New service will manage devices remotely for clients and take onus off in-house IT departments
Azzurri Communications has launched a new mobile device management (MDM) platform that is being driven, in part, by an exodus of customers from BlackBerry.
ICON Mobile will manage security and access on devices for clients externally and cut down on the need to have an in-house IT team looking after the service, as part of a ‘continued focus’ on mobile-centric applications.
“Customers were saying to us our employees have got smartphones and tablets and we’re concerned about security risks and we want to consider a strategy to replace Blackberry,” product manager mobility solutions Paul Fawcett, told Mobile News.
“They were claiming that the old model of having the IT department maintain, manage and support MDM is not one that they wanted to keep going with.”
The solution is scalable for between 50-10,000 users and can be deployed across Android, iOS or Windows devices.
It will manage security across each handset, allowing for personal usage and the facility to tag calls as personal and private. Each handset will cost in the range of £6-7 per month to manage.
On the BlackBerry exodus Fawcett says it is being driven by a number of factors.
“It seems to be a trend that is accelerating in the first quarter of this year. People are moving away from Blackberry – not lock, stick and barrel yet, but when they’ve got new users with new requirements they’re not giving them BlackBerrys, they’re giving them other devices.
“It’s a combination of the later generation of BB devices not meeting users needs and the uncertainty around whether BB will carry on making devices. Also, BB price points are significantly higher for the new devices than the older ones and a lot of organisations just aren’t happy with that sort of pricing.”
