Managing the Explosion of BYOD with Mobile Device Management Solutions

The bring your own device (BYOD) phenomenon is taking businesses by storm. Now, more than ever, BYOD programs are becoming commonplace in the workplace, helping to satisfy the needs of today’s 21^st century worker – who’s accustomed to using the latest high-tech devices.

In fact, businesses are encouraging employees to bring their own devices to work. According to a Gartner study, half of employers will require employees to supply their own device for work purposes. Moreover, 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016.

“The era of the PC has ended. Employees are becoming more mobile and looking for ways to still be connected wherever work needs to be done,” said Phil Redman, research vice president at Gartner. “The convenience and productivity gains that mobile devices bring are too tempting for most companies and their employees.”

While the benefits of BYOD – including creating new mobile workforce opportunities, increasing employee satisfaction, and reducing or avoiding costs – are abundant, the movement has dramatically shifted the roles of IT departments, bringing on new challenges, such as security risks, policy requirements, increasing IT workloads, high mobile management costs, and privacy issues.

“Securing corporate data on mobile devices is a big challenge, but one that companies must embrace. Enterprises are struggling with how to support and secure this dynamic workforce,” added Redman.

To help combat these challenges, effectively support BYOD initiatives, and gain full control over all mobile devices entering their IT management software system, CIOs and IT administrators are increasingly turning to mobile device management solutions (MDM).

In fact, over the next five years, 65 percent of enterprises will adopt a mobile device management solution for their corporate liable users, according to the aforementioned Gartner research.

MDM gives CIOs and IT administrators the ability to:

• Support multiple mobile platforms
• Extend IT management and security policies to both corporate and employee-owned devices
• Automate help desk software support (if the MDM solution is integrated with your Service Desk and Asset Management)
• Easily enroll employees’ devices by simply sending a device enrollment notification via email or SMS
• Initiate individual or bulk device enrollment
• Set customized policies
• View detailed hardware and software inventory
• Apply or modify device policy settings
• Trace installed apps
• Deploy preconfigured Wi-Fi and email settings

With MDM, CIOs and IT administrators can easily manage complex fleets of mobile devices while simultaneously satisfying the demand of 21^st century workers.

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