Dealing with Rapid Mobile Change
By now we’ve all had a chance to digest the news last week that Microsoft is acquiring Nokia. But wait, Blackberry is looking to make a speedy sale? And now rumors of Amazon releasing its own free Android phone? It looks as if we are on the verge of even more change and fragmentation in the mobile space even after we’ve seen so much, so quickly.
I find the graph pictured on right (via Asymco) fascinating. Who knew that Android would reach one billion users in under five years or, put differently, in half the time it took Facebook?! While I’m personally fascinated by trying to keep up with any and all mobile trends, I can imagine it brings mixed feelings to anyone dealing with it in the enterprise space.
How do you provide your employees mobile access to corporate systems in a safe and secure manner? How do you support employees bringing their own devices (BYOD) to work? Can it be done predictably and in a cost effective way?
The good news is that SAP has answers to these questions and believes an enterprise mobile strategy can be implemented predictably and cost effectively. For example, the Afaria rapid-deployment solution (RDS) provides an award-winning device management solution that can be deployed in as little as three days. It’s an extremely quick way to connect mobile devices from diverse platforms (iOS, Android, WP8, etc.) to existing security and directory servers. I won’t go into details here, but it’s a fairly comprehensive package inclusive of features like roaming usage tracking and compromised device detection.
And as a quick teaser, I wanted to share that SAP will be releasing the latest version of this Afaria RDS package next month and vastly increasing the scope of what’s included. This new version will be renamed SAP Mobile Secure rapid-deployment solution and will now include SAP Mobile Documents and SAP Mobile App Protection by Mocana in addition to SAP Afaria.
So what does that mean? Now it’s not just about mobile device management (MDM); it also includes a solution for secure mobile sharing of enterprise content (MCM), and a solution for app encryption, a discipline of mobile app management (MAM). More details will be coming soon, but the bottom line is that SAP is working hard to deal with all the changes happening out there in the mobile space so that you don’t have to!
For more details on the Afaria RDS, check out its landing page on the SAP Service Marketplace. Or feel free to leave a question or comment below. For more details on the forthcoming Mobile Secure RDS, stay tuned! More coming soon.