Source: Aberdeen | Enterprise Mobility Management 2012 | Andrew Borg | April, 2012
Whether a company is trying to move its performance in EMM from Laggard to Industry Average, or Industry Average to Best-in-Class, the following actions will help spur the necessary performance improvements:
Laggard Steps to Success
- Start with MDM. It wasn’t long ago that many organizations were satisfied simply with the control and management of the physical devices alone. As presented in this report, MDM is often the first small, though important, step in the comprehensive management of the full EMM lifecycle. If your organization can’t recover the contents, or lock or wipe the data from a lost, stolen, or compromised device, then it better be entirely certain that there’s no confidential or protected data on it first.
- Track them before you lose them. Lost or stolen mobile devices that cannot be recovered are your organization’s single largest mobile security and compliance vulnerability. You can’t manage what you can’t track, and over two-thirds of Laggard organizations can’t track the number of lost or stolen devices that they have successfully decommissioned. Use the MDM solution described above to take control of all rogue devices.
- Develop custom mobile apps. Custom mobile applications can provide competitive differentiation, whether they’re for Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), or Business-to-Employee (B2E) purposes. Options include in-house development (only 23% of Laggards do this), or outsourcing to application experts.
Industry Average Steps to Success
- Mobile Application Management (MAM). With over 29 billion mobile apps downloaded in the past three years, organizations cannot afford a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to their mobile software application (app) ecosystem. A MAM solution enables the organization to deploy, monitor, and enforce policy for both corporate-developed and publicly available apps. Robust MAM incorporates a corporate ‘app store,’ app blacklist and white-list (see sidebar on the next page), Over-the-Air (OTA) app upgrades, and real-time status, reporting, and policy enforcement.
- Let users help themselves. Let the user-centric culture of ‘IT-ization’ work for your organization. Lowering end-user support costs is the single biggest lever on driving down the Operational Expense (OpEx) budget for IT. User self-service web portals can be very effective in automating basic procurement and support functions, yet only 27% of the Industry Average have them in place.
- Open for business (apps). As part of IT’s consolidation and control of mobile assets, consider opening an enterprise mobile application store (enterprise ‘app store’) for users to download mobile software which is compliant with company policy and sanctioned by IT. Just 28% of Best-in-Class organizations currently have implemented a mobile app store; yet this is a capability already provided by several of the industry’s leading EMM solution providers. It works hand-in-hand with software policy enforcement, by providing an easy-to-find and easy-to-use method for mobile users to comply.
Best-in-Class Steps to Success
- Invest in mobile DLP. The unintended loss of data residing on mobile devices and removable storage presents the greatest single threat to the intellectual property and sensitive or private information owned or accessed by the organization. Lost or stolen confidential data can expose the organization to liability of up to almost half a million US dollars per compliance lapse. Encrypt and secure all data and file attachments delivered to or accessed by mobile devices.
- Optimize app performance. Application performance ultimately defines the end-user experience, and as such should be tested and optimized to ensure the best possible outcome. Well-designed apps use network, CPU, and memory resources efficiently. How do your apps perform, and how can their performance be improved? Almost two-thirds (66%) of Best-in-Class organizations cannot objectively determine the answer to this question.
- Tablets have an insecurity complex. In their apparent rush to deliver on the productivity promise of tablets, as well as the demands of end-users, 62% of the Best-in-Class have deployed them without the most basic security measures in place, such as lock and wipe of lost or stolen tablets. Apply to tablets the same rigor and IT service management principles that are used to support netbooks and smartphones.
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