About Mobile Iron

The company Mobile Iron Inc., is headquartered in California

The company was founded by Ajay Mishra, Suresh Batchu and Bob Tinker, 2007. Tinker is current  president and CEO of the company, Batchu is CTO.

 

What do they do?

They are the Manufacturer of solutions for Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) for the management of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers as well as the content and software distribution for these devices across the Messaging enterprise of an organization.

 

What is Mobile Device management (MDM)?

 Mobile Device Management is a term used in information technology and stands for the centralized management of mobile devices such as smartphones, sub-notebooks , PDAs or tablet computer by one or more administrators with the aid of software. The management refers to the inventory of hardware in organizations that software and data distribution, and the protection of data on these devices. Because these devices via cellular / WLAN contact with the company network, and problems of wireless management must are dissolved.

 

What is Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)?

Enterprise mobility management (EMM) is the set of people, processes and technology focused on managing the increasing array of mobile devices, wireless networks, and related services to enable broad use of mobile computing in a business context. This is an emerging discipline within the enterprise that has become increasingly important over the past few years as more workers have bought smartphone and tablet computing devices and have sought support for using these devices in the workplace.

The main challenges of determining the right enterprise mobility strategy for an organization is to relate the available mobile IT to the overall purpose of the work conducted, to determine how closely the business process should be aligned to the mobile IT, and how to support mobile workers when they are using these devices in the workplace.

 

Confused about MDM and EMM?

Let’s compare the difference between MDM and EMM.

 

MDM – Is used for managing the software installed on the mobile devices and if any new mobile devices trying to activate it checks whether it meets the MDM policy configured. It has the list of permissible and non-permissible software’s/applications that can be used in the corporate mobile devices.

EMM – Is used to add/ remove users in Mobile Iron.

This MDM feature in Mobile iron can be administered and monitored in 3 ways.

 

VSP (Virtual Smart Phones)

Sentry Servers

Atlas servers

 

What is VSP?

The Mobile Iron Virtual Smartphone Platform (“VSP”) is the central hub of the Mobile Iron solution. It may be deployed as a physical hardware appliance or as a virtual appliance using VMware ESX or Hyper-V. The VSP interfaces with the Mobile Iron application and enterprise resources such as LDAP, Exchange ActiveSync, certificate authorities.

So in a simple term it is just acts as an interface between mobile iron server and Microsoft Exchange. Nothing more involved in VSP apart from interface.

 

What is Mobile Iron Sentry?

Mobile Iron Centry provides access control for email. Sentry connects to Microsoft ActiveSync-enabled email systems such as Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, Google Gmail, and Microsoft Office 365. Like the VSP, it may be deployed as a physical hardware appliance or a virtual appliance using VMware ESX. Mobile Iron Sentry is included in the Mobile Iron Advanced Management package, though the hardware appliance is sold separately.

 

In a Simple term Mobile Iron Centry acts as a security control and gives access control, authentication to connect to any messaging servers and access the data from them. So centry authenticates and connects to the messaging platforms whereas VSP is just an interface.

 

How to access VSP – https://serverfqdn/admin

What is Atlas?

Mobile Iron Atlas is an advanced management and reporting console that provides highly scalable administration, reporting, monitoring, and troubleshooting across the Mobile IT lifecycle. Atlas collects information on device and application metrics and status, identifies potential issues, and provides actionable insights that enable an administrator to assess critical information and apply corrective steps. Atlas is a part of the Mobile Iron Advanced Mobile Management product.

Below screenshots are examples of Atlas consoles

 

Administration part in Mobile Iron:

Issues related to the Mobile Iron VSP can be separated into two categories:

Admin Portal

System Manager

Admin Portal

Helps in user reporting user deleting mobile iron profile, user deleting mobile iron app, unable to download mobile iron app. 99 percent In Most cases device needs to be retired and reregistered from Mobile Iron.

System Manager

After installation, most configuration tasks are performed in the System Manager portion of the Mobile Iron Admin Portal. The System Manager enables you to: Complete the configuration steps necessary to implement the Mobile Iron VSP, manage basic network settings established during installation, manage how Mobile Iron fits into your infrastructure, upgrade the VSP, troubleshoot VSP issues and perform basic maintenance tasks.

So we do not need to have access system manager always especially for Help-desk team as it has all the configuration change that needs to be done which will not be required for user management tasks.