Microsoft (News - Alert) remains a software and technology giant in the PC market. The company recently acquired Nokia's mobile handset business and, since then, has been on its way to support the Finnish firm in restoring its lost glory; Nokia, in fact, was once the world's largest handset maker. Before being acquired by Microsoft, Nokia lost market share to Samsung and Apple (News - Alert) and struggled to meet the fast-changing needs of consumers. The acquisition also reiterates Microsoft's focus on “moving customers forward in a mobile-first, cloud-first world,” which just happens to be also the theme of Microsoft’s sold-out TechEd North America event conference happening in Houston this week.
At the convention, Microsoft hopes to help businesses tackle the increasing use of mobile devices within enterprises and understand the value of the intersection of mobile and cloud to drive value and boost productivity. Such an event is necessary as more organizations are now embracing a cloud-based infrastructure for Enterprise Mobility and are allowing employees to bring personal devices into work (i.e. BYOD) to better run business operations. At TechED, Microsoft is to address Enterprise Mobility (EM) capabilities with the latest cloud services across MDM, MAM, identity/access management and information protection.
Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), which is a comprehensive set of cloud services for every business and every device, is “the only solution that has combined all of the capabilities needed to fully enable users in this new, mobile, cloud-enabled world,” states a Microsoft TechNet blog. Microsoft has tackled mobile device management (MDM) and has taken a cloud-based approach with its EMS product Windows Intune and the hypervisor for Azure, the company's public cloud platform. The company also shows its commitment to help customers manage and protect their identity, mobile devices, applications and data.
Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Windows Server and System Center, who has a series of blog posts on the subject, says that “EMS will make it easier to deploy mobile devices within the enterprise” when using a cloud that is connected to devices and allows the delivery of new value and new capabilities to customers, wrote Anderson in a recent TechWeekEurope post. He pointed to Redmond’s Active Directory, which has also been extended to the cloud with Azure Active Directory (AAD) as an identity/access solution, with security controls and capabilities that enable organizations to manage access to Azure, Office 365 and a world of other cloud apps. Through cutting-edge security practices, it is possible to expand business use of AD across private and public clouds; and by undertaking an Enterprise Mobility strategy, corporate assets being accessed and stored on mobile devices are secure. “Anderson says the important concept here is that with MDM you can provide protection at the device level and with MAM you can provide protection at the application level, creating a layered approach to security.”
EMS provides a MDM strategy and Mobile Application Management (MAM) features. Microsoft offers Azure Active Direct Premium that controls identity and access management, and enables mobile device user’s data protection thanks to Azure Rights Management Services via the cloud for everyone, on every device.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson