Mobile device management service

MDM: Getting Started

Anywhere you turn, anywhere you look, we’d wager there’s a computer in your sight. They’re everywhere these days. Especially in our offices and increasingly in the form of mobile devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones. Now all that may seem cool to you, but it’s a nightmare for the IT admin guy who has to manage all these devices and ensure they’re working properly at all times. If you’re in his shoes, you’d need no less than a thousand pairs of hands to juggle all those thousands of devices that are running in the company at any point of time.

What you really need isn’t a thousand pair of hands, but one MDM that’ll get the job done. In the modern world full of smart devices, MDM is the genie that can serve as a boon to IT administrators of large enterprises.

What is MDM?:

MDM can be a great way to improve the efficiency of your mobile devices. It can also help you save time and money. In this blog post, we will give you an overview of MDM and how it can help you manage your mobile devices.

The Mobile Device Management (MDM) industry is one of the most fascinating and rapidly growing segments in the tech world. With the ever-increasing number of mobile devices and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies in the workplace, organizations are always on the lookout for ways to control and manage the mobile devices that connect to their networks.

And that’s exactly why MDM exists. With it, administrators can push apps and configurations to devices, as well as remotely lock and wipe devices if they are lost or stolen. Moreover, MDM solutions can also provide valuable insights into device usage through telemetry data.

They typically include a web-based console that allows IT administrators to manage devices, apps, and corporate data. They can also remotely control devices and monitor compliance with corporate policies.

mobile device management

dotHive is an MDM solutions provider who’s especially dedicated to offer the best possible MDM experience for all parties involved. With Hive, you can dive straight into your mobile devices from anywhere in the world. dotHive is all you’ll ever need to manage your devices at various locations, yet all under one roof.

dotHive is one of our fully-featured software solutions that we developed with love and passion, fully in-house, here at Dotworld.

Current market landscape and options to choose from:

The landscape is set by the developers of mobile operating systems and mobile device manufacturers, who decide the level of control that a software program can have while running in their platforms. Their approach and restrictions they choose to implement ultimately decides what an MDM tool can and can’t do on their devices through their APIs. Hence, MDMs have become more or less a commodity in recent times, with most vendors offering a similar set of core functionalities with not much difference.

So, basically any MDM in the market would do the trick to some degree, but at the end of the day, when choosing between them, it all comes down to which features you care about the most and picking the tool that does it well. The difference between competing MDM providers may come down to software integration with other applications, compatibility and support for multiple platforms, maximum device load/ server load that can be handled, additional feature set and of course, pricing plans.

If you’re just getting into MDM solutions and you’re considering options for the suite of devices in your company, you might want to evaluate certain parameters like how many devices will be using it, their hardware capabilities, platform and of course your company’s budget.

Do ask yourself: Is speed and responsiveness your priority? Or maybe it’s stability and a bug-free operation for a robust and reliable experience, or maybe you just want something low cost for a quick fix.

The main factor in consideration may just be compatibility and support for platforms and operating systems on which the program can run. It is key to consider what platform or OS most of your devices are running on, and go for that accordingly.

It is also up to you to choose whether you want the feature-rich application with gimmicky and bloated functionality or a basic app that runs low on system resources and comes with a minimalistic outlook and GUI to keep things simple. If you just want something that just gets the basics right and that’s all you need, we’d recommend the latter.

support various operating systems

dotHive offers solutions with minimum compromises and maximum performance. Our app is up to 200% faster than offerings by competitors, all while recording and processing more than 150 data points related to the device parameters, in real time. It can run on Android, Windows and Linux operating systems, with even iOS being added recently.

Our MDM runs light on system resources, while also offering unmatched customizability options to clients in the form of open APIs and SDKs. All this while we charge a nominal fee of just 2$ per device monthly.

Feature sets:

MDMs these days come with loads of features in general, enabling a lot of control and freedom to the admins. Remote access /remote control is one of the most definitive core features of MDM software. Along with screen mirror and screen control, it grants the owner full access to remotely control and monitor any of the connected devices in their arsenal, as if they were there in person. This really comes in handy especially when deploying bulk software updates to remote devices or for any such similar bulk operations deployed to specific device groups. Depending on the platform, the feature can be called as android remote or remote desktop by various other vendors.

remote access

Telemetry is another important feature that helps monitor the device’s health metrics, usage parameters and performance statistics all in real time. One can also customize aspects of device usage logs and reports that they want to receive on a scheduled basis.

CPU usage

Apart from device management use cases, other capabilities offered in MDM apps are hardware inventory tracking, software distribution and troubleshooting, security encryption and authentication procedures, and network management.

Some notable advanced features offered in MDMs like Geofencing and Kiosk Lockdown can really make life easier for the admin by going the extra mile in terms of functionality.

For instance, dotHive offers the Kiosk Mode as a feature that allows only the use of a few admin-selected applications to streamline and refine device usage experience for use in purpose-specific environments while also preventing the possibility of misuse. We offer this feature on most platforms — Android, Windows and Linux operating systems.

We also offer you unmatched extensibility and customizability options via SDKs for all our applications. Using it, you can add and implement your own functions, as well as customize existing options and features to suit your needs.

dotHive’s other notable features include device grouping, file transfer using FTP, file manager, interactive shell, ADB shell on web, and camera integration.

BYOD environments:

Things can get a little tricky in predominantly BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) environments. When trying to implement MDMs in such scenarios, there are more considerations to take into account, such as the end-user’s privacy concerns, the hardware and software compatibility of their devices and of course the company’s own data security. It is often a balancing act between safeguarding the integrity of corporate apps and data, without unnecessarily compromising or trespassing upon the employee’s personal data.

Enterprises can still employ some thoughtful methods to maintain user privacy while deploying MDM in BYOD environments. Some options include app wrapping, which sets up a secure wrapper to enable the IT officers to enforce strict security rules on supported mobile apps. Android Enterprise, Google’s enterprise mobility program is especially suited and preferred for android devices as it offers separate work and personal profiles so that the end users can relax and stop worrying about their personal data reaching the wrong hands.

Tomorrow’s trends: Where it’s headed:

Most MDM vendors nowadays increasingly offer more cloud-based services on top of on-premises ones, given that cloud and SaaS is currently gaining more and more traction in the market as far as enterprises are concerned. It also helps that cloud subscriptions offer a greater degree of flexibility and a pay-as-you-go service model that is seen as favourable to many organizations.

This is especially so, in the wake of the huge rise in work-from-home (WFH) jobs, which is expected to grow even more in the coming years. Cloud based MDM SaaS services are thus increasingly preferred by organizations to deploy to and manage devices of employees working in various remote locations.

These days MDM apps take on additional roles in terms of broadcasting content, with Content Management Systems (CMS) coming baked into the application. Even though they used to be offered as separate apps, vendors and consumers seem to prefer and are increasing headed towards the direction of all-in-one apps that can do both and possibly even more.

Another trend seen in recent years is the market moving in the direction of UEMs, which is the next evolutionary stage of MDMs. In addition to providing enterprises options to manage their fleet of mobile devices, Unified Endpoint Management tools (UEM) also extend the same functionality to include endpoints like desktops, printers, IoT devices and wearables, which can all be controlled from a single console interface.

Going by these points of discussion, it seems like MDM SaaS solutions and UEMs are the future of MDM as we know it, as another chapter of MDM begins, ultimately aimed at providing both the end-user and the admin a smooth, simple and delightful experience.