In the world of enterprise mobility, there are acronyms aplenty. As we mentioned in an earlier post on the evolving needs of enterprise mobility, MDM, EMM, and MTM are but the tip of the iceberg. What we didn’t talk about in that story is the growing trend to UEM.
In long hand, unified endpoint management is the means to manage, secure and control your entire IT environment. This goes beyond mobile devices and includes all endpoints (smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops), your users, apps, data, and content.
Why UEM and why now?
These days most businesses need to support their employees in their use of multiple devices with different operating systems and various form factors. Offering workplace flexibility and modern ways of working is essential and organisations are embracing BYOD, and ensuring employees can access the information and systems they need, whenever they need them, wherever they are.
But, the complexity of managing and securing a wide range of devices across an enterprise can be overwhelming. Given the broad array of technology and BYOD types prevalent in most large organisations, IT managers can find themselves managing a diverse range of solutions to secure endpoints.
Number of devices per employee still growing
With the number of devices still on a rapid growth trajectory, this job is going to become more complicated still. The types of devices continues to diversify beyond traditional desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets to encompass Internet of Things devices. And this could mean any number of wearables to anything with a sensor like your office air conditioning system.
Of course, as essential as MDM and EMM technologies are to the modern enterprise, they were not specifically set up to manage the emerging set of IoT devices. This leaves many organisations having multiple discrete platforms. One to manage traditional computers, another to manage iOS devices, another for Android, another for Windows, and more for IoT endpoints.
Yet, fragmented endpoint management is not only expensive and inefficient, it’s risky too! To integrate and manage this mix of devices UEM is essential.
Enhanced security
With the increase in targeted attacks, having clear visibility across all endpoints is a tremendous advantage to all organisations. By being able to view every endpoint you can identify the applications on each and take action as appropriate. So, rather than having to rely on your employees to proactively manage their own devices, with UEM, you can monitor and act on all endpoint devices and update as required, enabling security features remotely.
Greater visibility
With real-time notifications of suspicious behaviour or policy violations, you can take prompt corrective action against malware, ransomware and other threats before they become an issue.
Efficiency
UEM keeps all endpoints on and off your network up-to-date with the latest patches without IT involvement. As UEM automates the rollout process for these deployments, you can free up your IT team from spending quite so much time managing routine tasks.
Consistency
UEM provides a single toolset for managing all endpoints, and ensures users have a standardised and optimised experience across devices. Onboarding new employees is also quicker as the IT team can push software and configurations to any new employee, wherever they are.
Optimal employee experience
From an employee perspective, all they need is a user ID and password to gain access to your corporate content on their preferred device. Likewise, providing one place to go for all the apps they need, one place to report device issues, with consistent policies across all devices whether it’s Windows, iOS or Andoid, vastly simplifies the employee experience.
Beyond cost savings by bringing down support costs, reducing software licensing requirements, and simplifying device management, UEM improves the employee experience over the long term. Creating better mobile experiences for employees drives up employee productivity, ultimately leading to better customer outcomes.
To learn more about UEM and how imei can help your organisation create better mobile experiences for employees, please get in touch.
