Do enterprises really need an MDM solution when they already have a solution for laptop and desktop management?

Post edited by: MJJoseph, at: 2007/05/31 03:40

Yes they do increasingly and rapidly as smartphones are becoming more widely used within the enterprise segment. Already today a company employee can purchase a mobile device that has bluetooth, Wifi connectivity and mass storage in which they can store lot of corporate data into them. This naturally will expose in negative terms a security risk for the company since so much confidental company data can be carried out from the premises and the mobile device can be lost or stolen hence there needs to be as good DM solution for the mobile devices as there are for laptops and servers in the future so that the smartphones can become true corporate assets since there are lot of benefits for enterprises to utilize mobile devices starting from push email/calendar sync to some great solutions for field workers like bar code readers, RFID etc. that are already widely used in the corporate segment. With good MDM solution an enterprise can support and do problem solving on behalf of the field workers if an error arises. I could go on and on with examples both for productivity and security reasons but there is a definitive need for enterprise MDM.

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Post edited by: mterhonen, at: 2007/11/23 15:24

What they probably need is a securely-locked down handset that can be secured remotely, and use push-mail to allow access to corporate data that's stored on the company network, rather than the handset wherever possible.

There's a big problem at the moment in enterprise from users unofficially storing a fair bit of sensitive corporate data on non-company-approved handhelds, given the commonness of MS Exchange/Outlook synchronisation - a stolen or lost phone can provide an awful lot of info that a corporation wouldn't want to get out into the public domain. Even apparently harmless data such as phone contacts are useful to a social engineering hacker...

Ric