Device management is becoming increasingly
important to carriers as devices and services become more complex.

There are about 3 billion mobile phones being used in the world; devices almost as diverse in their capabilities as the people using them. Yet, each one has to be managed by the network or, if the phone is owned by a business, by a corporate IT department.

But device management can mean many things in the expanding world of wireless telecommunications. Enterprise IT departments need to keep handsets and the data on them secure, carriers want to keep the software on the device up-to-date, and both want to manage what kinds of services and data the device can access.

At the most basic level of device management is the process of authenticating it for use on the cellular network. Operators sometimes do this when the subscriber first signs up for service, but not always. The analyst group Current Analysis estimates that more than two-thirds of handsets need some kind of configuration after they are sold, and one-third of customer support calls are related to handset configuration problems.

As mobile phones are able to do more things like e-mail, take and send photos or video, or store sensitive and private information, device management becomes more dynamic and ongoing.

That’s why one of the first groups set up within the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) focused on device management. That working group, reputedly one of the most active in the OMA, has come up with an evolving standard, OMA DM 1.2, to provide basic levels of management techniques and interoperability.

The OMA’s device management (DM) specifications focus on such areas as device configuration settings, installation and updates of device software, device diagnostics, lifecycle management, software updates, application settings and user preferences.

Bancroft: Cost drives handset configuration.

Matt Bancroft, chief marketing officer for Mformation, says mobile device management falls into five broad areas: setting up connectivity, service provisioning, support, security and measurement.

In the first case, a device may have to be set up properly before it can send and receive an MMS, which isn’t an issue with SMS. The same thing applies to other data capabilities, including WAP access, GPRS data, e-mail, instant messaging, video, and push-to-talk. Provisioning involves the same applications but on the network side.

Support is providing service once the customer has subscribed, including diagnosing and fixing problems, as well as updating on-device software. Security includes the capability of locking devices and wiping any data, enforcing passwords, encryption and backup and restore functions, plus virus protection.
Finally, measurement is just that – measuring the customer experience and use of the service.

CONFIGURATION
Handset configuration is a big issue for operators, Bancroft says, because on average it costs the operator $65 per phone. Configuration can be as simple as setting gateway settings in the device for a few applications or much more complex because there can be 1,000s of settings. That’s why Mformation and other device management companies have automatic configuration services.

“Once an auto configuration is installed, we’ve seen the amount of MMS usage going up dramatically,” he says. “The network may be working properly but the device has to also.”

One of the basic issues with handset security is when devices are lost. “There are 60,000 handsets lost every month in the U.K.,” says Bancroft. “With them goes all the information stored on them.”

That’s why more carriers are starting to offer backup-and-restore services, especially for smartphones. AT&T Wireless has started offering an automated service for $1.99 a month. The service uses the technology of Asurion, a Tennessee company.

Carriers also are starting to offer more complete device management capabilities for enterprises as well as individuals. Mformation recently announced its Enterprise Manager 5.1 technology, which operators can use to contract device management services to enterprise IT departments. The technology works with most OMA-based devices, which includes more than 1,200 handsets and on any air interface.

A recent survey done for Mformation showed two-thirds of enterprise chief information officers at the largest 500 enterprises are “very concerned” about the potential for lost data on mobile devices.

LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT
Dave Ginsburg, vice president of Marketing and Product Management for the device management company InnoPath, says as devices become more complex, device management becomes more critical through the life of the device. Firmware updates need to be made to configure or fix the device, which also requires remote diagnosis.

“This is becoming extremely interesting to the operators as devices and services become more complex and because the user lacks the knowledge to do it themselves,” he says.

Ginsburg says security and lifecycle management are two of the evolving areas for operators to deal with. Lifecycle management includes management of the applications on the device, such as making sure that digital rights management or policy management configurations are up-to-date.

InnoPath has had many deployments by carriers of its firmware updating technology (called FOTA, for firmware over the air), as well as configuration management. Last month, it started offering an end-to-end (client and network) security solution, first through a collaboration with the security vendor SMobile Systems.

The collaboration integrates the SMobile firewall, antivirus and security policy enforcement software with InfoPath’s Integrated Mobile Device Management (iMDM) technology.

InnoPath is working on a new capability, policy management, which it hopes to deploy in a live network in the next six to nine months.

Although InnoPath’s device management focus has been on consumers, and its carrier customers include AT&T and Sprint, Ginsburg says as its iMDM platform becomes more fully featured the carriers are seeing it as a way to serve enterprises as well. InnoPath might also work in the future with system integrators on such deployments.

POLICY MANAGEMENT
Policy management, which can be used to authenticate use of services or applications, is one of the focuses of Bridgewater Systems. Bridgewater works with VeriSign and its Wireless Data Roaming Service to provide network access control functions for operators, when subscribers are roaming onto another network. VeriSign handles the clearinghouse service, including authentication, authorization and accounting.

Ann Hatchell, corporate marketing director for Bridgewater, says the company’s 90-plus customers are service providers globally to manage the customer experience on the network.

“From a device perspective, we can manage almost on a one-to-one basis,” she says. “We can set up rules to govern each device.”

Nelson: Technology wraps business rules with subscriber profiles to cover a multitude of parameters.

Tyler Nelson, Bridgewater’s vice president for business development and marketing, says the company’s technology wraps business rules and logic around a subscriber profile that can cover a multitude of parameters, including billing, usage, content and services, and even time of day.

The technology merges the static information on the device about such things as screen resolution and software capabilities with dynamic information about the subscriber’s access capabilities and use.

Verizon Wireless is one of Bridgewater’s largest customers. The operator uses Bridgewater’s technology to support its VCast data offerings, including access and authentication. It controls which services or applications the subscriber can access based on what the customer has paid for.

Nelson says it is “early days” for device management and policy management in the networks, but that operators are confronting the need to rapidly introduce new content and services while making sure they are able to manage the use of all these. Many of the new applications are in technology silos, like a WAP gateway, that can’t handle the increased demand of accessing subscriber information.

Bridgewater is working with a number of carriers to deploy centralized subscriber repositories with access to siloed applications so real-time policy decisions can be made, he says. Sometimes Bridgewater will replace a legacy network access controller to eliminate any data bottleneck.

Although device management involves many different elements, wireless operators, IT departments and support companies are attacking individual elements to make sure that companies can better track devices and the important data on them.