Multi-Platform Enterprise Mobility Solutions

June 30, 2009 by ADMIN

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Britt Womelsdorf, Principal Systems Consultant, Sybase iAnywhere

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Anyone who knows me knows that I like wine. I mean I REALLY like wine. I like red wine, I like white wine.

I like wines from California and from Oregon and from Australia and from South Africa and from France and from…..well you get my point.

I’ve even been known to drink wine from my home state of Virginia.

One thing I like about wine is that there are always new wineries to choose from, new blends, varietals, hybrids and wine making techniques to sample.

No matter how much I like any particular wine, I can guarantee you that the next bottle I open will likely be something different. Not surprisingly, many of my friends like wine as well, and I pride myself in being able to support their varied wine tastes.

I see many analogies between my love for wine and the field of Enterprise Mobility.

No matter how popular a device is today, there will likely be a different device that is more popular tomorrow. The kind of device that field service technicians need is likely going to be completely different than one required or desired by an executive.

Anyone who’s ever held a ruggedized Windows Mobile Professional Device next to an iPhone will attest that a “one size fits all” approach to device selection will end up making very few people happy.

And yet, there are still products out there claiming to be “Enterprise Solutions” that only support a single mobile operating system, or, worse yet, a single version of a single operating system.

While these products may do an admirable job managing the subset of devices that run that OS, what about the rest? I’ve seen two approaches here, one I’ll call “Corporate Lockdown” and the other I’ll call “Blind Eye Management”.

Corporate Lockdown refers to the creation of a mobile policy that restricts usage to only that OS that the company can support.

It’s an effective strategy from a control perspective, but I certainly don’t want to be the one that communicates to a senior executive that he can’t use a specific device - regardless of the reason.

Blind Eye Management is the corporate equivalent of “looking the other way.”

In this scenario the existence of other devices is generally known about but simply not acknowledged. This can be a dangerous approach from many different perspectives (particularly security), but is adopted in many organizations.

Obviously I’m biased, in that I work for the market leader in providing enterprise multi-platform mobile device management.

Afaria provides the level of support that would allow me to answer that senior executive with a “YES!” rather than a “no” when he tells me he’s about to hook a device to the network.

Afaria allows me to be to enable business rather than restrict it. And Afaria allows me to do it with an infrastructure that’s secure and reliable.

Now…..what kind of wine do YOU like?

Britt Womelsdorf works for Sybase as a systems consultant. Britt enjoys a focus on wireless and mobile solutions for the enterprise customer, and is an expert on device management and security. Britt spends most on his time with Afaria customers and enjoys sharing tips and tricks, little known features in Afaria, and creative uses of the product.

Sybase iAnywhere, a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc. (NYSE:SY), enables success at the front lines of business. The company holds worldwide market leadership positions in mobile and embedded databases, mobile management and security, mobile email, mobile middleware and synchronization, and Bluetooth® and infrared protocol technologies. Sybase iAnywhere plays an important role in the Sybase Unwired Enterprise strategy, which focuses on managing and mobilizing information from the data center to the point of action. Tens of millions of mobile devices and over 20,000 customers and partners rely on the company’s “Always Available” technologies, including Sybase Unwired Platform, SQL Anywhere, Afaria and iAnywhere Mobile Office.

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