More and more mobile devices make their entrance to companies: iPhones, iPads, Android phones etc etc. What to do with this fact as an IT manager? Where do you start and what are choices you have to make?
First, let’s start with a number of trends that you need to address in your strategy:
• Private and business are mixing together. It is quite normal that an employee reads his/her mail on vacation and people want to do some work while sitting on the couch.
• Bring Your Own Device: more often it happens that employees own a iPhone or smartphone to buy their business applications to do this.
• More and more apps to access back-office systems. How do you put the infrastructure in the hand and make you safe and manageable?
• More employees have phones: Mobile devices are no longer only entitled to the management or the sales staff.
• Appstores: Employees are used to select their and install them. They also want to do this with business apps.
As an IT manager you deal with these trends and will have to answer a few questions before selecting the right mobile strategy:
1. Do I allow private devices on the corporate network? (And if not, why not?)
2. How do I prevent the safety risks, when approving personal devices?
3. How do I make sure the infrastructurewill not become a mess, because many apps need to have connections with back office systems?
4. How do I take care of the user management of mobile users? And how do I prevent former employees from having access to corporate data?
5. How do I tell which apps can be used?
6. How do I give the staff an overview of the business apps that are allowed in the company? And then; can they install the apps themselves, while a back office connection is required?
7. How do I take care of dealing with Appstores that are tied to personal credit cards?
Just some questions that your company should think about before a mobile strategy can be formulated.
This Blog post was written by Rick Farris, Systems Engineer at Navara Mobile Middleware.