Mobile application and device management represents a major new opportunity for solution providers. To help its partners take advantage of that opportunity, Hewlett-Packard inked an alliance with AirWatch, the enterprise management mobility arm of VMware.
AirWatch is ideal for IT organizations looking for a standard mechanism to address the mobile application and device management of customers, said Marc Wilkinson, mobility global practice lead for HP Enterprise Services. Rather than requiring partners to invest in developing those capabilities themselves, HP Mobile Enterprise Services will be incorporating AirWatch into the managed mobile computing services it already provides, Wilkinson said.
The HP Managed Mobility Services packages supported by the AirWatch platform include Management Essentials for managing devices and applications and Trusted App Access, a set of tools for enabling secure access and providing single sign-on capabilities.
All customers and solution providers need to do is log on to the AirWatch portal and register their device, said Kevin Keith, director of business development for AirWatch. “It’s actually much faster than using an on-premise solution,” Keith said. “The agility that provides it terms of supporting mobile computing devices is pretty compelling.”
By relying on HP to provide the base level services, HP partners can add higher-margin value by focusing on helping customers restructure their workflow to take full advantage of business innovations that mobile computing apps enable, Wilkinson said.
That also makes more financial sense for traditional HP resellers to offer mobile services delivered via HP Managed Mobility Services, rather than investing the capital needed to build out their own managed services offering, Wilkinson said.
“We provide managed services for mobility that can be deployed within a private cloud, or partners can use the public cloud provided by AirWatch,” Wilkinson said. “In either case, all the integration with Microsoft Active Directory, the security, segmentation of users and best practices is all provided.”
Michael Vizard has been covering IT issues in the enterprise for 25 years as an editor and columnist for publications such as InfoWorld, eWEEK, Baseline, CRN, ComputerWorld and Digital Review.