My iPhone honeymoon is over. I get it. It's way fast, talks fluently with my stockpile of mac devices, and looks like a coaster I'd get at a hipster mixology bar. Sometimes I whisper to it "you complete me".
But I can't help but look at the mind-blowing innovation on the consumer side of smartphones and wonder why has it taken so damn long to sort it out on the business side? Don't get me wrong, there's been movement here. Apple has been quietly adding enterprise security features for years and Samsung is now throwing down the gauntlet with SAFE, Blackberry with Balance, etc. But on the backend, especially for a mix of devices, things are still a bit of a rat's nest.
We've celebrated the advancements on the wireless side, from ratcheting up wireless encryption to the godsend that is 5Ghz 802.11n. But things aren't as straight forward when it comes to enabling the device and controlling usage.
For better or for worse, MDM has become synonymous with BYOD in the enterprise. And because of that, MDM businesses have been sprouting up like weeds. In fact, according to analysts, there are now over 120 of them. But due to a litany of reasons that I won't dive into here, people are starting to shun MDM for BYOD, using it more for corporate issued mobile devices. And let's be honest, most people's actual implementation of MDM today is nothing more than ActiveSync; a stopgap.
For BYOD, there are promises of greener pastures. We can now kick the tires of Mobile Application Management (MAM) where IT can control just the corporate apps and data, not the users personal device and personal stuff. MAM is definitely the new popular kid, with everyone from Good Technologies to Symantec to Citrix buying up MAM companies.
And the last piece of the puzzle (And a key piece) is the network. Many people have been taking a network centric approach to BYOD, profiling and onboarding personal devices and then segmenting confidential resources on the network from those devices.
So we have wonderfully elegant devices that are causing IT departments to pull their hair out as they look at three siloed BYOD requirements. They have to onboard multiple vendors, fight for budget dollars, and double-up helpdesk resources.
Until now, Aruba has focused mostly on the network to address this problem. Although we cross boundaries a bit into MDM, our primary mission in life has been the network. Well, things are about to get more interesting. Imagine one system that brings together all the critical components of BYOD control in one place.
