Enterprises handcuff employees when it comes to mobile devices Read more: Enterprises handcuff employees when it comes to mobile devices

Fred Donovan

Because of poor mobile management strategies, many enterprises are relegating their employees to using the equivalent of graphing calculators when it comes to mobile devices.

That is the conclusion of new research from Altimeter Group about the use of mobile devices in the workplace. The research group interviewed both solution providers and customers in developing its report, "Building a Solid Platform for Enterprise Mobile: Introducing the Mobile Control Plane."

Enterprises are "willing to send their teams into the field with less than ideal tools or simply not support the growing number of mobile users they have. Why? It's because they've not yet figured out the proper way to manage mobility," noted Chris Silva, the author of the report, in a blog post.

Silva recommends that enterprises adopt what he terms a "mobile control plane," which combines technology to manage mobile devices with proper policies for their use.

The mobile control plane provides a solid platform that can be deployed for technology and leadership, Silva argued.

"The idea behind the control plan is that it can evolve from an existing investment in mobile device management or mobile application management, adding data security tools as use cases for sensitive information sharing on mobile devices emerge, or identity and authorization tools as single-sign-on is extended to the growing number of tools and applications on users' devices," according to the report.

Silva makes a strong argument that simply throwing money at the mobile device management issue will not solve the problem. Any MDM product needs a well-thought out enterprise mobile device strategy behind it. Otherwise, the investment in MDM will likely be wasted.