Mobile Device Management for Scanner based devices

Over the last few years there has been a lot of discussion over Mobile Device Management now popularly known as MDM. These generally involve exchange connectors and some of the functionality required of these Management suites is:

• Remote wipe 
• Remote lock
• Enrolling the device using corporate credentials and integrating these credentials with the directory services. 

The devices which fall in this category are iOS, Android or Windows Mobile OS based devices like tablets and smart phones. These devices often are BYOD devices where employees are often using features like email, calendar, corporate phone directory on their smart phones or tablets for easy access. And to cater for this demand IT administrator look at MDM vendors like Air Watch to secure these devices which access their network resources. Often there is a password required as soon as unlocking the device. 

However what gets missed in these discussions is management of mobile devices which have a scanner (Laser or Imager) and are widely used in the retail, stores, warehouse and logistics industries. For example devices used in a retail store to scan barcodes, verify price for the customer, tracking delivery of parcels, etc.  Manufactures like Motorola, Intermec and Datalogic manufacture these devices. Motorola's MC3000 is a popular handheld scanner used widely in the retail industry. A large retail organisation will deploy thousands of such scanners in their stores. 

The OS on these scanner based devices is usually Windows CE5.0 or Windows Mobile 6.5 and not iOS or Android. Also remote lock and remote wipe is not a major consideration when selecting an MDM vendor for these devices. These devices install applications often written inhouse and require client side packaged and deployed. So some of the main requirements for these is to be able to package and deploy applications to these devices, updating the registry on these devices remotely, sending files, deleting files, remote controlling the devices to provide assistance, cold booting these devices. 

Vendors like Wavelink, Soti, and Afaria provide MDM for scanner based devices in this niche market. 

Lot of vendors are trying to cross the line and provide MDM for both types of Mobile devices. Utill this can be successfully achieved, there will be two markets for MDM. One providing MDM for tablet and smart phone devices and the other managing the scanner based devices.