Mobile Device Management

In today’s distributed IT environments, maintaining visibility and control over the IT inventory is both critical and increasingly difficult to accomplish. Hardware devices get connected to the network in remote locations. Software versions being used across the organization get out of synch. Licenses fees are paid for installations that are not needed. Patches are not fully deployed – especially for laptops that are frequently offline, making an entire network vulnerable to security attack. Unauthorized software leads to inefficient time use. The inability to control and manage the distributed IT environment is a direct threat on the organization’s bottom line.

BigFix Asset Discovery ensures that organizations truly identify all IP-addressable devices quickly, with minimal network impact. Any Windows device that is managed by BigFix can be used to initiate the discovery process, allowing each subnet to be scanned in parallel or independently with results analyzed locally and consolidated for reporting back to the central management server. This allows for frequent scans and provides unmatched accuracy. BigFix Asset Inventory enables deep software and hardware property inventory capabilities for devices managed by BigFix. BigFix agents are quickly and easily deployed to servers, workstations, laptops, and mobile devices to query tens of thousands of computer properties, keeping inventory data current even for roaming endpoints.

BigFix can help IT organizations maintain visibility into mobile laptop and notebook computers, even when roaming beyond the immediate confines of an enterprise network. Here, the BigFix Agent not only runs on mobile computers, but the BigFix Platform includes mechanisms for secure communications to BigFix Consoles over the Internet and other wide-area connections. These features create a consolidated view of computing assets regardless of their hardware and software platforms.

BigFix asset discovery and license management can help organizations cut software licensing costs by identifying unused “shelfware” licenses and supporting non-penalty-generating conformance to licensing terms and conditions over the life of a contract.

BigFix can recognize and provide information on any IP-enabled device through BigFix’s unique distributed scanning technology. This class of devices includes network peripherals and plumbing such as printers, scanners, routers, switches and so on.

The BigFix single-agent/single-infrastructure architecture enables pervasive discovery and management of data center, desktop and mobile computers.
The BigFix Agent itself is very lightweight, ranging between 2-4 megabytes of endpoint system memory and consuming 1-2 percent of processor bandwidth when active. The Agent works by sending messages upstream to the BigFix Server when changes occur in a managed device’s status or configuration.

BigFix is not just a Windows-only solution. The BigFix Agent runs on all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 as well as popular flavors of Unix, Linux and Mac OS.

BigFix solutions can scale to deliver unsurpassed levels of real-time visibility and control on infrastructures up to 250,000 managed endpoints from a single BigFix Server.

BigFix is highly customizable and flexible. The BigFix Fixlet language enables rapid development of custom services. BigFix can also provide a window and control channel for non-BigFix third-party applications.

Sampling rate theory applies in the case of static asset discovery. To know what is going on in a period of time, you need to sample a given phenomenon twice as fast as its maximum rate of change. This is why CD-quality digital recorders sample sound 44,000 times a second, twice the rate of a 20,000 Hz high frequency audio signal. In the ITworld, doing an asset inventory every week will tell you what is going on in an asset base to a resolution of two weeks. This is clearly unacceptable in today’s high velocity threat environment where viruses can spread in minutes and intruders and sensitive data can leak in seconds.

In addition to real-time visibility from a macro perspective, BigFix goes deep to report all relevant information about an asset’s status and configuration up to the BigFix Console. This provides not only a powerful tool for compliance reporting, but also can translate into real-time decision support when processed via correlation and analysis tools.

Mobile Device Management

Mobile Device Management (MDM) Software

Advanced Mobile Device Management Addresses the Unique Challenges of Mobile Enterprises

Multiple platforms, including iOS and Android™

High mobile support costs

Mobile security issues

Kicking off a mobile apps strategy

Large international roaming bills

Unsecured employee-owned phones and tablets

Advanced Mobile Management

Solutions

Mobile Device Management

Mobile Device Management (MDM) Software

Advanced Mobile Device Management Addresses the Unique Challenges of Mobile Enterprises

Multiple platforms, including iOS and Android™ High mobile support costs Mobile security issues Kicking off a mobile apps strategy Large international roaming bills Unsecured employee-owned phones and tablets Advanced Mobile Management

Solutions

Multiple platforms, including iOS and Android™

High mobile support costs

Mobile security issues

Kicking off a mobile apps strategy

Large international roaming bills

Unsecured employee-owned phones and tablets

Advanced Mobile Management