Mobile Device Management

Overview of Mobile Device Management Solutions

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is an industry term describing solutions that facilitate the remote management of mobile devices. Typically mobile devices could be laptops, personal digital assistants (PDA's), rugged data collection devices and smart phones. Most of the mobile device management solutions focus on the PDA and the smart phone population, given the general difficulty of managing these small highly mobile devices.

The common denominator with these various types of devices is they typically have some type of micro operating system that allows them to run software applications. The current leaders in mobile device operating systems are Microsoft, Palm, RIM Blackberry and Symbian (the last two focus primarily on smart phones).

In the past these devices have been extremely popular for running applications that manage personal information (PIM) such as contacts, addresses, calendar and email. As these operating systems have become more powerful and the prices have decreased combined with the commoditization of wireless internet access (WiFi, GSM/GPRS, CDMA, etc.), these devices are becoming essential tools for the enterprise. Today you can find a variety of applications available for inventory/asset management, field force automation, and even micro applications that have access to customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. In general, businesses are recognizing that these mobile devices are becoming the last frontier of enterprise computing, or as Kevin Price (CEO AccuCode) likes to say, mobile devices are becoming the"finger tips of an enterprise system".

The Cost of Mobility

The industry analysts generally agree that the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a mobile device is around $3000 to $4000 per year, and may be even higher if the device is used in industrial environments. This cost is quite a bit higher that the TCO of laptop and desktop computers, primarily because these devices are very mobile, they may not have regular network connectivity, and they are easily lost, stolen, or damaged.

Given the potential of enterprise mobility solutions, it is generally agreed that having a mobile device management solution is essential for the successful implementation and execution of a mobility solution.

Remote Device Management

Most mobile device management solutions will provide variations of the following remote functionality:

• Asset Management, the ability to view and group devices by location, device type or some other type of category
• Software Management, remotely assigning software to the devices with the ability to provide software updates or patch management
• Configuration Management, provides the administrator with the ability to configure the settings and registry entries within their device population
• Performance & Diagnostics, some of the MDM vendors will provide information about the health of your devices, including memory, battery, and network information, with reporting and alert capabilities
• Back-up & Restore a Device, this is essential for lowering the TOC of your devices, the device needs to be able to bring itself "back to life" in case of a hard-reset or some other type of device tragedy. Some MDM vendors will allow you to back up files and folders from the device
• Security Management, some of the MDM solutions will allow you to enforce power-on-password, others can even provide remote locking of the device if it is stolen or lost, or even provide the ability to wipe clean all corporate data stored on that device