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Mobile Device Management a necessity, says Rakesh Kushwaha (Mformation Technologies)

Rakesh Kushwaha, CTO and Founder, Mformation Technologies, spoke to our correspondent Anup Varier on Mobile Device Management (MDM).

What is Mobile Device Management?

RK (Rakesh Khushwaha): MDM is a technology where there is a software that provides Over The Air (OTA) control of devices. The devices that it can manage are generally 3G type data-centric devices. It is more relevant to data services rather than plain voice services. As soon as you start using 3G and various different applications and data services, you need more device management capabilities.

A typical MDM would include various different functions like Configuration management which controls the enablement of the device for internet services, e-mail IPTV, Video streaming and application installation.

It also allows any software that resides on the device to be managed whether it’s the firmware upgrade to a newer version, an OS patch or a new application like field tracking or CRM etc. that needs to be installed. Diagnostics manager enables customer care staff to find, diagnose and fix customer problems over the air and this reduces call handling times.

Another important feature that is key to managing a device is the security aspect. So when a person informs the company’s IT staff that they have lost their mobile device, the personnel can immediately lock the machine over the air, wipe off all data from it if necessary and display a message which reads ‘Please return this mobile to so and so place to be awarded a certain amount’.  This works on the premise that the data on the phone is more important than the device itself.

And to connect all these management features there is a portal that allows mobile operators or large system integrators to offer their enterprise customers a secure, tailor-made environment as a hosted service. So enterprises in a sense are our customers’ customer.

How is MDM different from any other internet based service?

RK: If a software needs to be upgraded from v1.0 to v2.0, today how it happens is – the device will connect over the internet download the relevant v2.0 which would typically be a file of 6-7 Mb and that would not be too feasible in case of a mobile device. You need to download in Kbs.

What device management allows you to so is that it creates a delta package of v1.0 and v2.0 which would be a differential package in Kbs and you then push this over the air onto the device and it upgrades to the newer version.