Enterprise Mobility: Mapping MDM

Indian enterprises are taking a slow and cautious approach to adopting mobile device management solutions, but the market is poised for growth By Mehak Chawla

So what does an IT head worry about most once his enterprise mobility pilot becomes a full-fledged project? Manageability, security and application rendition are just a few things that comprise the answer to this question.

And these are exactly the factors that bring mobile device management (MDM) into the picture. As the mobility market is enjoying its growth curve, mobility management is another opportunity lingering on the horizon. Though there is many a case study today for enterprise mobility implementations, only a few companies have embarked on the MDM route, especially in India. Global growth predictions, however, seem hopeful.

According to a recent report by Nasscom, in association with Deloitte, the global enterprise mobility market opportunity is expected to grow by a CAGR of 15% to touch $140 billion by 2020. Most of this market is expected to constitute the MDM, mobile application management (MAM), mobile security and mobile business applications pie. Enterprise mobility growth in the APAC region is expected to be the highest, at 21%.

Interestingly, MDM has been redefined several times during its short career. Initially it was all about managing different operating systems and provisioning apps on them. Then it included security in its fold. In its current avatar, MDM solutions are redefining themselves as holistic, end-to-end and, in most cases, device agnostic tools.

Whether this new avatar of MDM will accelerate the so far lack-luster adoption in the Indian market is yet to be seen.

MDM challenges
For a CIO, the biggest concerns in a multi-device scenario revolve around creating a standard environment, rendition of apps on multiple devices, helpdesk support and  dynamic access management.

According to Shree Parthasarthy, Senior Director, Enterprise Risk Services, Deloitte India, MDM is really starting to gain traction because of the advent of small devices with big capabilities. Mobile devices are disrupting the unity of the device landscape in an organization. Adoption is still lacking because corporations are restrictive about devices they are allowing to enter the company’s networks. However, organizations are realizing that they have to manage devices irrespective of operating systems.”

Several OSes come loaded with device protection and management features and analysts believe that this could be a dominant trend in the future. However, the need of MDM is being felt more clearly than ever because enterprises are realizing that security aspects need to be considered not only for the device but for the apps as well.

The latest Symantec State of Mobility Survey 2013 reveals that 6 in 10 Indian organizations consider themselves innovators when it comes to mobile adoption. This results in greater security risks along with more technologies for IT to grasp – and quickly support. The growing number of ways in which corporate users can acquire or access powerful applications, and the types and quantities of applications themselves, is emerging as a significant trend that impacts mobile device management,opines Anand Naik, Managing Director – Sales, India and SAARC, Symantec.

Though the explosion of devices is what propelled the enterprises to consider an MDM platform, today MDM goes way beyond device management. IT heads are trying to establish things like data ownership, access management, authentication and application-level security models. A key realization that seems to have dawned on India Inc. is that they can no longer control the devices. All they can do is manage them effectively.

Mobile everything management
Initially, the focus of MDM was very device-centric. However, it is gradually inching beyond the hardware. Explains Seemant Chaudhry, Director, Enterprise Mobility and Transformation, India Subcontinent, Citrix, “MDM is now moving beyond the device. We are gradually progressing toward mobile application management because enterprises are realizing that managing devices alone is not enough.Citrix recently launched XenMobile MDM solution, for instance, can not only detect jail-broken and vulnerable devices but also provision policies and apps to devices automatically and blacklist or whitelist apps.”

B.S. Nagarajan, Director, Systems Engineering, India & SAARC, VMware, feels that not only  do organizations have to provide multiple applications on multiple devices, but they must also ensure complete security and high availability of these apps. “These demands often lead to a hodgepodge of point solutions, ultimately increasing costs and complexity for the enterprise,he says.

Nagarajan believes that a virtual workstation that that spans all devices and manages apps and security in a holistic manner might be the way out. VMware’s Horizon Suite, the company’s platform for workforce mobility pans all devices and consists of Horizon Workspace, Horizon Mirage and Horizon View. These products and their technologies, individually and collectively as a suite, deliver the tools businesses need for today’s multi-device, mobile workspace.”

