EM&S - The importance of mobility to a digital economy

Mobility is an essential part of any workplace transformation strategy, helping businesses to become more productive and introducing greater control over a widening user landscape.

The benefits to any organisation from greater mobility are significant, introducing operational flexibility, improving productivity and reducing cost. But with greater mobility comes greater risk. For many, these risks are a barrier to the benefits mobility will deliver, constraining modern workplace practices, perpetuating inefficiencies and restricting growth.

Enterprise Mobility & Security addresses all the key aspects for a secure cloud and mobility transition, managing identity and access management, mobile productivity, information protection and identity driven security.

The age of Hybrid Working

With increasing numbers of employees and customers working remotely, there are significant benefits to be gained from the introduction of Enterprise Mobility & Security products. Mobility is fast becoming the norm, but many businesses struggle to maintain appropriate control

It is expected that all businesses will have a Mobility strategy in place by 2025, as demand for greater workplace flexibility and customer expectation increases.

Enterprise Mobility introduces greater workforce flexibility, allowing employees to work from anywhere across multiple devices, increasing productivity and reducing costs.

While the benefits far outweigh the risks, the implementation of any mobility strategy requires considerable planning and preparation. Any organisations planning their mobility strategy should focus on key areas such as:

• Mobile device policies, for company and personal devices
• Identity and Cloud security
• Data Security
• Threat Detection
• Mobile Productivity

Security, a No. 1 Priority

Over 50% of all businesses use Microsoft Office 365, making the Microsoft EM&S suite a natural extension for any organisation with existing Microsoft products. Security and compliance will be influential in any decision process, particularly:

• Increased potential for security breaches
• Managing BYOD
• Document management
• User authentication
• Information protection
• Threat detection

Making the Right Choices

With mobility such a key business topic, most customers will have, or will have plans for its implementation. So what should be your first step?

1. The right Partner

Identify a strong partner with the right experience they can prove. Not all providers are equal and service levels vary considerably. Do your due diligence, particularly on the organisations they’ve worked for, and if they can’t demonstrate expertise, there’s probably a very good reason for it

2. Pick the right Technology

The partner you select will recommend the technologies to chose and part of any partner selection must include a review of these technologies.

Mobility impacts on almost every business area, including those where other technology products are used. Any customer planning, or implementing a wider workplace transformation will benefit from aligned EM&S products, so make sure any selection works seamlessly across your transformation portfolio.

Many organisations already use Microsoft products in the workplace and Microsoft have a comprehensive EM&S solution. If you’re happy with what Microsoft provide elsewhere, selecting a Microsoft accredited partner and Microsoft products could very well be the best answer to the mobility dilemma.