MDM: A necessary means to manage enterprise devices
Mobile Device Management plays a crucial role in any organization that supports the modern workforce mobility and supporting solutions like BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and managed mobility, which offer a secure, controlled, and flexible work environment like working beyond business hours, from remote locations, or field-based jobs.
Enterprises need MDM solutions to protect sensitive corporate data and applications, manage and monitor mobile devices used for business, en-masse security updates, policies and deployments on devices, remote management of real-time device tracking. Read the article to know what MDM traditionally offers, why it should evolve and where is it heading in the future.
According to Zion Research Analysis 2016 – Global MDM revenue is expected to rise from USD 1.35 Million in 2015 to 5.15 Million in 2021
Future Marketing Insights, report on Mobile device management Market: Global Industry Analysis 2013 – 2017 and Opportunity Assessment 2018 – 2028, predicts, global MDM market size to register a global CAGR of 22.9% during 2018 – 2028.
Today, MDM is Evolving with More Capabilities
Traditional MDM solutions provided capabilities like device provisioning, policy enforcement, asset management, administration, and reporting. But a modern-day cloud-based Enterprise Mobile Device Management solution like Scalefusion has evolved to support many more features like:
- Containerization: A clear separation between corporate assets and personal assets (data and apps) on the same mobile device. This ensures a successful BYOD program wherein corporate assets cannot be accessed without proper authentication, neither the enterprise IT admin can inspect the personal data and content.
- Remote control and data wipe: It’s a much-needed feature that Scalefusion supports to ensure real-time remediation of devices by gaining control over the device remotely from a single dashboard. In the case of device loss or theft, the organization can wipe the workspace container or the enterprise data of the entire mobile device.
- Mobile Application Management and Mobile Content Management: Modern MDM solutions offer MAM to help manage and control the purchase, management, distribution and deployment of bulk apps and MCM to facilitate seamless and secured sharing of enterprise content and data across managed devices.
Here, we should be aware that most companies are offering these capabilities and hence there is an ongoing competition amongst MDM players in the market. However, the new buzzword is Enterprise Mobility Management that combines the best parts of MDM, MCM, Identity and Access Management and MAM, and the popularity of UEM can also not be ignored. So, to sustain the fluctuations, MDM needs to evolve into something better and bigger!
Tomorrow, MDM is Going to be a Highly Competitive Market
Vendors today offer a lot of features in their MDM arsenal, but they compete not only with each other but are also pitted against the PC management giants like Microsoft’s Systems Center and Windows Intune, Dell KACE, LanDesk, etc., endpoint security vendors (Symantec, McAfee, etc.) and even network management vendors (Juniper, Cisco, etc.) who are expanding their domain to MDM solutions.
The competition will be fierce for pure-play MDM vendors and the future can be predicted with the following influences:
- Rising competition: Competition from mobile OS vendors, device manufacturers who have started offering containerization and other services as a part of the core platform.
- Security challenges with IoT devices: IoT devices like wearables are making inroads into an enterprise ecosystem and they are easy to configure and enroll in a network. Hence, they might pose serious security challenges like:
->Difficulty in tracking down the total number of IoT devices in corporate network their
->The ease of connecting to any network makes them susceptible to malware
->Most security solutions do not address IoT device enrollment, management, and control.
- Advanced Persistent Threats: MDM solutions strategy should include the management of Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), as the mobile endpoints are an easy target for stealth activities. Monitoring each endpoint, logging all user activity, and analyzing threat patterns to generate alerts and updating virus definitions must be a top priority to prevent any security lapse.
- Deep Packet Inspection: Some MDM providers have started offering advanced features like deep packet inspection to examine the content to identify specific applications or services they come from and tackle malicious traffic.
- Google Android Enterprise Recommended: Vendors meeting Google’s specifications of the hardware and android security features will have an edge over others when they pitch their solutions to businesses.
- Diverse devices with varied configurations: Devices like smartwatches, smart glasses, and other wearables have already entered the mobile workforce making organizations migrate towards full-blown Unified Endpoint Management suites that offer a centralized device management platform.
So, is It the End of MDM?
MDM is not dead. During these emerging market concepts, newly-coined terms and customer expectations, MDM needs to evolve into something more relevant, agile and stronger. It will ultimately aim to converge all these capabilities into one single solution that can easily be integrated into the existing or transforming enterprise technologies, IT system management, communications software or workforce management tools to drive interoperability, synergy, productivity, cost-efficient IT processes, and excellent decision-making across teams.
According to Tim Williams, the Vice President of Global Marketing and Product Strategy at FileWave, “The struggle to define best practices for MDM and client management continues to this day…All we need to worry about is how these devices will be managed.”
