Enterprise IT changed substantively when smartphones and tablet computers caught fire. No longer was it just the stray employee who brought their laptop into work, perhaps taking a spreadsheet or three home with them. With rise of smartphones, employees now began conducting a fair amount of work on their personal phone.

Not to mention the range or corporate-sponsored devices that also has exploded as workers have demanded more both from mobile solutions and a wider range of solutions. The days of just having to support a fleet of Blackberries for upper management is gone.

As the problem has become endemic, software vendors have developed solutions such as mobile device management (MDM). MDM secures, monitors, manages and supports mobile devices, helping enterprise IT regain some measure of control.

MDM solutions often push applications, settings and data to devices across the enterprise.

But it slowly is being recognized that MDM is not enough, which has spawned a new acronym IT departments will want to know: EMM, also known as enterprise mobility management.

MDM is about locking down devices, while EMM is more about working with what enters the enterprise mobility space. It is riding the wave, not fighting against it.

“EMM is an emerging, holistic approach to managing mobile devices that incorporates and transcends mobile device management, mobile app management and other software for managing mobile assets,” said Mike Anderson in a recent statement, president and co-founder, Aragon Research.

Effective EMM includes the ability to empower workers with a single, central web console for managing mobile devices, and delivers a safe, scalable mobile device management solution with over-the-air capabilities to control users, their devices, and the mobile apps that provide continuous access to mission critical corporate data and services. It enables remote provisioning and granular security for enforcing policies, protecting enterprise data and allowing remote locking and wiping of data on lost or stolen devices.

Further, it needs to empower the workers with self-service options.

“One thing vendors must do is to recognize the expansion into EMM, and shift their focus from MDM price to overall mobile management to align with the requirements on enterprise short lists,” added Anderson.

Anderson will be speaking on the topic of EMM and why MDM is not enough during a webinar on May 8 at 1pm EDT. Sponsored by Smith Micro Software (News - Alert), the talk is entitled, “The MDM Fallacy: One Size Does Not Fit All.” You can register for the webinar here.