Enterprise Mobility Case Study: IBM

Enterprise Mobility Case Study: IBM

2 min read
Over the course of three years, IBM piloted mobile access with different devices and operating systems, adding new entries like tablets as the market produced them. IBM collaboration software became an integral part of the solution. By 2011, wide-scale production deployment was under way, with mobility viewed as a core infrastructure service and in excess of 100,000 smartphone and tablet users with access to the IBM corporate network. Today, the program covers 120,000 mobile users, including 80,000 personally owned devices, and continues to expand.

The following are a few of the key lessons learned:

  • Employees are supportive of personally owned (and funded) smartphones and tablets
  • Employees want to use a single smartphone for personal and business use. Most users don’t want to use two smartphones— one for work and one for personal use
  • The majority of employees were supportive of the devices and platforms that IBM elected to support (e.g. Android 2.2+, iPhone 3GS+, BlackBerry, etc.). However, there were additional devices and platforms that employees asked for that could not be supported due to security requirements
  • Generally, employees appreciated the need to enforce security policies on the device. However, this was a deal-breaker for some users. The biggest customer dissatisfier is the eight-character alphanumeric password to unlock the device. Employees want better authentication techniques and the ability to be prompted for a password when accessing “work” data.
  • For security purposes, there needs to be better containerization solutions to separate work and personal data and the ability to manage all work data as a single container. This reduces the need to secure each application individually.
  • Remote wipe of an entire device is unpopular with employees. Employees applauded the enhancements to Lotus Traveler which allows remote wipe of just corporate data (e.g. email)
  • Browser-based cloud solutions like IBM® Lotus® iNotes® ultra-light mode provides flexibility, reduces device dependencies and addresses data at rest security concerns
  • With multiple smartphone and tablet options, they needed to provide guidance to employees so they could make informed choices on what the best device(s) were for their particular needs
  • Leveraging Lotus Mobile Connect clientless SSL proxy provided the best end-user experience on Apple iOS and Google Android. However, this necessitated the use of a separate, VPN client solution for general access to the corporate network.
  • Employees were receptive of self-service support options including automated onboarding and diagnostics

About Uniphore: Uniphore Technologies Inc is the leader in Multi lingual speech-based software solutions. Uniphore’s solutions allow any machine to understand and respond to natural human speech, thus enabling humans to use the most natural of communication modes, speech, to engage and instruct machines. Uniphore operates from its corporate headquarters at IIT Madras Research Park, Chennai, India and has sales offices in Middle East (Dubai, UAE) as well as in Manila, Philippines.

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