Another reason why MDM seems to be moving beyond the device itself is that application level threats as becoming a reality. Today, a mobile application is as vulnerable, if not more, as the mobile device. In such a scenario, mitigating threats that might emerge from the application front becomes a necessity. That is why, says Chaudhary, most organizations that are talking about BYOD are mandating an MDM policy.

Naik of Symantec confirms the trend. Companies are devising holistic MDM strategies to help mitigate the risks of data security breaches, as well as the unintentional loss of confidential information. The Symantec survey found that in India 45% of organizations ensure that mobile devices that connect to the network have proper safeguards installed.”

When to opt for MDM
Even as MDM is becoming all-encompassing in its scope, IT heads are debating whether to deploy a solution only to manage their mobility platform. The adoption of MDM, as a result, is nothing to write home about, just yet. However, as mobility pilots are turning into projects and consumerization of IT cannot be ignored, MDM is sure to gain acceptance.

As far as the CIOs are concerned, on the zenith of their list of mobility concerns lies the security aspect. However, not everyone would feel the need to deploy a full MDM solution, which is wider in scope, for solving only security and access management. Besides, the scale of most mobility implementations in India is relegated to select business users and is not so vast as to require a management platform.

As a natural evolution, many CIOs are currently working on their mobility and BYOD strategies and are looking to adopt MDM as and when they have the basics in place. Deepak Shivathaya, Head – IT, Religare Mutual Fund, fits the bill for this scenario. “We are just starting our mobility deployment and an MDM solution will come in the picture only once we have a stable mobility platform,” he says.

Another case in point is that of Shriram Value, an enterprise that has a mobility platform in place, but is not actively evaluating an MDM solution just yet. V. Sendil Kumar, Asst. Vice President – IT, Shriram Value, explains, “We have developed an in-house mobile application for field executives, which is compatible with Android, RIM, Symbian etc . The app can be downloaded on their own mobile and we give them a password and PIN number to access the application.  It is almost similar to an online banking portal. Once they collect the payment,  immediately an SMS is triggered to the hirer, collection agent and also to his superior.”

Though the company is managing its mobility without an MDM solution as of now, Kumar believes that MDM is sure to come along the way. “The reason we are not using MDM yet is that data is not stored on the mobiles of executives. However, we are planning to add many features on mobiles in the coming months, and there could be a chance of data getting stored on the devices. With MDM, pushing of application patches will be quite easy and we can have better control on the device.Kumar is evaluating products from AirWatch, IBM, MobileIron, etc., for his MDM needs.

There are other IT heads who take the security equation in their own hands. Joydeep Dutta, CTO, ICICI Securities, explains how they are managing security on mobiles. “We are not doing MDM for our mobile offerings yet. However, we are solving the security issue by doing Windows authentication. We have customized our CRM for mobiles and have defined access controls. Any person accessing the application first has to go through the Windows authentication and then through application level security.”

On the other side are firms like Asian Paints that are using tools such as Afaria to manage their tablet-based mobility initiatives. As a security measure, the company has also partnered with the telecom service providers, as it wanted to ensure that the devices would only be used to connect to its corporate network rather than for Internet access.

Manish Choksi, Chief – Corporate Strategy and CIO, Asian Paints, explains that when it comes to mobility, iOS is far ahead of Android in the West, whereas India is clearly inclining toward  Android. Catching up with iOS is going to be a huge part of our mobility as well as MDM journey,he says.

This also brings us to the most crucial challenge in the way of MDM today- that of provisioning applications on various operating systems.

OS Agnosticism
Ironically, though MDM is steadily moving beyond the hardware and into applications and networks, the biggest challenge to its adoption is diversity of OSes.  

Jagdish Mahapatra, Managing Director, McAfee India & SAARC, explains: “Technologically, the biggest roadblock for MDM is the fact that in a mobile world, operating systems are different (iOS vs Android vs Win8), fragmented (e.g. Android 2.2-4.1 implemented across devices) and closed (e.g. agents aren’t an option like they are on PCs). Culturally or psychologically, the biggest roadblock is that MDM in a mobile environment is difficult to implement and maintain from an administrator perspective. At the same time protection of data is much less of a concern for the BYOD user.”

