So it's about 10 pm on Monday night. A good day at work (working on some really cool research on BlackBerry shops), capped off by meeting some friends for cocktails and then coming home to make a nice, healthy, dinner.
It's summer time, which means I am part of Red Sox Nation. They're not playing tonight after Daisuke Matsuzaka had another disappointing outing. What baseball can I possibly watch then? Well, I can watch the Yankees hopefully lose to whoever they're playing. In fact, there's a T-Shirt I saw recently that I loved: "I love two teams, the Red Sox...and whoever beats the Yankees." Regardless, I can't help but read up on enterprise mobility...
As many of you know, part of my daily reading schedule includes reading Mobile Enterprise Magazine - the only web site/magazine I know of wholly dedicated to our space. Gotta love it. In any case, there was an article on the site that caught my eye written by Mort Rosenthal, CEO of Enterprise Mobile. The title is "Mobile Device Management: 3 Questions to Ask for Surefire Success." Given my penchant for mobility management, this article - needless to day - caught my eye. Too bad I couldn't agree with it.
The article is very well written and shows the clear level of intellect that Mort has. Just go look at his bio on the Enterprise Mobile web site to see how accomplished his career is....besides, how many people do you know who got, not only a call, but a big fat check from Steve Balmer to start a company? I know of one - including Mort. The problem is, I think he is making an all too common mistake when it comes to mobile device management.
"When implementing a central device management strategy, consider the following questions to guide your planning:
- What data and applications are essential to each user?"
And there is the rub. I think Mort is making an all too common mistake when talking about DEVICE management to include APPLICATION management. Now I know, the whole world of mobility management is intertwined and there are increasingly large greay areas. However, I don't think it's wise to talk about applications when talking about DEVICE management. Here's why. As far as I am concerned, mobile device management should be soleley about the device and the device alone. In fact, mobile device management should cover:
- Remote user provisioning (think VPN config, email, etc.)
- Device configuration (think IT/Business policies)
- Remote user administration (updating the core device apps, inlcuding VPN, etc.)
- Remote over-the-air backup (of the data on the device)
- Remote over-the-air updates (think FOTA)
However, when Mort talks about what needing to assess what applications are required by various employees, I can't consider that DEVICE management. He's correct that it's a tremendously important question, but that goes into APPLICATION management. Who gets what? How are they configured? What about updates? What if your job changes....do you still need the same applications? Can I (un)install my own applications on the device?
That, my friends, is application management as far as I am concerned.
Now in fairness, Mort is blurring (in my not so humble opinion) the same concept that many device management companies blur - when they talk about how they can push applications to a device, as well as enforce white or black lists. However, I tell all these companies the same thing. They do more than JUST device management....part of their offering includes application management services. However, you can't just lump the two together. If you want to talk a bigger story, talk about the whole stack of mobility management needs. However, especially as the market requires so much education, please don't (big word alert!) obfuscate the matter - it's confusing enough as it is!
So what do you think? Share the enterprise mobility love with me.
PS: The #$%^&* Yankees won. :-(
