Let's say that you're about to take the plunge. You have users with mobile devices, for sure. You can't stop them, after all. But now you've decided to go the whole nine yards and develop a corporate policy on the devices. What should you think about? This tip, which is excerpted from InformIT,
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Kate Gerwig, Editorial Director
talks about one area of concern, device management.Managing the ever-swelling ranks of mobile devices is becoming a major headache for enterprises. An ad hoc approach can be costly in the long run, both in terms of lost data and reduced productivity. If your organization uses mobile technologies, now is the time to grab the bull by the horns, and define a policy for managing devices and the software and data that reside on them. Some of the issues here are the following:
- Asset management
- Software distribution
- Backup and restoration of data
Mobile asset management consists of purchasing, tracking, maintaining, and retiring the enterprise mobile devices, software, and peripherals. Somewhat ironically, a PDA itself can be used to ease the job of recording and updating asset information. ScanSmart offers a barcode-based, asset-tracking system that uses Palm devices to scan barcode labels affixed to your assets.
Software distribution to mobile devices can be a painful task if not automated. Products such as the On Command CCM product from On Technology provide remote installs and updates to both networked computers and hand-helds.
Backing up and restoring data in the event of a disaster is rarely handled adequately in an organization that takes an ad hoc approach to device management. Backup software is available for most mobile platforms, including Palm and Pocket PC. This will become even more important as memory and storage capabilities increase.
Perhaps the ideal tool for device management is an integrated product that provides software distribution, asset tracking, and backup and restore. This has the advantage of a single management console as well as coupling software asset management with software updates. Xcellenet offers such a product: Afaria supports all these functions and runs on laptops, Palms, Blackberry pagers, and Pocket PC devices.
To read the entire article from which this tip comes, click over to InformIT. You don't need to give any information, like a registration. All you need to do is get, not give, info.
This was first published in November 2003