The hunt for the perfect MDM solution

A CIO Summit speaker says one size does not fit all

By Vera Alves, Auckland | Thursday, 12 July 2012
Vice president of ICT at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Winston Fong highlighted the need to find the right solution to manage the wide range of mobile devices that the company has to incorporate, when he spoke at the CIO Summit last month. According to Fong, the ‘one size fits all’ model does not apply to MDM solutions.

Fong also singled out “data classification” as something companies need to look at when dealing with the BYOD trend. “There are immediate opportunities with the sales force, L&D, shop floor, and trade shows,” he added.
“It is challenging to manage the number of devices per individual. Data and application management is limited,” says Fong, adding that there are good application management solutions but “they are not available in New Zealand at this stage”.

“In summary there is greater value and functionality in MDM but we found they are still not that mature enough for our organisational needs. We tried on premise solutions,” says Fong, who adds that the company also tried Citrix and VMware solutions.

According to Fong, benefits of adopting a BYOD policy include cost savings and improved sales processes, along with increased application utilisation and productivity. “The users are passionate about these devices. There is still a population that is not so interested and thinks business needs to provide the devices so we have to face that challenge as well,” he adds. “There is a lot of development and we have the opportunity to specify our needs.”