The emergence of Cloud and Mobility technologies has overhauled the way operational duties are performed; it has presented a situation wherein businesses globally are adopting the Bring-your-own-device model, allowing the employees to access corporate applications and data anywhere, anytime, and on whichever device they choose. While enterprise mobility has many advantages, it can easily be exploited to compromise business data, apps, and devices if it is not managed and secured effectively. In order to meet the mobility security challenges, businesses are opting for reliable strategies to help them govern, manage, and safeguard their device fleets; Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions bridge the gap by fulfilling these requirements. MDM allows an organization to monitor, secure, and control the fleet of mobile devices deployed in a single console.
Implementing mobility infrastructure can pose various critical challenges for businesses such as data security, policy compliances, etc.; which is why choosing an MDM solution that caters to the smooth transition needs becomes prime. Businesses ought to conduct a comprehensive requirement analysis and feasibility assessment before choosing an MDM solution. In the aftermath of the analysis, the company can create a comprehensive report with its pain points for deeper analysis. To determine whether an MDM solution is appropriate for your business, you need to weigh both its pros and cons.
To ensure enterprises choose the right MDM solution, we have listed down nine mistakes for decision-making that the enterprises can avoid while choosing an MDM solution for their business.
1. Buying solutions that aren’t future-proofed
Businesses can hand-pick between MDM solutions hosted on the premises (on your network) or hosted in the cloud (off your network) while choosing one for themselves. The type of MDM solution your organization will require will depend on operational needs and any regulations it may be subject to. It is imperative to understand where the servers are located if you opt for cloud-based solutions; their provisioning structure and the scalability opportunities. To prevent any shortsighted contingency, time-consuming upgrades, painful re-implementations, or getting stuck with a solution that hinders the organization’s growth, these mistakes become important to reconcile and avoid while doing market research.
Moreover, avoid choosing an MDM solution that hinders the company’s growth by sticking to selected features and doesn’t continually add new features to existing functionality. Change is continuing apace. In order to remain competitive, companies require future-proof MDM solutions. In other words, an MDM suite should be agile enough to respond to the extensive business changes, no matter if it is exploring new market opportunities, revamping business models, or is undergoing rapid growth.
2. Unexpected hidden charges
There are several MDM vendors that charge businesses annually per device whereas others offer a “per user” option wherein businesses can import an unlimited number of devices per user with additional costs than the former package. Businesses evaluate their capital expenditure costs based on the pricing options available and choose the one ideal for their business needs.
However, some of these vendors bill hidden unexpected charges to the businesses separate from the device/user fees for support/maintenance. It becomes imperative for businesses to preemptively evaluate and eliminate choosing an MDM vendor that doesn’t offer a transparent pricing structure between the licenses and maintenance.
By obtaining an accurate pricing structure including the license fees as well as the administrative costs associated with obtaining the license, tech support, and maintenance empowers the businesses to perform a cost analysis and choose the best MDM solution catering to their mobility transition.
3. Non-flexible user experience
MDM solutions primarily function on device enrollment and enforcement of pre-determined corporate policies and restrictions on those devices, subject to the OS supported – Android, iOS, macOS, or Windows. These functionalities are formulated on frameworks created by the software developers specific to OS platform compatibility. It governs the guidelines on how the devices can or cannot be enrolled and managed.
In most MDM solutions, all developer frameworks are supported, allowing seamless device enrollment and policy enforcement across a vast assortment of OS platforms. Other solutions are limited to a specific operating system and have limited capabilities, such as the inability to provide user-specific enrollment methods.
It is wise for businesses to go with an MDM provider that is platform agnostic and supports diversified OS platforms to manage the fleet of devices compatible with business needs. Moreover, also the one that offers businesses the flexibility of end-users automated device enrollment, self-enrollment, and self-service for basic support.
4. Absence of after-sales services and technical support
In evaluating and selecting new solutions and services, many organizations take into account technical support and after-sales services. It becomes a costly and time-consuming affair for businesses to invest in MDM solution vendors that fail to offer technical and onboarding training sessions to make them familiar with the features and utilities bundled.
Additionally, research for MDM vendors that tend to amplify your business growth by empowering your sales team with manual training sessions. Avoid considering MDM vendors that don’t facilitate you with benefits such as proof of concept, pre-sales demo, and migration plans for contingent use-cases.
