Tue, October 15, 2002 — CIO — His official job title is personal communications manager, but John Crouch often feels more like a professional juggler. That’s because Crouch is in charge of the 500 or so Research In Motion BlackBerry handhelds used by medical and administrative employees of Baylor Health Care System, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health-care providers.

Managing wireless devices is a daunting task. Cell phones, PDAs, notebook PCs and other mobile wireless gadgets are easily lost, occasionally stolen and, unlike desktop PCs and telephones, difficult to inventory. And like many other enterprises with proliferating wireless devices, Dallas-based Baylor is looking to bring order to its mobile fleet by using wireless device management software.

As companies equip more employees with wireless devices, and as the units themselves become increasingly sophisticated and expensive, the need for effective and efficient management tools grows ever more pressing. (Gartner now estimates the total cost of ownership for wireless devices at more than $4,100 per user per year.) Looking to fill the management void, an array of vendors?ranging from niche players like Mobile Automation to software giants such as Novell?is promising to help enterprises get wireless units under control.

The available software ranges from asset management tools that let administrators inventory their pricey mobile investments to applications that provide on-the-fly software upgrades, remote synchronization, security features and even the capability to locate a lost or stolen device. But no one tool as yet can do everything for everyone.

Safe and Secure

For Crouch, the device management capability that matters most is security administration. Since Baylor employees routinely access sensitive patient information on their BlackBerrys, it’s important that administrators can swiftly secure data in the event a unit is lost or stolen.

Until last year, Crouch’s sole line of defense was a simple software utility that locked each handheld after 60 minutes of idle time; the user then had to enter her password to regain access. "There really wasn’t any centralized management," he says.

After reviewing tools from several different vendors, however, Crouch settled on mFormation Enterprise Manager, developed by mFormation Technologies. If a user can’t find his handheld, Crouch can send a command that immediately locks the device and prevents prying eyes from viewing any stored information. "[And] if it’s confirmed stolen, we can actually wipe all the data off the device," he says.

Beyond safeguarding critical data, the mFormation software also helps Crouch find lost units. The technology isn’t accurate enough to tell Crouch on exactly which restaurant table or under which car seat an errant BlackBerry has been left, but narrowing down the AWOL handheld’s location to the nearest cell tower can jog the user’s memory. "We’ve located several devices with that mechanism," says Crouch. Down the road, as more wireless devices begin incorporating GPS technology, management software will gain greater location accuracy.