Managing mobility requires enterprise-wide solution

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: IT managers have spent the last decade working to get their technology infrastructure under control; yet, managing employee mobile assets such as smartphones (BlackBerry, Palm, iPhone, etc.) and wireless cards is becoming even more challenging and is overextending their already strained IT departments.

Following the release of MobilityCentral, the mobility management product unveiled at CTIA, Visage Mobile -- the creators of MobilityCentral, a mobility management solution for enterprises -- issued a nationwide survey to almost 600 mobile users, which revealed that managing mobility has expanded from an IT issue to one that effects the many stakeholders throughout the entire enterprise, from Finance and HR to every manager and employee.

Based on data returned from the survey, the majority of employees are uninformed and disengaged when it comes to monitoring and managing their corporate issued mobile devices.

* More than 60 percent of the respondents said their company does not have a formal policy for mobile devices.

* 74 percent of respondents said they do not have access to their corporate wireless bill.

* More than 60 percent of employees waited three weeks or longer to be issued their mobile devices after being hired.

* Not surprisingly, 80 percent of respondents are using their corporate issued mobile device for personal use.

* Eight percent of respondents have had a corporate-issued device with potentially sensitive enterprise data either lost or stolen.

The bottom line is companies can no longer afford to be complacent with the management of their mobile devices and need to proactively engage employees in the solution. Like ERP, CRM and HRM systems before it, mobility management is the next issue requiring an enterprise-wide solution. Visage Mobile is answering this challenge with MobilityCentral.

MobilityCentral employs an intuitive, SaaS-based dashboard that provides greater visibility and control for enterprise mobile phone management. With its "self-service" approach, administrators can grant access to individual employees, allowing them to control their own spending and make requests through the application. Company decision makers are granted a 360-degree view of their deployment, enabling them to track individual spending, compliance, usage, or other key performance metrics to maximize their mobility investment.