Microsoft: Enterprise Mobility Suite – Thoughts so far

Disclaimer:  I am a technology consultant, and Microsoft products and technologies are my bread and butter.

As I have noted in the past, I have been very pleased with the "new Microsoft" and the Mobile First / Could First messaging and direction.   It has been great to see Office 365 being adopted at so many places, and with so much success. 

Someone asked me recently, "What are your customers saying about EMS?"    

After I answered, I said to myself, “darn – I should put that answer in my blog!” so here I am!  — 🙂

For those of you who do not know, Enterprise Mobility Suite is a Microsoft bundled offering that combines several products for the purpose of better managing identity, mobile devices, security and thread analysis across multiple operating system (specifically Windows, IOS, and Android.    As of this writing, the following products are included in the suite:  

• Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium for hybrid identity management
• Microsoft Intune for mobile device and application management
• Microsoft Azure Rights Management for information protection
• Mcirosoft Advanced Threat Analytic

Ok back to my answer to the question …    Everyone is intrigued and want to take it for a test drive.   Interest caries depending on the use case:

1) Customers with MAM and MDM -Definitely interested and where most of the action is happening.     Single Management Point for application access, deployment, device management is by far the topic of most proactive demand.  (They are pleased with the rest of the components)      

2)  Customers looking for integrated Identity Management and SSO?  YES lots of interest, but it has been a dream for so many years, that they are skeptical… They are willing to try it, especially those with O365 already.   The most need/want is authentication over the Internet – Definitely drawing people in proactively.

3) Customers with Rights Management needs?   I've come across very few looking proactive on this.   Understandably Microsoft is switching the paradigm from “device and storage encryption/protection” to file-based protection so it will take a while to “sync in”

4) Customers interested in Thread Management?  It is a new addition to the EMS family, but I have come across no one actively / proactiblly looking for this feature, but when I tell customers what it is and how it works, they are definitely interested…

It will take some time to fully realize the power Microsoft is providing to end users and organizations. Keep on trucking Microsoft! –

 

2015-08-26T17:19:42-05:00