If you plan to manage different types of devices (operating in different platforms such as Android, iOS, macOS, & Windows), look for vendors who offer multiple tiers of support options. Verify the service level agreements for each option as well as the support available in different regions and languages.
5. Absence of information privacy & compliance transparency
The majority of organizations operate under a strict compliance regime according to their business standards, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and require all MDM services to meet these requirements.
A transparent and reliable MDM solution that empowers your organization to generate user and device reports, along with security logs (adhering to the business compliances) on demand within a few clicks can be an ideal choice for you.
An MDM solution might not be beneficial for your business if it fails to meet your business compliance regulations in terms of tracking devices fleets and security event logging, as well as providing insights to aid audits and incident response steps. Moreover, MDM vendors should make the vendors’ data management policies transparent with their business partners in an upfront manner to establish mutual trust when it comes to sensitive data storage and handling.
6. Non-integration of third-party applications
More than 90% of companies use third-party apps as part of their mobility strategy, according to a Gartner report1. There are certain MDM vendors who work cooperatively with an assorted range of app vendors to ensure greater flexibility and security when businesses choose their MDM products for deployment.
Integrating an MDM solution with a third-party application seamlessly in the existing mobility ecosystem is critical to protecting new technology investments and avoiding iterative rewriting.
In addition, most MDM solutions offer the option of integrating on-premises, cloud-based and hybrid applications. Businesses IT experience to improve significantly if the MDM platform add-ons the integration with other management, support and reporting tools.
For example, businesses may integrate Active Directory with Azure/Office 365 or use proprietary single sign-on (SSO) support on selected device profiles to leverage their company’s directory services infrastructure with hands-on administration.
7. Over and under-secured governance – Data Security
In order to prevent corporate data breaches, leakage or even compromisation, organizations should have the ability to enforce pre-determined corporate and security policies on devices fleet and prevent vulnerable or unprotected devices from accessing sensitive information in an unauthorized manner. The security policies for each business differ, and you should have the authority to tailor such frameworks to fit the mitigation of risk associated with particular device activities.
For instance, question yourself this: does the device require a unique passcode to be protected? Has encryption been enabled? How old and what version of the OS and browser are you running and are they configured and patched appropriately? By monitoring device security status, you can decide if an out-of-date or vulnerable device should or shouldn’t be allowed access.
Consider an MDM solution that provides you with a comprehensive insight into the security posture of all the managed devices. Attempt to not weigh your scale for one that prevents your governance to enforce predetermined corporate security policies as an administrator rather than prescribing the MDM vendor to push policies.
8. MDM vendors not offering unified visibility
The vast majority of solutions for endpoint visibility are siloed. In most cases, they are exclusively designed for Windows, Macs, or mobile devices. Having a separate solution that is tailored to each platform results in dwindling productivity and major administration headaches.
Business owners need to avoid the biggest mistake of not embracing a single mobile device management solution. Having a unified MDM solution in place can enable the IT admins to deep-dive into the visibility of accurate and real-time data of managed devices under a single console. As a consequence, they are in a position to anticipate and react to changes that could impact their predetermined security policies and reduce administrative complexities.
9. MDM vendors not offering Inventory Management
There are several MDM vendors that lack the ability to provide detailed information on the fleet of device inventory and manually reconciling and recording the data can be cumbersome and time-consuming for most IT enterprises. MDM solution providing device inventory feature facilitates businesses with entire device’s vital information on demand and eliminates the burden of device lifecycle management.
Take into account mobility solutions that empower your business to identify all the managed devices accessing the mobility environment; tag assets specific to users and track devices assigned, active devices allocated, and the applications deployed.
Closing lines…
Enterprise mobility solutions should not only focus on what is provided today but also anticipate where the development will lead. In addition to being relevant to current and future scenarios, the mobile device management solution must also be cost-effective. To ensure an adequate level of support for your enterprise mobility implementations, it is of utmost importance to not avoid the testing of potential Mobile Device Management solutions for usability and user reactions.
The features you need most should be included from the beginning, even if MDM software can generally be customized to meet a company’s particular needs. Scalefusion is one of the most reliable MDM solutions that values enterprise innovation and adaptability.
We invite businesses of any size to try out our MDM solution for 14 days for free to see how it works, how affordable it is, how scalable it is, and how responsive the support is.
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