In the era of bring your own device (BYOD) money saving policies, the importance of mobile device management software has never been greater. IT managers are scratching their heads at device management tasks for hundreds of devices. Mobile device management software (also called mdm software) is an enterprise IT solution that helps manage and secure mobile devices (Blackberry, iPhone, Android, tablets) that have sensitive corporate data on them.
By 2014 the number of employee owned mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) that are used by for business work will more than double. According to Juniper Research, there will be 350 million personal mobile devices in the workplace compared to 150 million this year. These staggering numbers make device management and mobile device management systems even more essential.
Over 70 percent of businesses that encourage staff to BYOD have no specific security policies or procedures for device management, according to a recent study. IT managers haven not yet embraced the power of mdm software.
Say an employee loses their iPhone with all of their email and passwords saved on it. That would normally be an IT manager’s nightmare. But mobile device management software can be employed to remotely erase sensitive corporate data. Just tap into the stray iPhone using computer software and wipe out all of its sensitive data without ever having to see the device in the flesh. This kind of device management is a dream for those tenuous security breach moments.
The beauty of mobile device management is that most providers are cloud based, meaning everything can be accessed and managed via the Internet. These services are cheaper, faster, and more scalable than on premises services that often require the handling of each and every single device. Imagine how long mobile management would take to update software on 300 devices at once? Organzing those kinds of in person tasks are hard enough with desktop computers, let alone personal devices that are moving around with their owners at all times. Mobile device management just makes these large tasks tremendously easier all around and more cost effective.
With over 1.2 billion people accessing the web from their smartphones and over 250 million Android based smartphones being used around the world, device management is becoming a must have protocol. Using web access as a way to update and manage devices is a clearly smart and efficient IT solution for everyone, including the device users.