The future of Enterprise Mobility Management

Kristin Montag is Product Manager for Cortado Corporate Server at Cortado AG, a company providing a complete solution for enterprise mobility with a focus on mobile productivity. We spoke to Kristin regarding future developments in the enterprise mobility field, and the challenges of app management, as well as Apple and Google's place in the enterprise world with iOS and Android respectively.

TechRadar Pro: What future developments do you expect in the enterprise mobility market?

Kristin Montag: The market in general is still very young and enterprises have different needs and strategies. The market is changing very quickly, which is why enterprises remain cautious and only plan for the next 12 months. A lot is going to happen in this field, especially when you consider that mobile in the future will no longer just mean smartphones and tablets, but also smartwatches and smart glasses.

Enterprises taking their first steps into enterprise mobility were generally only worried about securing and managing devices; now many enterprises are looking for comprehensive solutions that facilitate productive and, at the same time, secure integration of the devices.

It is also clearly evident that the preferred enterprise mobility solutions are those that can be integrated holistically into the existing infrastructure, this means into the existing Windows system, including policy management via the Active Directory and the file system. This means there is no parallel system and the time and effort for IT remains manageable – maximising the benefit to users and subsequently for the enterprise.

TRP: Why do enterprise mobility projects often fail and how can success be assured?

KM: Many projects fail because responsibilities within the enterprise are not clearly defined. Only rarely is there a dedicated enterprise mobility employee. As a result, these projects lag behind. In addition, many providers bought enterprise mobility solutions as an add-on which are now part of a very large system that is extremely complicated to install. The time and effort that IT departments need to put in to help the productivity of their mobile users are often beyond reasonable limits and lead to delays, which can be avoided.

What always makes us wonder is that the security of mobile laptops was never discussed and considered as intensely as it is for smartphones and tablets.

Some enterprises lose sight of productivity and satisfied users when just considering security. They block and containerise until ultimately users are unable to work with their devices productively anymore. This results in users looking for insecure workarounds, using their personal, and therefore unsecured, devices, or growing disillusioned with mobile work. That is the point when an enterprise mobility project is considered to have completely failed.

An ideal solution would be one that encompasses all these aspects. Some approaches are already clearly heading in the right direction.

TRP: The mobile device management (MDM) market is heavily saturated and there has been consolidation within the market recently. What changes in the MDM market do you expect to see in the next year?

KM: Since iOS 7, Apple has provided all the functions required to integrate iPhones and iPads into IT securely, and iOS 8 provided even more interesting business functions to give new momentum to the market. App wrapping, which many providers have bet on, has conclusively become obsolete.

Android has something up its sleeve here too. At its developer conference Google I/O earlier this year, Google announced the Android for Work program for its operating system. The operating system has a directly integrated security layer, which separates the personal and business areas on the device, making it ideal for BYOD programs.

In our opinion, the market will show that enterprises rely on easy-to-implement, productive solutions. Simplicity is the trump card here.