On Tuesday I reported that at CeBit in Hannover, Germany... SAP & Sybase announced the first set of applications to Millions of Mobile Workers. This will extend the reach of SAP Business Suite Applications (including SAP CRM), to iPhone, Windows Mobile and other Mobile Device Users. Then on the next day came another great announcement that Orange Business Services will leverage Sybase’s enterprise device management platform (Afaria) to help companies tackle the challenge resulting from the increasing number of...

• mobile workers
• devices
• applications
• and ever-growing heterogeneity of corporate mobile environments.

I have always said that, both Management & Security are inter-dependant and if not in place, your valuable enterprise mobile asset is vulnerable as soon at it is goes 'on-the-road'. I use the wording valuable, not really due to the cost of the actual device, as that is minor when compared to the corporate applications and data deployed on the device itself.

Think.. What damage could be done if that device & the data within got into the hands of your competition of even worse, someone malicious?

Mobile Device Management to anyone serious should mean SECURE management of DATA, DEVICE and APPLICATIONS.

Orange Business Services will enable enterprises to consolidate their global mobile assets (devices and SIM cards), implement a mobile security policy, deploy all mobile applications and control wireless spending. This unique device management service is hosted in the Orange network, with Service Level Objectives, and can be easily accessed by any enterprise that requires cross-operator, cross-device management and is scaleable to meet both large mobile fleet demand and bursting usage. Caroline Comet-Fraigneau, Head of Mobility Business Unit, Orange Business Services said...

“Security compliance, centralised mobile device control, and application deployment are major challenges that global enterprises must overcome to benefit from the 21st century corporate mobility world. Our cloud-ready approach to mobile device management not only addresses these issues, but also ensures a positive return on investment by avoiding heavy CAPEX investment, ensuring a low unit cost per user by sharing our platform across multiple customers and helping reduce enterprise mobility costs.”

This announcement follows others, such as Verizon last year and I totally believe that we will see more Telco's follow their lead by Partnering with Sybase.

REMEMBER... Enterprises must "securely manage the data, devices and applications"....   device management is NOT enough...the data is more important.

• SAP and Sybase Extend the Reach of SAP Business Suite Applications