Document History
Executive Summary
This report will provide a snapshot of the EMM marketplace of several market leaders as concluded by the Gartner in their latest report dated 8 June 2015. The report will review some key selection criteria for EMMs, and how US’s current EMM solution, Microsoft’s Intune, compares to the top EMM solutions rated by Gartner in their Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites.
Introduction
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, (US) has embarked on a mission to retool and enhance their mobile devices and the management system used to control, secure, and operate. The selection criteria for such a system is complex due to the speed at which the Enterprise Mobility Management, (EMM) industry is rapidly changing to provide for a growing customer base whose needs vary greatly as do their business models. These business models levy different priority of feature capability for the devices managed by the EMMs. With that said, one constant remains that the underpinning capabilities of any EMM worth it value is its ability to provide access to resources, securing access from unwanted intrusion, and its ability to remotely control mobile device access when the user is no longer to have access to corporate resources.
Acronyms, Terms, and Definitions
The following acronyms and definitions are provided from the 6/2015 Gartner Report on EMM Suites to ensure that the content of this document will be clear to representatives from all organizations that use it.
Acronym/Term
Definition
EMM - Enterprise Mobility Management
EMM suites help organizations integrate mobile devices into their security frameworks and systems and information technology life cycles.
MDM - Mobile Device Management
MDM is a platform life cycle management technology that provides inventory, OS configuration management, mobile app provisioning and de-provisioning, remote wipe, and remote viewing/control for troubleshooting. MDM profiles, installed on the device, facilitate these functions.
MAM – Mobile Application Management
MAM applies management and policy control functionality to individual applications, which are then delivered via enterprise app stores and managed locally on devices via the EMM console.
MCM - Mobile Content Management
MCM enables users to access content from their mobile devices. Current System
US currently utilizes a vintage Blackberry EMM solution, which is lacking in the latest capabilities that the leading competitors in the industry possess_. US has selected the Intune system to replace the Blackberry EMM system largely due to its compatibility with US’s future focus on integration with Active Directory as supported by Office 365, bundling by Microsoft and cost advantages.
Solution Discussion
US selected the Microsoft’s EMS solution, called is the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), which includes Microsoft Intune, Azure Active Directory Premium, and Azure Rights Management. The selection meets the federal statutes required for federal agencies to purchase and operate to conduct agency business. Microsoft’s Intune has all the basic capability (i.e. device remote management, mobile device encryption security, access to Azure’s Active Directory, and finally remote device wipe) necessary to meet current corporate mission needs. However, those are the bare essentials in capabilities, and as we find out later in this report, there are other criteria, which may be of value that US may wish to consider before fully implementing the Intune solution.
The Intune system while a relatively safe choice given the Cloud solution selected by US, is not considered to be a leader in the EMM marketplace as reported by the latest Gartner report on EMMs. Microsoft ranked in the lowest third of twelve companies in the report. Microsoft excelled somewhat in the area of “Vision” in the “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites," but failed