade mobile device management solution that provides security, mobile Virtual Private Network (VPN) and software distribution for Windows Mobile devices. MDM is natively supported by the latest version of the Windows Mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.1

 

Windows Mobile 6.1 is now available for free download to AT&T Tilt and MOTO Q Global smartphones from AT&T, which has the broadest portfolio of Windows Mobile devices of any U.S. carrier. Additional new smartphones launched by AT&T later this year will feature Windows Mobile 6.1 with support for MDM.

 

With MDM, customers using Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphones now have secured access to applications, files, corporate data and other information located on the corporate network and previously inaccessible without a secure VPN connection. For example, customers can now access information such as price sheets, marketing collateral and legal documents on the corporate network – items that were often previously available only through PCs or laptops.

 

MDM also gives the corporate information technology (IT) departments of AT&T customers that use Microsoft (News - Alert) software’s new security and management tools that work well with existing infrastructure investments, such as Active Directory and SQL Server. MDM’s tight integration into Active Directory extends group policy management capabilities to Windows Mobile smartphones. This integration allows IT managers to manage smartphones similar to the way they manage desktop computers, making them first-class citizens on the corporate network.

 

“Microsoft is committed to providing businesses with powerful, familiar and flexible mobile solutions, and we’ve extended the management capabilities for IT professionals with Mobile Device Manager,” said Stephanie Ferguson, general manager of mobile communications business, Microsoft. “We applaud AT&T and Enterprise Mobile for creating the Early Adopter QuickStart Program so that their business customers can more immediately deploy and benefit from Mobile Device Manager and Windows Mobile 6.1 phones.”

 

Microsoft System Center MDM 2008 is available through Microsoft resellers. The MDM Early Adopter QuickStart Program is available through a co-sale arrangement between AT&T and Enterprise Mobile. For the complete array of AT&T offerings, visit http://www.att.com.

Eve Sullivan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Eve's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Eve Sullivan