Mobile Device Management (MDM): Ensure a full range of services

These trends create both a significant management challenge and an opportunity for mobile operators and enterprise IT departments. Data services are now critical communications tools for both consumers and enterprises, and voice communications alone are no longer sufficient to deliver the high-quality, always-available communications that mobile subscribers demand. However, seamlessly extending mobile data services and applications onto potentially thousands of different mobile handset models across different network types is a much greater challenge than providing a quality voice-calling experience. In addition, this management challenge grows every day as new, more-sophisticated mobile devices, complete with multiple gigabytes of memory, advanced processing capabilities, and expanding portfolios of mobile data applications and services, are released onto the market.

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is a solution to this management challenge giving mobile operators and enterprise IT departments complete control of their device fleets. MDM technologies enable management of any mobile device and ensure that all mobile devices that connect to an operator's network are correctly provisioned to offer the full suite of mobile data services available.

Handset technologies drive MDM penetration
The presence of key technologies on the handset determines, to a large extent, the degree to which it supports MDM and can be managed. The more advanced the MDM technologies available in the client on the handset are, the greater the number of management tasks that can be performed on the device. The client in the handset can support several types of functionality including remote configuration, bug fixing, diagnostics, software and firmware updates, over-the-air delivery of new applications and services, a variety of security capabilities, and service performance and availability monitoring.

There are three important classes of MDM client handset technology in use today:

1. OMA Client Provisioning (OMA CP)
Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) CP version 1.1 was the first device management technology, inherited from the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) forum by the Open Mobile Alliance. OMA CP was designed as an industry-standard alternative to the various proprietary protocols then in use, which included Nokia-Ericsson Smart Messaging and Openwave Primary Provisioning.

Client provisioning is the process of remotely readying a mobile device for active service, primarily by configuring communications settings, with minimum user interaction. OMA CP provides for two basic phases of client provisioning: bootstrapping (establishing a trusted connection between client and server for the first time) and continuous provisioning. Using OMA CP, operators can configure core connectivity settings on devices as well as application settings such as picture messaging, email, streaming, and others.

OMA CP is a first-generation device management technology. It only allows for one-way communication: settings are pushed out from server to client without any way of interrogating the device to find out the current device status before or after the event.

2. OMA Device Management (OMA DM)
OMA DM is a global standard that represents the second generation of device management technology. It establishes a two-way communication stream, using the IP session for communications between the device client and the server. OMA DM is also extremely versatile and extensible, which increases its appeal to vendors who wish to differentiate themselves.

Two key aspects of the OMA DM architecture that provide for this extensibility are management objects and the management tree.

• Management objects (MOs): Almost any aspect of a mobile handset can be defined as an OMA DM management object. MOs can include user applications, middleware components, service settings, or the firmware image. There are some mandatory MOs in the OMA DM specification, and the OMA is in the process of defining further optional MOs. Some of the more well-defined MOs include FUMO (used for FOTA or firmware updates over the air), SCOMO (for managing software components) and DIAGMON (for performing device diagnostics and monitoring).
• Management tree: Each device that supports OMA DM has a management tree that organizes all of the available MOs into a hierarchy. The MOs are defined using the device description framework (DDF), which enables an OMA DM-compliant server to recognize the details of the MOs supported on a particular connected device. The DDF also enables the server to treat the handset according to its precise capabilities.