Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time with IT leaders talking about the ups and downs of their mobility plans and BYOD challenges. While virtually every company has embarked on some efforts in this space, there is a tongue-in-cheek description of those endeavors as “random acts of mobility.”
The fact remains that an end-to-end approach is the key to successful mobility enablement. For many IT organizations, the stumbling block has been securing control over corporate data while still providing an excellent user experience for their employees.
Despite the fact that BYOD programs are being widely deployed across all device types, security remains a top concern—and rightly so. According to a recent Dell global security survey, a new generation of unknown security threats stemming from big trends, including BYOD, mobility and cloud computing, create a multitude of new risks. A sizable number of the 1,440 IT decision makers polled claimed that mobility was the root cause of a breach, even though 93 percent allowed the use of personal devices for work. And, 57 percent of those surveyed cited increased use of mobile devices as a top security concern in the next five years.
These results reinforce what we hear from customers. They’re eager to give employees access to the devices they need to do their jobs as long as it doesn’t increase risk exposure. They want to be better partners with line-of-business owners but are cautious about adding undue risk, cost and complexity. Our customers take security very seriously, which is why they’re concerned about using separate tools to manage different devices, endpoints and OS platforms.
Launched at Dell World in December 2013, Dell Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) was developed in response to what customers told us they needed most yet found lacking in current mobility enablement solutions. We know that fragmentation among different mobile device managers was a major pain point, so we developed an end-to-end, unified solution for securing and managing mobile devices, laptops and desktops—or the container-based workspaces on them. And, while Dell is a leader in PCs and has introduced award-winning tablets, our EMM solution is designed to support heterogeneous environments, encompassing iOS and Android smartphones; Windows, Android and iOS tablets; Linux, Mac and Windows laptops and desktops; as well as thin and zero cloud clients.
We also took advantage of strategic IP from different Dell businesses, including SonicWALL, KACE, Credant and Wyse, to build Dell EMM with mature, best-of-class technologies that address security and encryption, policy management, user self-service and compliance reporting. These were all areas that customers complained were inadequate or addressed by disparate tools that were complicated to use and so created problems for users and excessive administration for IT.
Now generally available, Dell EMM is lowering the barriers to secure mobility enablement while enabling IT to become better business partners. With Dell EMM, IT can manage both corporate- and employee-owned mobile and fixed endpoints with a common set of policies for apps, devices, data and user identity. And, our modular mobility consulting and professional services can augment internal IT resources to drive ever-evolving mobility deployments.
When we unveiled Dell EMM, industry watcher Jack Madden applauded our strategy to build for the long term. He felt the fact that EMM includes PC, type 2 hypervisor and thin client management enables us to cast a much wider net than pure-play EMM vendors. Jack also cited the Dell buying experience as an advantage to customers that use a lot of Dell products since they now have one more thing to put in the cart.
For IT departments either reevaluating their mobility strategies or just getting started with BYOD, now is a great time to look at what Dell EMM can offer. Based on the success of early customer trials, it’s clear that Dell can meet end-user expectations, line-of-business demands and IT requirements with our prescriptive approach and comprehensive solution set.
We look forward to sharing highlights from real-world deployments and customer successes in the coming months. In the meantime, what mobility enablement strategy will best fit your long-term business needs?
Drop me a line at Tom_Kendra@Dell.com to share your ideas on how EMM can lead to better business partnerships for your company.