EMM is slowly replacing MDM Technology
Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools became a rage back when BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) came to the scene. It seemed an effective tool for tackling the security concerns posed by the influx of new devices. But now, with the burgeoning of mobile devices, it seems MDM alone is no longer sufficient to address all the concerns arising in an enterprise mobility program. So what now? The answer seems to be Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM).
What is Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)? How Does it Differ from MDM?
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) is much more than Mobile Device Management (MDM). While MDM focus more on securing/managing various mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, recent advances in enterprise mobility are pointing “less at the actual devices being secured and more at the information in transit being secured”. And Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) is a tool which covers this broader picture. So, Mobile Device Management (MDM) is now considered a part of the broader picture that is Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM).
In other words, one could say that MDM is the predecessor of EMM.
Different Acronyms, Different Capabilities
MDM(s) are still critical to enterprise mobility but it has its limitations which are sidelining them. The most obvious of them is that MDMs operate at the device level. So if an admin wants to destroy some of the data in an application that the employee uses both professionally and personally — Dropbox is a common example — all of the information must go.
This simple limitation snowballed into a problem of huge proportions when the employees’ expectations graduated from just using their devices on the company network to accessing “work-related apps without having to give up control over their personal data”. This and many other such drawbacks has eventually brought Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) to the scene.
Enterprise Mobility Management is all about Flexibility
While MDM narrowed down admin’s scope of work to device-level management, EMM solutions have expanded their capabilities to set up security policies on an “application as well as information level”. The EMM features – those which MDM fails to offer – can be split into 3 major categories:
So, taking into account the meteoric rate at which mobile device related technology is changing, it’s better to adopt the more “control-oriented, flexible and advantageous Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions” over the “out-of-date, rigid Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions” for managing various mobile devices which might become a part of an enterprise.