There’s a lot of well deserved buzz about the Exchange 2010 announcements today, but unfortunately this post is more about the present day versions!
I’ve had a few conversations over the past few weeks about managing mobile devices like smartphones and iPhones. Many companies now have a lot of phones and PDA’s being used to access email, calendars and contacts. Now I think this is great news, having consistent access to my calendar and contacts from all my phones is fantastic. From a company perspective though it can pose some challenges.
With all those devices wandering around the countryside with copies of mailboxes, attachments, address books etc on them, the risk of loosing something important increases. So how do you go about managing the things?
Fortunately there are quite a few people out there who can help. There are a number of products out there that will manage phones, PDA’s smartphones etc. Some will manage just specific devices and others will look after anything that’s even slightly intelligent. Depending on your size, you can probably also get these as a managed service from people like Brightpoint, so no need to buy kit of your own.
These dedicated solutions offer a fantastic amount of control over remote devices, including software distribution even remote control. But the costs do add up.
If you’re using Microsoft Exchange and Activesync, another option is to look at the management options that they provide out the box. Since Exchange 2003 you’ve been able to apply polices to devices that connect to Exchange for mail. This has the advantage that you can apply policies to all devices that connect to Exchange, including those that might be personal phones (of course you’d need to warn people!).
Whilst Exchange doesn’t offer quite the same level of control as something like Mobile Device Manager or mProdigy, for some it will offer enough for free that the dedicated solutions aren’t necessary.
When this subject first came up at work last year I put this table together that shows what options are available from Exchange 2003 through to Exchange 2007 SP1, and on Windows Mobile and iPhone. The info came from quite a few places, but I can’t remember exactly where so sorry if anyone recognises a bit of it as theirs!
Unfortunately the table is too big too wide post here directly, but here’s a copy of the spreadsheet with the info:
Hi there,
i’m left wondering then if Android (out of the box) is more compliant than an iPhone?
in other words, is it possible for a blackberry enterprise organization that opts to lock out webmail access for users of non-compliant devices to still (inadvertently?) keep access open for users of Android devices? i’m seeing this right now and it’s confusing as all iPhone users are shut out but yet have seen an Android device maintain exchange access with webmail access privileges
certainly confounding to a layperson!
thx
J