Less is More When Consolidating Endpoint Management Tools

There is a lot of buzz around empowering employees — and rightfully so. Employees are at the root of every digital transformation, so it's important to leverage tools that can provide the digital experience employees expect. 

But, what does that look like? 

For IT teams, it means providing employees seamless access to any application on any device from anywhere. It's no longer acceptable to issue employees a single desktop computer and expect them to work exclusively from one location. Employees use several devices — mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktops — in their personal lives and expect the same experience in their work environment. In fact, 61 percent of Gen Y and 50 percent of workers aged 30+ years believe the tech tools they use in their personal lives are more effective and productive than those used in their work life. 

This leads many organizations to expand their offering of company-issued devices and adopt Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). BYOD allows employees the flexibility and convenience to work productively from their own devices. Data suggests this trend will continue to grow as the BYOD market is over $80 billion. While BYOD delivers greater flexibility for employees, it creates several challenges for IT teams faced with managing the influx of endpoint devices. 

There's an endpoint management tool for that

Endpoint management tools help IT teams track end user devices and include features for managing security, compliance and patching. These tools are designed for specific device types. For example, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) manages Windows devices, JAMF manages Macs, Airwatch manages mobile, and so on. See the diagram below of the various management tools per device type. 

When IT teams only managed one or two device types, these traditional endpoint management tools were a decent solution. Now, with organizations offering more robust device options, these tools are no longer ideal. Let's say an organization issues Windows desktops, Mac desktops, mobile phones and laptops. This requires four separate endpoint management tools, creating a lack of visibility, higher costs and inefficient IT processes. 

Welcome to the modern (management) age 

To efficiently manage today's plethora of endpoint devices, it's key for organizations to transition to modern management, or unified endpoint management (UEM). Our Global Engineering Team — as well as Gartner and several other research companies — find VMware's Workspace ONE to be the best UEM solution. Workspace ONE allows IT teams to manage any application on any endpoint device within a single tool.

By consolidating endpoint management tools and operating from Workspace ONE, organizations can fully leverage the benefits of modern management. 

Gain visibility into all employee devices 

Many organizations make the shift to unified endpoint management for greater visibility into their endpoint environment. Endpoint management tools create several silos within IT teams, making it difficult to form a clear view across device types without navigating multiple systems. Workspace ONE collapses these siloes, so IT can easily capture the status of all endpoints in a timely fashion. This is one reason why WWT's internal IT team transitioned to Workspace ONE.

Improve endpoint security 

Implementing an overarching security policy can be time consuming when using multiple endpoint management tools. Policies must be recreated in each system to ensure all devices are protected with consistent security coverage. 

More than two-thirds of enterprises want UEM for the ability to apply single security and management policies across multiple device types. With Workspace ONE, IT creates the security policy once and can apply it to all devices with one click. Additionally, with greater visibility, IT can better protect against potential security breaches by collecting valuable endpoint data to identify and respond to vulnerabilities faster. 

While Workspace ONE is a key component for improving endpoint security, it's not the sole solution for preventing and addressing attacks. Organizations must still consider security solutions for things like server infrastructure, network infrastructure and next-generation firewalls to ensure a holistic security approach. This is especially critical in today's age of advanced endpoint attacks. Our Security experts can help organizations evaluate what they have and identify additional tools they may need as well as better understand how Workspace ONE fits into their broader endpoint security architecture.

Ensure endpoint compliance

Because many end users can work anywhere, it's crucial for IT to have constant visibility of devices. Some endpoint management tools only display devices that are on the organization's VPN, which can cause compliance issues. Workspace ONE allows IT to manage devices whether they're on or off the network so compliance and patching are always up to date. 

Save IT staff time and reduce costs

UEM allows IT teams to gain efficiencies in several ways. Workspace ONE enables end users to use self-service for application deployment, saving IT admins significant time. A study by Forrester found that organizations using Workspace ONE reduced time spent delivering employees core applications from two hours to roughly 10 minutes. Additionally, Workspace ONE's improved security and patching management decreased support calls by 10 percent and reduced the number of calls escalated to Tier 2 or higher by 46 percent. This added up to more than $331,000 in savings over three years.

Lastly, Workspace ONE saves time onboarding new employees. The study found that before Workspace ONE, organizations spent an hour setting up a new employee's device. After Workspace ONE, this was reduced to five minutes, totaling a cost savings of nearly $452,000 over three years with an average of 12,000 employees.

Start your journey to Modern Device Management today

Modern management is becoming increasingly popular with 81 percent of enterprises planning to implement a UEM solution within the next 18 to 24 months, and a CAGR of 32 percent. It's important to understand, however, that while tool consolidation sounds simple, it doesn't happen overnight. Transitioning to UEM is a journey that requires careful planning, but one certainly worth exploring.