There are a number of components that go into finding the right mobility management strategy for your company.  It’s hard to find the time to assess all of the players and what you can gain from each.  You must also consider whether you want a managed service or be able to host all your mobility management components on-site, bearing in mind that no one supplier will perform all the required functionalities you may need.

Another major part is being able to decipher the growing vocabulary surrounding each option.  Decision makers (which have largely been the users themselves) may be at risk of making uninformed choices due to the increase in new acronyms and how inconsistently they are used.  By now, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is widely used and understood throughout the industry. But there is somewhat of a mobility management/security hierarchy that you should understand before deciding on your strategy:

• EMM (Enterprise Mobility Management) is a popular catch-all term that embraces various aspects from supporting mobile devices to tracking user experiences
• MDM (Mobile Device Management) represents the very first incarnation of mobility management to emerge as an established market
• MAM (Mobile Application Management) is actually an extended concept of MDM to embrace procurement, maintenance and security of mobile apps and the data within them
• BYOD was fueled by Apple’s iPhone arrival in 2007; employees started bringing personal smart phones, tablets and other devices to work and used them to access corporate resources
• MMS (Managed Mobility Services) is comprised of a broad set of software and consultative services, which pulls together most efforts involved with planning, establishing and maintaining a corporate-wide mobile strategy

There is no wonder why the landscape is said to be so complex.  It’s constantly changing and evolving faster than ever, and many times, without even involving IT. With so many terms being thrown around the industry, decision makers and end-users of mobile devices need to be aware of all the tools available to them. Can you use one without the other? Which tools complement each other?  Learn more about the EMM toolbox and how it can help you make the right decision about managing your mobile devices and application by downloading Enterprise Mobility Management Defined.