Mobile devices: a buyer's guide
Published: 26 Sep 2007
Managing mobile devices
For enterprises, the productivity benefits of equipping the workforce — or portions of it — with mobile devices are offset by the additional burden on the IT department. As the devices become ever more capable, adding enterprise applications like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to traditional email, PIM and web browsing, so the risks of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands increase. And the more applications that make their way onto mobile devices, the more headaches there will be for the IT department over deployment, configuration (including device lockdown), licensing, asset tracking, data synchronisation and backup, in addition to security concerns.
Fortunately, there is a healthy number of Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems that address these issues. Although a full survey of the market is beyond the scope of this article, here's a list of some of the key players:
Avocent LANDdesk Handheld and Embedded Device Manager
BlackBerry Enterprise Server
BMC Configuration Management (formerly Marimba)
HP Enterprise Mobility Suite
IBM WebSphere Everyplace Access
Good Mobile Messaging / Good Mobile Intranet
Nokia Intellisync Mobility Suite
Novell Zenworks Handheld Management
Perlego Horizons
Sybase iAnywhere Afaria
Altiris Handheld Management Suite
Symbol Mobility Services Platform
Visto Mobile Enterprise Edition
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