Enabling a Mobile Workforce: Managing BYOD and Company-Owned Devices

The challenges of enabling enterprise mobility

To address the challenges that comes with enabling mobility in your company, you must understand the four elements of an enterprise mobility strategy (see Figure 1-1):

• Users
• Devices
• Apps
• Data

FIGURE 1-1 The four elements of an enterprise mobility strategy

When you embrace a mobile workforce, you not only must consider the user and the device he wants to use, you must consider how the apps that will be consumed will be affected by being on a mobile device. Even more importantly, you need to consider how to ensure that the company data remains secure. To effectively manage security of mobile devices, you should be sure to incorporate security into each of the four elements referenced in Figure 1-1. Focusing on each of the elements will help you to better address each challenge in a scenario-based approach. You want to ensure that your overall strategy is compliant with your business requirements while meeting the user’s expectation about how she will perform at work using the device or devices of her choice.

Now that you know the elements, Figure 1-2 expands on the elements shown in Figure 1-1 and shows the three core scenarios that you will use throughout the entire book:

1. Enable users to choose their devices.
2. Unify the management of applications and devices
3. Protect corporate data.

By using this approach, you will be able to understand the challenges that must be addressed by your company before you embrace mobility.

FIGURE 1-2 The three categories of challenges

As shown in Figure 1-2, the three core scenarios are bound to one or more of the elements shown in Figure 1-1. The following list explains the issues that must be addressed as part of your enterprise mobility strategy:

1. Enable users to choose their devices

   • Users want to use their own devices to access both their personal data and their work-related data/apps.
   • Users want access to these elements from anywhere.
   • While CEOs want to fulfill user requirements in order to enable users to be productive, they also want their IT department to be in control of how users access company data.

2. Unify the management of applications and devices

   • Users must have a common identity to access applications and company resources from any device and from anywhere.
   • IT must be able to manage, deploy, and maintain applications for all types of devices.
   • IT must be able to manage company-owned devices as well as user-owned devices from a single location.

3. Protect corporate data

   • Corporate data must be protected at all stages: while data is in the cloud, while data is at the company’s datacenter, while data in the user’s device, and while data is in transit between any (and all) of the aforementioned locations.
   • Corporate data must be isolated and protected from a user’s personal data while also securing a user’s privacy.
   • The IT department must be empowered to secure, classify, and protect the company’s data while also maintaining regulatory compliance.

Throughout this book, these challenges will be used as examples for scenarios that explain how Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) can assist your company’s efforts to enable a mobile workforce.