* Mobile operators tackle device- and network-agnostic mobility issues
Managing mobility is getting dizzyingly complex as more mobile operating systems roll out, and both corporate- and employee-owned devices make their way into the enterprise. The latest strides in this area come from Verizon Business, which has expanded a comprehensive mobility management service it launched last year with a development platform, and AT&T, which has just introduced a service to be available by the end of the month.
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Various approaches to mobility management are out there from countless disparate parties — security companies, mobility management start-ups, carriers and telecom expense management companies, to name a few. Some suppliers tackle one specific aspect of the mobility quagmire, while others provide more comprehensive platforms that hit some or most of the bases.
The key aspects of mobility enterprises are trying to rein in, often across differing mobile OSs and network services, are:
* Overall policy enforcement
* Security (of which there are many subsets)
* Device provisioning/deprovisioning
* Asset management and tracking
* Wireless expense management
* Troubleshooting/diagnostics
* Performance monitoring
For its part, Verizon has expanded its comprehensive Managed Mobility Solutions portfolio, announced in September 2009, with a development platform it calls its Mobile Services Enablement Platform, or MSEP.
Verizon’s MSEP is built on the Sybase Unwired Platform and aims at simplifying the deployment of applications across multiple carriers and devices, says Cliff Cibelli, a product marketing and development group manager at Verizon.
It does so using customizable application-development templates that can be tailored to create new business-specific applications. In addition, the platform is already integrated with enterprise software applications such as Siebel, SAP, Oracle, Remedy, Salesforce.com and Amdocs. The aim is for users to have a similar experience whether accessing these apps from an office or remotely, according to the company.
And AT&T has announced MobileIron Virtual Smartphone Platform (VSP), a service based on start-up MobileIron’s platform that the carrier expects to be available at the end of the month. MobileIron supports the gamut of mobility management aspects described above across Apple’s iOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm WebOS and BlackBerry operating systems. Android support is “coming soon,” according to the company’s Web site.
