Numara Links Mobile Device Management to IT Service Management
Numara Software, a help desk software provider, has a message for MSPs: Your mobile device management (MDM) efforts should integrate with your existing managed services for network devices security, provisioning, management and control. So where does Numara Cloud fit into the MDM Conversation?
The platform includes Numara Cloud Mobile Device Manager — which allows MSPs to integrate MDM into an overall IT service management infrastructure. Senior Product Marketing Manager Criss Scruggs, Senior Director of Product Marketing David Manks and VP of Global Marketing Andy White offered me some additional insights.
“MDM is very important to end-to-end IT management,” Manks said. “Companies need to think about how IT operations work and integrate together. Organizations haven’t developed a standard process for getting mobile devices onto the network. Companies still don’t have that identified and provisioned, and the risk is that devices companies don’t know about are coming onto the network.
So Numara is set out to provision and standardize all devices, including mobile. To that end, the company begins the first conversation with each new client with the same question: Do you know how many mobile devices are coming on to your network?
“IT staffs generally underestimate that figure,” Scruggs said. Some Numara clients have implemented their own bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies to keep track of devices entering and leaving their networks. Others have tried to restrict personal devices from the workplace, but the demand from employees has gotten so high that it’s pretty much impossible to do so anymore.
So how are businesses responding? If you can’t beat them, manage them. That’s where MSPs come in.
“The MSP arena is a key initiative to Numara,” said White. “There is an ongoing knowledge requirement around IT service management because technology, people and processes are changing all the time and MSPs are in a good place to solve those challenges.” So Numara is offering its cloud MDM solution to MSPs who can then package it as part of an entire, integrated IT service management solution. That’s where Numara is differentiating itself, according White. “Companies want MDM to be integrated into the IT service management operations of the entire company,” he said.
So Numara is trying to separate itself from other MDM providers by being more than an MDM provider. It wants its MDM solution to be part of the greater IT solution, and the company has taken that message to the U.S., UK, Germany, Australia and most recently, Japan. Numara plans to more aggressively pursue the Spain, Russia, Italy and Southeast Asia markets in 2012.
Still, the MDM market — including on-premises software and cloud-based services — is getting fiercely competitive. Most of the major MSP software providers are developing MDM capabilities for MSPs, and some of those solutions have already reached market.
The first MDM provider to really get it right with MSPs could have a significant advantage.
One of the reasons, I believe, that Zenith took off was their ‘pay as you go’ model, that significantly differentiated them from the rest of the RMM market that required a licensing commitment upfront. Whether or not that was the right choice long-term, it allowed many companies to test the RMM waters without a huge commitment.
It would be nice to see one (or more) of these MDM vendors come up with a similar model that would allow MSPs to get familiar with less risk than an upfront licensing purchase. If MSPMentor could do some reporting on pricing models (not the pricing, of course, though that would be helpful) of these MDM vendors, that might put a bit more pressure on the vendors and help them with adoption at the same time – otherwise their apparent lead over existing RMM providers might disappear as existing RMM tools catch up in MDM.
Too many acronyms…
Fiercely competitive with big names like Google, Mcafee, Sybase, along with start-ups like Zenrprise who just got $20+ million in funding, and numerous other providers like Airwatch, Mobile Iron, and at some point Blackbery with their Fusion.
Seems Numara is right in coupling MDM with other IT management objectives. As a mobility consultant at Vocio I think MDM will be one small piece of overall IT management, which just happens to be mobile.
The other area that doesn’t get much press, but is no less important is Wireless Expense Management. Which deals with the expense/cost side of the equation, and helpdesk functions which can be outsourced. I see that not being rolled into IT management because of the financial component.
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