Discovering, Managing, and Supporting Mobile Devices in Your Enterprise

If you use a Smartphone like an iPhone, a BlackBerry or other mobile device, you might rely on it for so many functions that you wonder how you ever got along without it. That’s why it’s no surprise that a growing number of organizations are “mobilizing” their critical business applications.

Managers use mobile devices to access needed information and submit their approvals of critical business functions while they are away from their offices. Support staff members receive tickets and act on them using incident and problem management applications. Field sales representatives use mobile devices to check product pricing and availability and to enter orders.

And these are just a few ways in which mobile devices are being used in today’s workforce. Mobilization is boosting the productivity of field workers significantly, and that has a direct positive impact on revenue and customer satisfaction. In fact, some mobile workers are shifting entirely from desktop and laptop PCs to mobile devices. As a result, for many workers, mobile devices have become just as critical to doing business as desktop and laptop computers. Consequently, it’s important that IT manage and support mobile devices with the same rigorous discipline as with desktop and laptop PCs.

Managing mobile devices presents a major challenge because they introduce an additional layer of complexity to the IT infrastructure. They add a huge number of new, higher-maintenance devices as well as a patchwork of complex telecommunications networks that are outside the purview of the IT staff.

That’s why mobile devices need to be brought into the visibility and span of control of the IT staff. This can be easily accomplished by bringing mobile devices into the Business Service Management (BSM) environment. 

BSM is a comprehensive and unified platform for running IT. With BSM, mobile devices can be treated exactly as other layers in the IT infrastructure, using the same proven processes and mechanisms. That infrastructure currently includes such elements as servers, desktops, laptops, network devices, and mainframes. BSM, therefore, enables mobile devices to be managed as business-critical components, and not as add-ons or an afterthought.

The downloadable paper discusses the necessity and challenges of managing mobile devices and how BSM enables IT to meet those challenges.