Enterprise Mobility Suite Brings Device Management To Enterprises

Organizations all around the world are finding it increasingly difficult to cope up with the phenomenon of BYOD (bring your own device). Employees are bringing in their own devices into the corporate network and store not just personal data but also work-related data on it.

Managing such a variety of different devices and platforms becomes quite a challenge for any IT department. There is also the question of ensuring privacy, i.e. where do you draw the line in separating personal data from work-related.

As a solution to this problem, software vendors have rolled out what are popularly known as MDM or mobile device management solutions. For example, Symantec, BlackBerry and IBM have such solutions. Likewise, Microsoft too has one, which goes by the name of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite.

This offering was announced in 2014 and leverages the capabilities of Windows Intune as well as Microsoft SCCM. It also utilizes certain Azure-based services behind the scenes. The tool’s main purpose is to facilitate controlling the different portable devices that are deployed in a company network using a single administrative console. It also enables certain security scenarios such as being able to remotely lock a stolen device and reset / wipe its data as necessary.

Most MDM solutions are licensed on a per-user model and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite is no exception to it.

Features of the EMS include for example, geo-location capabilities. The fragmentation and lack of a native management API in Android may also be a hurdle. Microsoft’s sincerity to treat all of the different platforms similarly may be considered to be questionable by some vendors, because unlike competitors like Symantec and VMWare which have no mobile platform of their own, Microsoft does have one. Also, Microsoft is highly keen on presenting Windows as a unified platform across the PC, tablet and the phone, unlike how Apple clearly differentiates between OS X and iOS.

For more information on EM+S or the new Microsoft 365 Packages, contact us direct at 1-877-292-7712.