Mobile Device Management Made Easy and Affordable
As workplaces become increasingly mobile, with employees of all types
using company issued and personally owned mobile devices to perform
their jobs, managing and securing these devices has become a
mission-critical task.
IT managers are keenly aware of the need to ensure the
security of their information from back-end to the frontlines. As it
relates to mobility, they must protect against security breaches that
might occur if mobile devices are misused, stolen or penetrated by
cyber criminals. Safeguarding the integrity of data collected and
maintained in the course of doing business is not just a good and
necessary business practice, but in many cases it is required by
industry or government regulations.
This challenge is not unlike the challenge IT departments
faced when desktop PCs and later notebooks first appeared on the scene.
It’s a bit more complicated, though, given the rapid mobile worker
population growth rate in today’s enterprises (projected by some to
exceed 70 percent of the US workforce by 2011). Add to that the growing
diversity of mobile devices, applications and wireless connectivity
that are in use, and the lack of mobile technology skill sets in many
IT departments and you can understand the burden this challenge can
place on companies.
MobiDM was launched to make it easy and affordable for
organizations to address this critical challenge through the creation
of a hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) mobile device management
solution powered by Sybase iAnywhere’s Afaria device management and
security product. MobiDM provides IT departments with ready-to-go,
comprehensive management and security capabilities that ensure that
mobile data and devices are up-to-date, reliable and secure.
A Unique
Business Opportunity Presents Itself
“Our company began as a software development firm that was focused on
developing mobile device management solutions for large clients such as
government agencies, large banks and others,” explains Alex Bausch, CEO
of the company behind MobiDM. “We developed and implemented a number of
these solutions for clients in our first couple of years in business.
Eventually, we were contacted by a few companies including Vodafone,
the world's leading mobile telecommunications company, with a
significant presence in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific
and the United States, Capgemini and KPN/Getronics, the leading
telecommunications and ICT service provider in The Netherlands. They
asked us if we could develop a managed service that would enable them
to offer their customers mobile device management and security quickly
and easily without the customers having to install and manage any
hardware or software. Essentially, they were looking for simplicity,
reliability and a low total cost of ownership.”
These, and eventually many other companies, simply didn’t have
the mobile technology skill sets and other resources required to create
and maintain their own solutions. Additionally, they preferred to focus
the resources they did have on their core businesses while still being
able to offer customers an easy and affordable way to secure and manage
the devices in use across their companies.
In these requests from Vodafone, KPN/Getronics and others,
MobiDM saw a unique business opportunity – a way to offer businesses of
all sizes an easy method for managing their devices without adding IT
staff, without incurring substantial development and equipment costs
and without interfering or inconveniencing end-users.
Solving Three
Key Issues
“As we thought about this,” says Bausch, “we decided we wanted to solve
three issues with MobiDM. First, we wanted to develop a solution that
would not burden customers or require them to hire employees to manage
the management solution. Second, we wanted the solution to provide
easy-to-use, transparent functionality to enable enforcement of
security policies, over-the-air software distribution and application
and data updates. We also needed the solution to provide device
configuration monitoring and enforcement, multiple device support and
the scalability to support the ever growing number of devices in use in
today’s enterprises. And finally, we wanted to do all of this without
requiring an upfront investment by our customers. I believe we’ve been
successful in doing all of this.”
MobiDM: A Closer
Look
In conceptualizing this managed solution, MobiDM envisioned a mobility
management platform with a Web portal interface that would utilize a
SaaS delivery model and be as easy to use as a typical electronic
banking solution while providing a clear, predictable cost of ownership.
“We knew from the start that we needed a proven, robust and
scalable mobile device management product to power our MobiDM
offering,” says Bausch. “Because we knew how critical that would be to
our success, we researched a dozen different options. This exhaustive
research led us to the conclusion that only Afaria from Sybase
iAnywhere could deliver the range of functionality, the multi-platform
support and the ability to mesh well with our SaaS strategy that we
required.”
The MobiDM solution consists of a portal interface and the
Afaria client software running on the handheld devices. These connect
to Afaria servers running on VMware virtual servers at the company’s
consolidated server farm via a variety of wireless connections
including GPRS/EDGE/3G,W-LAN e.g. 802.11b/g, Infrared and Bluetooth.
A Unique
Co-Development Relationship
Beyond selecting Afaria as the mobile device management and security
solution to power its managed solution, MobiDM established a unique
relationship with Sybase iAnywhere in which the two companies
collaborated in the development process. This is an ongoing
co-development relationship, which is proving quite productive. MobiDM
is able to upgrade the solution frequently to support new devices and
deliver additional functionality such as telecom expense management and
the scheduled delivery of audio and video files to users’
smartphones.
The company’s user base is growing at a rate of about a
thousand new devices each month. This growth, which MobiDM attributes
to its significant value proposition, continues apace with the company
expecting to be providing hosted management services to a million
mobile users before too long. This shouldn’t be a problem given the
kudos the company has received from its customers.
Satisfied
Customers
Eric van Daatselaar, Product Portfolio Marketeer at Vodafone
Netherlands says, “MobiDM is a vital part of our Windows Mobile E-mail
proposition – a SaaS solution aimed at our enterprise customers. MobiDM
gives us the opportunity to offer our customers control, management and
security over all their smartphones out in the field including the
settings of mobile connectivity from the smartphones to the ICT
environment. MobiDM supports the productivity of the mobile employees
for an attractive cost per month. So naturally, Vodafone Netherlands is
very enthusiastic about MobiDM!"
Edwin Pastoors, data and telecom manager of ONVZ, a Dutch
health-insurance company, comments, “We were looking for a solution to
secure and manage our smartphones. In MobiDM we found the solution. The
software has minimum impact on the device performance and is very user
friendly. We were also attracted by the company’s business model which
requires no upfront investment or any maintenance on our part. We are
very satisfied with the service.”
MobiDM + Sybase
iAnywhere = Success
“I believe that our success is due largely to the fact that we are
meeting a very pressing need,” says Bausch. “Organizations have
embraced mobile technology because it delivers clear and compelling
benefits including increased employee productivity, reduced operational
costs, improved data collection and accuracy, the ability to seize
opportunities where and when they present themselves and to strengthen
relationships with customers and business partners.
“Business and IT managers at organizations also know it is
essential that mobile devices be manageable and secure,” adds Bausch.
“What they want is a solution that works, that requires no up-front
investment on their part, that is easy to use and that delivers a
return on their investment. As long as we continue to meet or exceed
those expectations, I believe MobiDM will be successful. Sybase
iAnywhere is an invaluable partner and we look forward to that
partnership continuing and evolving as our business grows.”
