Step 1: Mobilize - Step 2: Manage
Toward the end of our podcast on the Consumerization of IT earlier this week, the subject of mobility device management (MDM) came up. As it turns out, I spent some time this week talking with executives from four of the major MDM vendors, and as I expected, their phones are ringing off the hook. This rush of activity is being driven by the fact that IT departments are finally having to face up to the fact that enterprise mobility is indeed moving beyond BlackBerry and they will have to respond.
I noted a major change in direction last year and commented on it in my report after the InterOp show in NY. It was there I got the first real feeling that IT was getting over the “bar the door” mentality about mobile device selection and starting to look for ways to secure and manage mobility in what is inevitably becoming a multi-device world. It’s hard to get a good read on how big a factor the “Bring Your Own Device” or “BYOD” movement is. I have seen reports that as many as 75% of companies now allow user-owned devices, but that is clearly not the case with the large users I deal with. That leads me to believe that BYOD is far more prevalent in the SMB market. Unfortunately, it is the larger users who are more likely to invest in these sorts of support systems.
Not that BlackBerry is dead by any means. While good market research focusing specifically on the enterprise mobility market is hard to come, from what I see among customers, BlackBerry is still king of the hill when it comes to enterprise smartphones. This “BlackBerry is Dead” rant has now gotten so pervasive that in his recent Smartphone OS Shootout article in Computerworld, Preston Gralla didn’t even address BlackBerry; it is a great piece if you’re interested in iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7, however.
Blackberry (or more specifically “RIM”) is the company that really launched and then dominated the enterprise smartphone market, and with good reason. For my money, Treo was the first to effectively combine a pocket organizer (the Palm in this case) with a cell phone to popularize the idea of the smartphone. However, coming from the two-way pager market, RIM delivered the whole package with push email, the personal information management functions of the pocket organizer, in conjunction with a mobile phone, and they continued to refine the user experience with features like “smart first click” (that’s where the option highlighted in each menu is the one you’re most likely to want).
However the key to that whole package was the BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BES, which has now become the strongest hook BlackBerry has into that enterprise customer. Sure the BES does the secure email and texting, but its real strength is in device management and security. The BES features over 400 policy options that can ensure the smartphone needs a password to turn on, it’s got a strong password, information on the device is encrypted, only certain applications can be loaded and used, and the list goes on.
However, as a BlackBerry-only appliance, the BES does nothing for your iPhones, Androids, Phone 7s or other devices. Enter the likes of Sybase (now part of SAP), MobileIron, Zenprise, and Boxtone. These companies provide the same type of policy enforcement, security (e.g. remote wipe and lock), and software maintenance you get from the BES, but for everybody’s (or almost “everybody’s”) smartphone. They also do a lot of other neat tricks to help you record, track, and maintain your smartphones.
When you talk to the MDM vendors you’ll find that iPhone comes up early and often. That’s because it was the first device that enterprise users were screaming for, and the one non-BlackBerry option that has best adapted for enterprise use. The change came after Version 4.0, where on board encryption became available. Android 3.0 or “Honeycomb” does support onboard encryption, but for the moment it’s only available on tablets like the Motorola Xoom and not on smartphones.
The biggest question I had to ask the MDM vendors was: "Can your product make my iPhone (or Android, or Phone 7) deployment as secure as a BlackBerry?" Their candid answer was: "Let’s look at that a little more closely." The short answer is “no,” because only BlackBerry’s security is FIPS compliant, based on the Federal Information Processing Standards; Apple has apparently applied for FIPS certification.
However, FIPS compliance is only mandatory in government agencies and certain highly regulated industries. So for the slightly less paranoid security requirements of most enterprises, the answer would be “sure”. All of the MDM vendors are limited by the capabilities of each operating system, so there are important differences between what they can do for iOS (Apple) versus Android or Phone 7; for the moment it appears Android and Phone 7 are a good year behind Apple in terms of security, but that gap will close quickly.
Of course, all of this is about mobility and not about mobile UC. The reason is that users continue to focus on “mobility” and “UC” independently of one another. Users love their mobility, more so now that they can do it with iPhones and Androids as well as the tried and true BlackBerry, and that is increasingly becoming the center of their communications. Siemens is now marketing the Sybase Afaria MDM product, so at least someone is getting the idea.
In the meantime, the floodgates are opening for more diversity in our enterprise mobility options.