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 Channel Futures

Mobility


47 Million Reasons to Offer Mobile Device Management (MDM)

  • Written by Joe Panettieri 1
  • April 24, 2012
Apple's record Q2 2012 results, announced today, contain these two stunning figures: Apple sold 35 million iPhones and nearly 12 million iPads during its Q2 ended March 31, 2012.

Apple’s record Q2 2012 results, announced today, contain these two stunning figures: Apple sold 35 million iPhones and nearly 12 million iPads during its Q2 ended March 31, 2012. That’s 47 million new mobile devices running Apple iOS — the latest wake-up call to MSPs that are still evaluating mobile device management (MDM) strategies. Here are some potential ways to get started with MDM.

I’m not suggesting MDM and its sister opportunity (mobile application management, MAM) are easy sells or extremely lucrative. I realize many MSPs are scratching their heads as they try to justify charging customers for MDM and MAM services.

But the fact is: Most MSPs already offer mobile device support without any formalized service offerings in place. So you might as well start charging for phantom, time-consuming services you’re otherwise giving away.

Five Places to Start

How? I keep going back to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management-oriented services. Gartner says true MDM platforms need to offer:

  1. Software Distribution — The ability to manage and support mobile application including deploy, install, update, delete or block.
  2. Policy Management — Development, control and operations of enterprise mobile policy.
  3. Inventory Management — Beyond basic inventory management, this includes provisioning and support.
  4. Security Management — The enforcement of standard device security, authentication and encryption.
  5. Service Management — Rating of telecom services.

Instead of telling your customers you will offer “proactive” support for tablets, describe your services using the five capabilities above. Or stated in simple terms:

  • In my case, I’d never pay for someone a monthly fee to troubleshoot my iPad — because it never really breaks.
  • But if someone explained to me how their MDM services manage my company’s app distributions, mobile policies, provisioning, security and network connectivity, I’d be inclined to listen to the sales pitch…

 

Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Content Resources Mobility

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4 comments

  1. Avatar Ben Greiner April 25, 2012 @ 1:03 am
    Reply

    A great way for MSPs to get started with iOS MDM is through our RobotCloud.net solution.

  2. Avatar Joe Panettieri April 25, 2012 @ 2:06 am
    Reply

    Ben: Thanks for the info.

    Readers: Ben has been an MSP and is a channel veteran. I have not leveraged his company’s IT services but MSPmentor have interviewed him from time to time for our mobile and Apple-oriented coverage.

    Best
    -jp

  3. Avatar Dave Sobel April 26, 2012 @ 1:22 pm
    Reply

    Joe:

    You hit on it — on an individual level, devices don’t resonate. That’s not where MDM is necessary and shines. It’s in the aggregate – managing applications, policy enforcement, provisioning and end of life, and security for users where device management is critical for organizations. Manage my iPad? Not interesting. Manage the provisioning, policies, and security on all devices connecting to my network? Very interesting.

    Offering this as a service — a complete, organizational wide service — is starting to resonate as a solid approach for MSPs. Our Partners are embracing the fact that using an MDM tool, fully integrated into their existing management platform, allows them to charge for those services you’re right to point out they haven’t been able to monetize before. The key, as always with Managed Services, is efficiency. Using a single dashboard to automate what is currently a manual process drives profit.

    Dave Sobel
    Director of Partner Community
    Level Platforms

  4. Avatar Richard Bliss April 28, 2012 @ 12:31 am
    Reply

    You have easily identified four of the five capabilities of nearly 100% of all MDM providers. But what about the fifth capability? Rating of Telecom management. A MDM vendor that can reduce the telecom expenses through proactive management of the costs of using the device in addition to the security of the device can easily justify charging for the services since the MDM solution will pay for itself within a single quarter due to reduced overage costs, 411 calls, zombie phones, and all the other minutia of truly managing the device from the beginning to the end of its life inside an organization. MDM vendors who fail to expand beyond security scare tactics to get customers to buy their MDM solution are going to find it continually difficult to justify their prices and their very existence. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for MDM comes out in a few weeks. There will certianly be a few surprises with the companies that have been included.

    Richard Bliss
    Chief Marketing Officer
    Amtelnet.com

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