Securely deploy, monitor, update and remove apps on user- and corporate-owned devices.

more times than not is a mixture of both.” For enterprises wanting to authenticate devices on the network, MDM is often the right tool. And when applications need to be deployed to those devices in a controlled way (or monitored post-deployment), then MAM fits the bill. Depending on where a company is in the mobile management lifecycle, one or both solutions are likely to be useful. “They go hand in hand,” Schroeder says. “It’s definitely not an either-or.”

Rege, too, believes that both MAM and MDM are part of the larger IT picture. “If you’re deploying a mobile IT strategy, you’re going to deploy devices, applications, and content,” he says. “And you’re going to have to secure and manage all three of those.” He sees MAM and MDM being intertwined in many enterprises to fully control the entire lifecycle of mobile management. Connectivity, jailbreak detection, e-mail setup, and data security are just some of the issues these solutions address, and often a combination of both platforms is the best way to do that. “You need to have a tightly integrated platform that spans the device, the apps, and the content, and can provide security and management for all three,” Rege says.

Considering MAM?

Ensuring your IT group has accurately identified what success looks like is the first step in a successful deployment, according to Dumitru. “Make sure they understand what they need and what the end users need first,” he says, “and then make sure the solution matches that.”  Before investing time and money in a MAM solution, he says his team carefully evaluated what the various platforms were capable of, to be sure they didn’t sink resources into something that didn’t meet their needs. “We knew we didn’t want to invest in hardware,” he says. The company also knew they didn’t want to add staff to run complex MAM tools, and because it was more important for their internal team to focus on their core business, Dumitru says, “We wanted something simple.”

Schroeder encourages enterprises to start small when deploying a MAM solution. “Start with what you’re comfortable with — what you can contain, monitor, and measure.” Once customers have identified any compliance issues or other requirements for success, Schroeder says they frequently begin with a small test set, such as a small number of seat licenses on their MAM platform. After the solution has been fine tuned and tweaked to fit the company’s particular needs, it can then be rolled out to a wider group of users. The important thing, Schroeder adds, is to simply start. “Start small, iterate often, and make sure you can monitor and measure it.”

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