Three problems of enterprise mobility and how MDM providers can address them
Mobile adaption in enterprises have risen significantly in part because of MDM / MAM solutions. MDM has given the required security and control to corporate IT so they can manage various mobile devices, especially if the company has a BYOD (bring your own device) policy.
There are growing number of MDM providers and counting. Ones we see most often in the market are AirWatch, MobileIron, Good, XenMobile and some newer, growing ones like Micosoft Intune, MaaS 360
While these solutions provided much needed security and control over enterprise mobility, they have also created challenges in enterprise mobility space. MDM solution providers are solving problems for their customers but often forget to address needs of application vendors who are technical users of their products.
I want to highlight three such problems in enterprise mobility market and how MDM providers need to address these for more adoption.
1. Process and product fragmentation:
MDM market is getting commoditized but not standardized.
When app vendors roll out mobile apps, one of the big problems is testing small nuances in each of the offerings. For example each MDM provider encrypts / decrypts data differently. Especially on MobileIron and XenMobile, which allows wrapped apps to read data before decrypting it, causing the app to crash. There is no standardized approach on life cycle management. MDM providers need to work together to standardize the life cycle management of mobile applications.
2. Need for better MDM tools:
MDM providers need to have cloud based tooling
For app vendors it is difficult enough to test across all the MDM providers, and lack of good tools doesn’t make it any easier. Some providers have now started offering online tools to wrap the mobile application and manage the life cycle, but most are still lacking good tooling that makes it easier to use their MDM solutions. I have seen vendors struggle with testing VPN tunneling, policy testing, etc.
MDM providers need to offer hosted solution to wrap their application with tools to test some of the basic functionality.
3. Last mile problem:
It’s the app vendor and not MDM provider at the alter with the customer
This is a fundamental problem in the enterprise mobile market. MDM providers sell and deploy the MDM solutions, but its the app vendors who are working with customers to deploy the apps at for them. Customers expect these app vendors to resolve all problems pertaining to the mobile apps — even the ones related to MDM solutions. App vendors constantly find themselves spending effort to test the underlying MDM solution.
MDM vendors need to provide better support for app vendors and make it easy for them to consume the MDM solution.
TL;DR
MDM providers need to work more closely with the enterprise mobile application vendors. This can help drive the adoption of their solution and make it easier for both the end customers and app vendors to consume the applications leveraging MDM.
Related reading:
How does mobile device management (MDM) work?
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