A New Mobile Operating System for IT

Had a very interesting conversation this week with a forward-thinking IT department.  They are trying to address the mobile client fragmentation and consumerization problem head on.  They know the demand they are seeing from users will only increase and they know unnatural restrictions on that demand will only inhibit innovation and the growth of the business.

Their strategy is to have a single central management platform that operates across client OS and apps, and then push the decisions and responsibilities for the applications themselves to the lines of business.  In other words, set the standards, enforce the policies, but get out of the way of the applications.  So an agnostic core that supports a diverse and evolving set of user experiences.

It struck me that the central management platform actually becomes IT’s mobile “operating system”.  If we assume that user devices will continue to be spread across multiple client operating systems (e.g. BlackBerry, iOS, Android, Windows variants, Symbian), the only way for IT to truly scale is to reduce the complexity IT itself faces at the core.  Users get to use what they need, lines of business get to deploy what they want, and IT doesn’t get fragmented beyond repair.

95% of the IT teams I talk to these days believe multi-OS is the future.  So the notion that multi-OS management is required is broadly accepted.  However, some look to it as a band-aid to solve the immediate problem of the CEO buying a cool new unsupported device.  What it needs to be, however, is a strategic foundation to ensure IT efficiency and responsiveness in the smartphone era.

http://mobileiron.com/blog/2010/08/management-as-operating-system/


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