* Pulling mobility together organizationally
Mobile device management (MDM) is quickly becoming a formidable chore as the use of smartphones ramps up. As mentioned in the last newsletter, there are many services and tools available for taming the mobility beast, but figuring out how to patch together a comprehensive process and tool set can be confounding.
There are a couple of ways to approach the challenge at an organizational level. Let’s set the stage: Traditional telecom folks often procure a company’s smartphones. They’re experts in the phone business and know how to negotiate volume phone discounts and aggressive per-minute pooled service plans.
Still, most analysts agree that security policies and support procedures that apply to laptop PCs should also apply to smartphones, given that smartphones are really becoming laptops in miniature.
This said, there are two approaches to tackling MDM:
1) Create a mobility process that bridges the telecom and PC disciplines. The traditional voice people get the ball rolling up to a certain point, then hand off the care, feeding and support of the devices and services to the IT department. A known process needs to be in place to make sure this happens smoothly.
2) Create an internal mobility group with members from the telecom, PC and security disciplines involved. Within the mobility group, you can create a pool of expertise and a process dedicated to mobile issues, costs, support and so forth.
Ahmed Datoo, VP of marketing at mobile troubleshooting vendor Zenprise, also suggests that it might be helpful to map the needed mobility tasks to the various phases of a mobile device lifecycle. From there, you can identify the internal resources and third-party tools and services that can help you make sure everything is covered.
Here are the main steps involved:
* Procuring and provisioning a device
* Provisioning software, firmware and application upgrades to the device
* Securing the device
* Monitoring the health of the device and network service
* Remediating problems
* Managing and planning capacity
* De-provisioning a user leaving the company
