Mobile handhelds deployed across enterprises and government agencies are many and varied. As the IT workforce has become more mobile in recent years, the challenge of managing the handhelds, securing them, and maintaining them has grown.
The traditional mode of setup, deployment, and maintaining mobile devices by physically plugging them into the network in batches is problematic and labor intensive. And in many handheld deployments, the handhelds are stationed far from headquarters. Consequently, they rarely see the four walls of the IT department.
Enter Mobile Device Management (MDM): The need for handheld management has provided an industry that caters to these needs, including several very knowledgeable vendors with a range of products and services to fit the needs of varying organizations. These vendors serve both large enterprises with thousands of handhelds, and small/medium businesses with just a few.
Airwatch is one of these companies, providing MDM products that include device management, application management, content management (including a secure “company locker”), multi-user per device management, and more. Airwatch supports nearly every operating system available for mobile handhelds, so companies that support a wide range of devices and form factors can utilize their products. Excellent management consoles allow for a mixture of devices, access levels, and management requirements. Airwatch can be deployed as an on-premises management option or through their cloud service.
Soti is another excellent vendor of MDM products, offering solutions for all major mobile operating systems. Soti offers management products in mobile devices, security, content, applications, and email. They also offer a really interesting out-of-the-box provisioning service for handhelds that have barcode scanners. An employee can simply scan a code and the handheld automatically provisions.
An active Internet connection through Wi-Fi® or cellular is all that is needed on the handheld to push out updates and new applications. As application stores are not prevalent on industrial handhelds, these MDM solutions provide a great option for getting applications and updates deployed to multiple handhelds without having to physically touch the handhelds.
Prices for these solutions are very manageable as well, starting at a few dollars per handheld per month.
MDM vendors eliminate the need to have racks of mobile handhelds sitting in your IT department, awaiting provision and updates. MDM options are cost effective and secure, and they continue to evolve as handhelds and software are updated.
Contact Juniper Systems to learn more about rugged handheld handhelds or any of the topics mentioned above.