Unified endpoint administration (UEM) is neither a brand new time period nor a brand new know-how. Moderately, it’s a bundling of present applied sciences right into a complete single platform for managing the enterprise endpoint property of digital property. UEM brings collectively instruments reminiscent of cellular and desktop/laptop computer shopper administration, software administration and supply, and coverage administration and enforcement.
Why is UEM Essential?
Endpoint administration is a problem for all organizations. Endpoints embrace telephones and laptops, web of issues (IoT and good gadgets, operational know-how reminiscent of sensors and door entry methods, and rising machine varieties reminiscent of wearables and VR headsets—any instrument used to entry enterprise property. All of those endpoints have comparable necessities: property must be managed, managed, secured, tagged, patched, and supported when points happen.
Addressing Complexity
The broad vary of gadgets and necessities brings complexity. Gadgets have to be safe as they’re used to entry enterprise knowledge, which can embrace delicate info and mental property. Moreover, the safety and patching wants of a tool working a bit of essential infrastructure are very totally different from that of the gross sales group’s cellphones.
Organizations can solely construct dependable and safe environments with a broad overview of the whole endpoint property, which will be achieved by unifying the administration of endpoints right into a single answer.
Bettering the Consumer Expertise
To securely entry enterprise knowledge, customers want their gadgets to be dependable, simply accessible, and nicely maintained. Moreover, with so many organizations embracing versatile work preparations, endpoint administration and help must be distant and seamless for the person.
If organizations severely limit machine utilization, this can hinder worker flexibility and productiveness. UEM options assist organizations enhance the person expertise and discover the appropriate stability between enterprise effectivity and enterprise management.
UEM At present
Fashionable organizations demand a lot of their endpoint environments and gadgets. This has pushed the UEM market and its distributors to construct complete options that perform duties far past the fundamentals of cellular machine administration (MDM), cellular software administration (MAM), and customer support administration (CSM).
UEM options at present may also:
- Handle a broader vary of endpoints together with IoT, VR, good gadgets, and OT.
- Patch software program together with third-party functions.
- Present safety enforcement.
- Present conditional entry and geolocation controls to assist create a extra localized person expertise.
- Apply on-demand adaptive insurance policies to ship acceptable coverage primarily based on customers’ real-time wants.
Main UEM options supply complete endpoint administration throughout a broad vary of gadgets and produce help, upkeep, entry controls, and safety underneath a centralized administration console. This helps to simplify advanced duties and cut back operational overhead.
UEM Tomorrow
Endpoint administration is barely changing into extra advanced and the necessity to convey much more duties right into a single platform continues to develop. Distributors are responding and including extra capabilities to their UEM options:
- Superior safety: Safety is a core problem and endpoints are one of many largest menace vectors to defend. More and more, distributors are incorporating superior menace detection and response into their merchandise, some by way of integration whereas others are constructing native capabilities to convey endpoint safety and administration collectively.
- Superior analytics: With such massive and complicated digital estates, the quantity of telemetry that may be gathered from endpoints is critical. Operations groups want assist in absorbing this flood of data. The elevated use of AI/ML and highly effective analytics engines helps to make sense of it, whether or not that’s to establish poorly performing gadgets, perform safety assessments, or prioritize patching, superior analytics is invaluable for driving down operations overhead.
- Automation: More and more, distributors are leveraging automation, so UEM options act like endpoint-focused orchestration platforms. Endpoint administration is filled with each repetitive duties and unplanned points that have to be handled rapidly. Constructing automated workflows will assist in each instances, lowering operations overheads whereas additionally permitting groups to reply extra rapidly when coping with points reminiscent of vulnerabilities or poorly performing gadgets.
- Digital endpoint expertise (DEX): Do not forget that the end-user expertise ought to all the time be central to UEM. DEX has been round for some time as a way for ingesting measurable telemetry from gadgets and functions to raised perceive endpoint efficiency and person expertise. Taking a look at issues that influence efficiency permits operations groups to extra proactively take care of potential end-user points. More and more, DEX is now built-in into UEM to arm operations groups with extra helpful insights.
UEM will proceed to evolve to satisfy the ever extra advanced calls for of endpoint administration. It stays an intriguing and revolutionary a part of IT.
Subsequent Steps
To study extra, check out GigaOm’s UEM Key Standards and Radar studies. These studies present a complete overview of the market, define the factors you’ll need to take into account in a purchase order determination, and consider how quite a few distributors carry out towards these determination standards.
In the event you’re not but a GigaOm subscriber, you’ll be able to entry the analysis utilizing a free trial.