The challenge Mahapatra details is similar to that of CIOs like Kumar and Choksi. “The major challenge is the compatibility where a lot of versions and operating systems keep coming. We should have enough resources to manage the versions and operating systems,says Kumar.

Another aspect that organizations are realizing is that while MDM and MAM (mobile application management) are fine, what happens to the data ownership issue? As a result, a comprehensive solution where an organization can integrate device, data and apps is being voiced as the need of the hour. Some vendors are already propagating device agnosticism. BlackBerry Enterprise Service BES 10, for instance, can enable cross-platform management of BlackBerry 7, BlackBerry 10, PlayBook, Android, and iOS devices and tablets from a unified management console.

Parthasarthy of Deloitte puts another problem in context. “Essentially the biggest challenge that we are facing is still in the context of mobile devices because despite their capabilities, enterprises are not able to do away with laptops. Unless we can provision cloud services for mobiles, people will continue carrying multiple devices and pose a challenge for application provisioning and access controls.”

Sunil Lalvani, MD, BlackBerry India, is of the view that formulation of policies around accessing personal data on an employee-owned vis-a-vis an employer-owned device is one of the bigger challenges of MDM today. Enabling relevant, secure access across the entire network through the creation of heterogeneous environments is another challenge to MDM on Lalvani’s list. Another impediment here is that integrated offerings for MDM are yet to become mainstream. MDM solutions so far offer to solve only one piece of the problem, but not the entire puzzle.

If these challenges weren’t enough, adding to these woes is the fact that since MDM is still pretty nascent, and cost models around offerings are still not evolved.

Solving the cost puzzle
While many believe that costing is  not a major hindrance to MDM, given the value it delivers, what is bothering CIOs is that the models are not so evolved and there is hardly any uniformity across offerings. Costs often vary highly from vendor to vendor. According to Chaudhry, the cost for an MDM solution is usually around $40-50 per user, per month, but it can vary from vendor to vendor.

Nagarajan of VMware agrees. hosting models around MDM suites vary across vendors and developers. The VMware Horizon Workspace suite is offered as a perpetual license and is priced per user.

The vendors, too, are trying to find their own pricing mix that works best for them. Explains Bala Mahadevan, CEO, Orange India, “Currently, MDM vendor offerings are not very consistent. Hence, it’s difficult to compare offerings and pricing models. Some solutions are focused on security, others on IT integration, and some are complete solutions encompassing all. Costing models are still developing as they have more than one variable number of devices, type of devices, type of platforms, variety of usage, type of software, etc.”

Lack of offerings on hosted or cloud model is also limiting options for organizations that do not have the resources to manage their own solution.

However, Atul Shetiya, Head, Product Engineering and Mobility, Blue Star Infotech, believes that is changing. firms now have a choice between investing in on-premise or cloud-hosted solutions and managed services. The latter has proven to be increasingly compelling for firms that lack internal expertise and budget. We can expect proliferation of cloud-based MDM solution providers in future.”

Organizations like BlackBerry are also working toward making their MDM proposition more attractive. Lalvani elaborates on the pricing model for BES-10. “In the case of BlackBerry, the BES-10 Server license is available free of charge. BlackBerry charges a perpetual license fee for the CAL to manage Android and iOS end points. For existing BES customers there is a BES-10 trade-up program. The costing for new users of BlackBerry 10, and Android and iOS also have a tiered pricing model to provide volume based benefits to our enterprise customers as they scale their business.”

Future gazing
Despite a slow start, there is hardly any doubt that the MDM market will see a robust growth in the near future. Indian IT heads seem only to be waiting for their mobility projects to stabilize before they start investing in device management.

Experts also believe that sub-categories of MDM, like application management, platform management and security management, could grow faster individually. The time may not be too far before we see MDM becoming a standard offering of mobility suites.