Introducing Mobile Device Management

Pritpal Rehal investigates what mobile device management could offer the University.

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One of the biggest IT demands over recent years has been for more and more access to wireless connectivity across the University estate. This has been fueled by the fact that many - possibly most - of us are adapting a mobile way of working.

Photo by John Houlihan
johnhoulihan.com

Laptops, mobiles and tablets have become a part of our lifestyle. An important tool, they hold our personal data and become (to some) an extension of who we are. Just like your house or car keys, if you lose your mobile, panic sets in... you start checking your pockets, coat, man bag, your pockets again your coat... ahhh - you know the feeling.

Many of these devices are University owned, as well as (wait for it... another IT acronym) BYOD (bring your own device). So what's the problem? Is there a problem? What are we trying to solve?

We've worked hard to develop and improve our IT Services Desktop PC platform, to provide a fully managed, adaptable and agile solution. Now the question is - can we deliver something similar for the emerging and growing mobile platform? Key to this is how we support and protect our data. Let me introduce MDM - Mobile Device Management.

MDM is designed to manage mobile devices, support users and, vitally, protect and manage corporate data. Over the last six months, IT Services have been working with various University groups who use mobiles to access data as part of the way they work. We ran a scoping exercise to find out how staff use their mobile device, what support they'd like to see, and how we could manage the data and devices en masse.

Information gathered from the groups suggested we look at a mobile solution. We are currently evaluating one MDM product, which offers a number of features including:

• Delivery/deployment in various forms depending on the device owner - University or personal. This give us the flexibility to deliver relevant features and services, and to support a range of operating systems.
• A self service web portal allowing users to register and manage their own device
• Bulk central registration of devices
• Multiple workspaces within each mobile device, keeping work (encrypted area) and personal data separate
• Set global or local profiles, policies and access control to support the data (including mobile apps), users and devices
• Integration with our identity management system (IDM)
• Sharing single tablets to multiple users
• Create a University App Store to deliver required or popular apps to our user base
• Develop our own University apps 
• Pre-purchase mobile apps, ebooks and other content for multiple devices 
• Encrypted Secure Locker, allowing us to push University data content to all or specific users anywhere in the world. Ideal for sending documents to students during Freshers' Week. We can also 'time bomb' the data, so it will automatically removed from the device after a set period of time.
• Geo-fence a device, limiting where and when it can be used
• Remote wipe for phones that are lost or stolen

These are just a selection of the many powerful features available - implementing any of these would need to be supported by University policy on role access, usage  and security.

We will be testing the technology with a group of departments over the next few months and hope to gain a better understanding, so that we can make an informed choice about having MDM as part of our mobile strategy.

Laptop in the Grass by Simon Brown
Used under a Creative Commons license.

The desktop is evolving. Is it mobile?

So, I wanted to write a blog on how the desktop is evolving - how we are using it to access information, generate content, how we interact with it at work and at home. I’m hoping to be less technical, more observational.

Photo of Banksy's Mobile Lovers by Vision Invisible.
Used under a Creative Commons license.

This recent work of art from Banksy seems to sum up exactly how we are all accessing and interacting with information in our daily lives. I think it’s a great picture - a couple embracing but also online, being in contact - physically and digitally.

So the traditional desktop - what is it? 

For most people it’s a PC on your desk with an operating system (eg Windows) and applications installed which allow us to do our work (whatever that happens to be).
This model has remained pretty stable for many many years and, yes, it has significantly improved over those years in terms of hardware, software and connectivity. 

But things are changing. The acronym BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has long been part of Higher Education environments and is just one of the factors affecting a change in desktop usage. So what are these devices? And why and how will this affect the desktop model? 

Well, I'm referring to staff and students using a mixture of mobile devices - smartphones, tablets, ultrabook laptops, Chromebooks etc. The point is, these devices are generally light, portable, fast, relatively (!) cheap and have a cloud based service or infrastructure around them to support the user (eg iCloud, Windows Store, Amazon, ebay or Google Play to name but a few ). The user has access to wide choice of smart, ever changing, exciting and powerful devices which allows them to access content anywhere in the world.

Consumer being the key word, these devices have come from this market and are entering the workplace. The popularity of Apple's iPad, iPhone and other competitor products have allowed users to make a choice about how they access ‘digital stuff’, not just on the PC but also on their smart device. These devices are now the norm in the business/education space - used to access work related content such as email, calendar, shared data and documents, but also used as the device of choice to interact with others on a personal level - making calls, acessing social media, using instant messaging, storing personal information, playing games, accessing movies or music, taking photos - witness the rise of the selfie :-) All simple, easy to use (kind of...) and ready to go - these really are smart devices. 

So back to the desktop - is it evolving? Yes, I think it is.

The device is changing, the user is mobile, the user needs to access their digital content whether it’s personal or work-related, and this is what we can see now:

• We can make the traditional desktop applications (eg Word, Matlab etc) available on these various smart devices, using Virtualisation (VDI) or streaming apps technologies
• The user isn’t bothered about the operating system - they just want access to the applications as they roam and move between different devices (PC, laptop, tablet) 
• Some users never even use local applications - they simply run a web browser with multiple tabs open, accessing everything via different web based applications as traditionally native (locally hosted) desktop applications can now be found in the public cloud
• Go to a meeting now, and you will notice those around you working on their mobile device at the same time - taking notes, multi-tasking perhaps, collaborating, sharing. A few years ago, this might have been considered bad manners - has it now become the norm?
• We love our gadgets -  we love having the latest smart device, and many of us have a mix of devices

But let's take a step back, this is not happening overnight - the traditional desktop has plenty of life in it yet. Not every business, every individual or even every application finds their home on the mobile platform. We continue to support the traditional desktop, even as technically we are moving in the direction of the mobile platform for some aspects of IT. 

As the desktop evolves, some things don’t change - having a safe, secure infrastructure in place to support personal and application data is as vital for mobile devices as it is for the traditional  desktop. Currently most users access IT in a mixed way,  swapping from desktop to mobile depending on location, application and device performance - making their own decisions to get the best user experience. We’re in a phase of transition which continues to evolve - and perhaps one day the desktop will become completely mobile?