April 11, 2012
2011 was all about mobile device management (MDM) , helping IT feel comfortable about all those iPhones, iPads, and the pending wave of Android devices on which their BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) tool couldn't enforce password, encryption, and other such policies. That's old hat now -- pratically a checklist technology to support mobile device heterogeneity. 2012 instead is shaping up to be about mobile application management (MAM), with a variety of vendors offering tools to control the apps themselves.
As most of the adoption has been of iOS devices, most of the vendor focus has been on iOS. The latest vendor to join the iOS MAM party is Mocana, which has released the iOS version of its Mobile App Protection (MAP) product that had previously been available only for Android apps. MAP is conceptually the same as technology offered by Nukona ( which Symantec recently purchased ) in that it adds a digital wrapper to existing apps. That wrapper can have policies applied to control the interapplication communication between the app and the rest of the mobile OS environment, including other apps. It's essentially a data loss prevention (DLP) wrapper for mobile apps. For example, MAP can be used to prevent file sharing, require a separate VPN tunnel, or limit an app's use to certain locations (based on GPS coordinates).
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Like Nukona's technology, Mocana's has the same limits imposed on it by Apple, which is that it cannot modify third-party apps available in the App Store. Thus, it can be used to wrap only homegrown apps and apps purchased through Apple's Business App Store for volume distribution to employees.
The DLP wrapper approach is one of several MAM approaches vendors are offering IT. The others:
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