Make Your Distributed Workforce More Productive With Modern Device Management

The distributed workforce today wants a frictionless and consumerized employee experience. Legacy endpoint management platforms can’t cater to those needs as these platforms are not fundamentally built for hybrid work and require devices to be directly connected to enterprise networks. These platforms also lack enough tools to govern security standards and flexibility to manage devices connected from home or other remote locations. Scaling up the legacy infrastructure to accommodate a large number of employees is difficult for IT teams due to the level of effort and investment it needs.

Organizations require uncompromised cybersecurity and compliance with configuration, patching and policy management standards to allow employees to work seamlessly from anywhere. Additionally, enterprises need to reduce the complexity arising from too many vendors and cross-train IT administrators on a unified toolset at an optimal cost.

Why modern device management?

Modern device management tools offer intelligence-driven device lifecycle management capabilities to manage desktop and mobile devices across all platforms with or without agents through a single, user-centric console. For desktops, these tools support native Windows 11/10, macOS and Chrome OS controls. It allows you to manage mobile devices without an agent through native iOS and Android controls. These tools can help you gather telemetry from identities, applications, and devices across your network to perform policy-related actions effectively. These tools can also monitor device productivity remotely and proactively flag security issues in line with zero-trust principles and are equipped with capabilities to manage your Internet of Things devices, wearables, and rugged handhelds.

Benefits of modern device management for IT

• Reduced workload: A secure, scalable, unified, user-friendly, intelligent and zero-touch device management platform makes it easy to set up new devices. It empowers end-users with the self-service setup of devices to onboard faster with minimal IT support.
• Easy provisioning of user groups, devices, and permissions: Once a format is established for provisioning new users, groups and permissions, it can be easily replicated for new users across all locations.
• Publishing upgrades, patches, and software catalog: Publishing periodic updates, OS upgrades, patches, etc., create a one-stop solution in modern device management. Users can install/uninstall any applications themselves from an approved catalog anytime.
• Adaptive security and enhanced compliance: Modern device management solutions offer adaptive and AI/ML-powered security built on Zero Trust principles. When a solution like Microsoft Endpoint Manager (MEM) is integrated with Microsoft 365 and other Azure solutions, you can block corporate network access from your lost or non-compliant devices or remotely wipe data in real-time.
• High visibility into devices: IT teams cannot monitor all the devices physically, especially in remote locations. MEM helps to measure user productivity and proactively fix software to prevent users from raising IT support tickets. It saves a tremendous amount of costs and time for knowledge workers.

Get Started with Modern Device Management

1. Determine the business case and assess needs: Evaluate where your organization fits in these broad four use cases: (1) Security-centric management, (2) Modern Windows PC, (3) Non-standard PC and (4) Remote worker. Assess the capabilities of your current device management environment and determine any gaps. You might need cloud-based management, application-level controls, zero trust access, endpoint analytics, remote provisioning/onboarding and advanced remote support. IT leaders must focus on data security to secure company data access using personal devices.
2. Select a tool that meets your requirements: Several device management solutions are available in the market, including on-premise and cloud-based capabilities. Microsoft Endpoint Manager (MEM) is one such solution that combines its cloud-based solution Microsoft Intune and its on-premise solution System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). It is attractive for enterprises that have pre-existing investments in Microsoft 365 services. Microsoft 365 Enterprise users can access Intune and SCCM from a single user interface. Organizations using SCCM for several years usually do not migrate to Intune overnight. With MEM, IT administrators can utilize both simultaneously.
3. Vendor consolidation and sustainability: Typically, organizations keep tools and teams separate for different workloads like MacOs, Windows, iOS, Chrome, etc. Modern device management platforms help to consolidate vendors under one umbrella and deliver all capabilities via a single control panel. A cloud-based solution can help you take one step toward carbon neutrality.
4. Continuous innovation: Since modern device management tools are cloud-native solutions, it enables rapid innovation and a shortened time to market using API integration capabilities. Legacy endpoint management solutions have very limited scope for API integration, making it challenging to achieve higher automation.
5. Avoiding technical debt: Choosing a pay-as-you-go pricing model helps to reduce upfront CapEx and avoid technical debt. This way, you can overcome the limitation of legacy solutions that involve heavy investments in setting up the on-premise infrastructure for endpoint management. In modern device management, the depreciation of assets is the hyperscalers’ liability, not the client’s liability.

Case in point

One of the world’s largest biotech pharmaceutical companies has 22,000 employees and 35,000+ devices. It invested significant time and manual effort to configure a large volume of new devices and address IT helpdesk tickets during the pandemic. It streamlined the right modern device management platform and controls to support remote work seamlessly. Its device management platform combined technologies from multiple vendors.

Our client expedited the implementation of modern device management during the pandemic. They now have a single pane of glass to manage all devices and can provision, patch, repair, upgrade, back up, recover, and maintain devices by leveraging self-service and automation of the new platform. Their service desk call volume got reduced by more than 30%.

Join our complimentary workshop on modern device management and get started on revamping your endpoint management strategy.