MDM Deliveries – Benefits of SaaS MDM Wrap-Up

As many of you saw at our live webinar last Thursday, there are many factors that go into which MDM delivery method might best suit your organization. The traditional method of deployment requires that you, as an organization, provide a level of commitment to hosting your own service.  This model has clear advantages in terms of providing complete control and may also suit legal and technical challenges that may exist.  However, there is an alternative deployment option which still provides the equivalent high level of security, while at the same time offloading installation and maintenance tasks.

By opting for a SaaS model, you’re better able to focus on your business of managing your devices without having to deal with operational issues.  Those operational issues can often delay deployments, as the necessary infrastructure needs to be in place for the benefits to be realized. For companies that are new to device management, or for companies where the investment cannot be justified, at least initially, what sorts of operational benefits are included in your subscription?

Installation

• Sign up and go!
• All you need to think about is loading a client agent onto a device and enrolling the device into your segment of the cloud service.

Reliability

• Your SaaS provider hosts the service using hardware, connections and facilities that are highly resilient.

Scalability

• As you add more devices your subscription level automatically adjusts the resources needed to keep your devices up to date, monitored and secure.  There’s never a need to perform any hardware or connection upgrades because you’ve grown.

Disaster Management

• Anyone that runs their own IT organizations knows the importance of having standby hardware and backup/restore capabilities in the event of the unforeseen.  Again, the SaaS provider has these procedures already in place and has high-availability-by-design.   And the best part is that you don’t even need to care about it.  Your service just keeps on working, 24/7.

Financial Benefits

• Your commitment to a SaaS service has a fixed timeframe and you are able to grow your subscription as you need more management capabilities and as your revenue grows.

Of course, opting for a SaaS vendor which has both on-premise and a SaaS management offering which are based around a common technology, also makes it much easier should you decide to enroll into SaaS, or move operations into your own IT organization.

The Wavelink SaaS product, Avalanche On Demand, provides customers with the same features and control that an on-site installation offers but with lower up-front costs complete with maintenance included in the subscription. Priority concerns such as security are also addressed by providing an encrypted path between your management console and Wavelink’s servers, as well as encrypted communications between each device and the Avalanche On Demand data centers.

Since Wavelink has adopted a full Web-based approach to both account control and device management, access couldn’t be simpler.  The user-friendly console design streamlines device management tasks, making them as efficient as possible while providing rich reporting and status information about your managed estate.

Customers simply pay a monthly subscription fee for each mobile device they wish to manage. The fee covers standard maintenance and upgrades.

To see how Avalanche On Demand can benefit your organization click here to view the webinar in its entirety.  What are some insights you might have towards the different delivery models? Have you been part of any discussions on the topic with colleagues or industry veterans?

-Martin Brewer

Tags: MDM delivery methods, Mobile Device Management, SaaS MDM, Wavelink Webinars