How Unified Endpoint Management Upgrades Technology Lifecycle Management

For most employees, enterprise mobile assets are replaced or upgraded every two years. Unfortunately for technology lifecycle management programs relying on legacy IT or TEM solutions, little in the way of security is offered over that time.

Your Enterprise Technology Management (ETM) effort is only safe if it can protect every stage of technology lifecycle management — from ordering through decommissioning.

Ensuring Technology Lifecycle Management Safety

Many of today’s technology lifecycle management teams leverage Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) software to keep assets and sensitive information safe.

Through staging and kitting, enterprise technology is outfitted with a UEM solution before it ever reaches end users to protect the organization, enforce mobile policy compliance, and guarantee secure technology lifecycle management processes.

On the other hand, legacy IT and Telecom Expense Management (TEM) providers often fail to fully integrate their solutions with UEM, meaning technology lifecycle management has minimal enterprise impact and difficult challenges to overcome.

An effective technology lifecycle management should not only integrate seamlessly with these security products, but also equip ETM teams with global expertise and a centralized software console to manage all assets, data points and processes involved. After all, a technology lifecycle management solution can’t succeed long-term unless it satisfies user needs and enforces mobile security policies.

To make that happen, UEM integration with existing ETM workflows is crucial. Automated provisioning and enrollment through UEM not only reduce the time it takes to secure assets, but also prevent unauthorized access to potentially vulnerable enterprise network intrusion points.

Some advanced integrations can even enable technology lifecycle management solutions to automatically prompt devices to enroll in UEM whenever they attempt to connect to an internal network. And, UEM integration with existing IT workflows unburdens technology lifecycle management teams from tedious manual provisioning tasks — without compromising asset security controls based on user role, home location or asset type.

Technology lifecycle management that features a comprehensive UEM integration even protects enterprise email access by automatically detecting and restricting access to suspended or unlicensed users and devices. In doing so, this security software-powered combo safeguards organizations from hazardous cyberthreats seeking to take advantage of network vulnerabilities and unprotected enterprise data — eliminating the content management challenges and data replication risks that frequently plague legacy solutions.

Application platform integration is something else typically lacking in legacy ETM solutions. By integrating UEM into a technology lifecycle management process and configuring this software to automatically propagate apps, enterprise mobile policy can determine how apps are best delivered to employees and used.

True Value of Technology Lifecycle Management

While legacy ETM solutions lack UEM integration capabilities, there’s another serious question many fail to address: what happens after an enterprise is done using a device? Without a recycling program or decommissioning strategy, unused assets can do as much — if not more — damage to a business as its currently active technologies can.

In fact, more than 130 million mobile devices are replaced every year. Whether decommissioned devices are sitting in a landfill or are part of the 87% recirculated or handed off to another user, each one poses a potential enterprise risk.

And, since 17% of Americans admit to not knowing how to erase their current device’s data, ETM efforts need knowledgeable and dependable technology lifecycle management programs to oversee device recycling and asset recovery tasks.

An expert technology lifecycle management solution capable of decommissioning devices not only ensures proper enterprise data destruction but provides verifiable reporting and recording of these activities as well.

The industry’s best solutions also provide asset controls that give ETM program managers a more accurate and complete understanding of where devices end up when they’re no longer needed or being used — completing the technology lifecycle management puzzle and preventing assets from potentially exposing valuable enterprise information.

If your technology lifecycle management still relies on a legacy TEM solution that doesn’t integrate with UEM, it’s only a matter of time before you pay the price for inadequate security. The combination of UEM and a secure end-of-life asset strategy is the best way to guarantee safe enterprise technologies moving forward.

Talk to one of our global experts today and find out how Tangoe can upgrade your technology lifecycle management solution.