In While Apple's iPad is meant for consumers, employees already want to bring Apple's iPad into the enterprise. Before IT can deploy Apple's iPad, security, connectivity, personalization, integration and scale issues need to be addressed. By using enterprise mobility management, Knowledge Center contributor Mark Shull explains here how you can seamlessly and successfully integrate Apple's iPad into your enterprise.
Preparing Your Enterprise
Today, enterprises are intent on mobilizing business applications to increase productivity, drive topline growth and improve customer satisfactionin short, to improve business performance. With the release of the iPad, Apple has helped to accelerate when the enterprise will mobilize lines of business applications such as business intelligence, sales force automation (SFA), point-of-sale and document sharing, among others.
But before corporate IT can begin rolling out the iPad, there are five foundational underpinnings necessary for an organization to succeed with their application mobilization initiatives. These underpinnings are security, connectivity, personalization, integration and scale. Here, I will detail how enterprise mobility management (EMM) platforms can be used by the enterprise to address these foundational requirements.
Security
Enterprises are required to protect corporate data on devices such as the iPad, including business application data, user credentials, shared credentials, e-mail and personal information. To meet this requirement, organizations can rely on EMM platforms to reduce the risks associated with violations of regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA), while enforcing compliance with corporate IT security policies.
When selecting an EMM platform, look for one whose architecture leverages native security (for example, PIN and password, encryption, and local and remote wipe) and management features that are built into enterprise-class mobile devices. By properly configuring mobile devicessuch as the iPadto connect into an existing IT infrastructure, data services can be delivered while maximizing infrastructure investmentand offering the best possible experience to users.
By following this architecture, IT can provide the necessary security controls yet remain seamless and unobtrusive to users. Also, doing so does not negatively affect device performance, battery life or impact the productivity benefits of the iPad.
While Apple's iPad is meant for consumers, employees already want to bring Apple's iPad into the enterprise. Before IT can deploy Apple's iPad, security, connectivity, personalization, integration and scale issues need to be addressed. By using enterprise mobility management, Knowledge Center contributor Mark Shull explains here how you can seamlessly and successfully integrate Apple's iPad into your enterprise.
Connectivity
Mobile applications are most powerful when they can efficiently connect to back-end data services. Devices such as the iPad are powerful productivity tools in part because they provide an array of connectivity options. In addition, enterprise-class devices provide powerful VPN capabilities which, when combined with wireless connectivity, provide secure remote access to enterprise data. These networking capabilities enable a new world of transaction-oriented applications in addition to the important and well-supported enterprise e-mail application.
When selecting an EMM platform, look for one that automates the configuration of secure WiFi, VPN and native e-mail sync. By properly configuring the iPad to connect into your existing IT infrastructure, as laptops do today, data and services can be delivered to these endpoints, which maximizes infrastructure investments.
While Apple's iPad is meant for consumers, employees already want to bring Apple's iPad into the enterprise. Before IT can deploy Apple's iPad, security, connectivity, personalization, integration and scale issues need to be addressed. By using enterprise mobility management, Knowledge Center contributor Mark Shull explains here how you can seamlessly and successfully integrate Apple's iPad into your enterprise.
Personalization
In the mobile environment, as in traditional computing, there is no one-size-fits-all. Each user requires a set of unique credentials: username and password and digital certificate (or both) to access network resources. Users located in various campuses or buildings connect to local wireless access points. Users in different geographic regions often connect to regionally deployed VPN access servers or front-end messaging servers. Users may require different security policies or access privileges depending on their role within the organization. EMM platforms enable iPad users to connect to the services needed while maintaining the level of data protection the organization requires.
When an authorized user connects the iPad to work, the EMM platform has easy-to-use, self-service facilities where the system automatically provisions the iPad with the user's unique credentials, connects the iPad to the network and user-specific application services (based on the security policy established for that individual user), and secures all data on the iPad according to policies appropriate to the user's role within the organization.
While Apple's iPad is meant for consumers, employees already want to bring Apple's iPad into the enterprise. Before IT can deploy Apple's iPad, security, connectivity, personalization, integration and scale issues need to be addressed. By using enterprise mobility management, Knowledge Center contributor Mark Shull explains here how you can seamlessly and successfully integrate Apple's iPad into your enterprise.
Integration
EMM platforms mobilize an enterprise's application architecture by connecting the iPad to enterprise applications via an organization's current infrastructuresync, WiFi, VPN and public-key infrastructure (PKI). The EMM platform bridges mobile users, applications and devices to the data services those entities need to access.
The EMM platform should integrate deeply into existing systems and, ideally, be a pure software overlay. That is, be part of the IT data center environment and architected to avoid inefficiencies, poor scalability and interoperability problems caused by closed or appliance-based IT silos. EMM platforms should integrate with Active Directory, Domino Directory, Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange ActiveSync, Exchange, Lotus Domino, Google Apps and enterprise PKIthereby reducing TCO by leveraging the IT organization's intrinsic skills
Scale
Scaling the introduction of mobile business applications to an organization's iPad users is both critically important and challenging, particularly as scale allows the organization to truly improve operational efficiencies and topline growth. As expected, an organization will face challenges that are both labor-intensive and time-intensive when enabling data access and protection for hundreds (or even thousands) of iPad workers. This fundamental requirementscalecan be cost-prohibitive without the proper tools. Select an EMM platform that allows mobility to be scaled to thousands of iPads and mobile users, for multiple business applications, over a geographically dispersed data networkwhile protecting mobile data.
Conclusion
Only after an IT organization has laid the foundational requirements of security, connectivity, personalization, integration and scale will they be able to deliver tangible business value, increase topline growth and improve operational efficiencies with devices such as the iPad.
By selecting the right EMM platform, the IT organization is able to ensure integrity, confidentiality and authenticity of all corporate data, as well as enable secure, real-time access to business application data and IT services. The IT organization is also able to configure iPads appropriately for disparate users, seamlessly integrate the iPad into the enterprise and meet all of these requirements on a large-scale iPad deployment.
Add new comment