Businesses have been looking at ways to connect their devices for years. The invention of IoT devices has added to the burden of companies to provide a unified dashboard for all of their devices. DZone defines Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) as having a single point of contact for all of a business’s connected devices. This is an important consideration today, especially since threats to connected devices vary from day to day. Having a single dashboard for monitoring and updating these devices is crucial to ensuring the business remains protected.
UEM is a natural progression from Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions. In 2009, two developers from Motorola realized that as devices become more connected, the need for a single unified dashboard would also increase. Prakash Gupta and Onkar Singh weren’t wrong. According to Markets and Markets, the UEM market will be worth more than $7 billion by 2022. Singh and Gupta’s company is called 42Gears, and it’s one of the premier providers of UEM services to companies such as T-Mobile, DiDi, Pfizer and Toyota.
The Growth and Development of a Small Provider
42Gears initially provided solutions for businesses to deal with managing their mobile connectivity. However, with the development and implementation of IoT as an emergent technology, the company realized it needed to adapt its business model. They took an in-depth look at how the business could go about developing a single system that could connect to a device, regardless of the operating system it was running. The result is the company’s proprietary Things Connector.
The Things Connector was developed as a way to integrate the business’s SureMDM software with a broader range of connected devices. 42Gears expected that more companies would start adopting IoT technology and would require a single unified connector to interface with them. IoT devices are notoriously independent in their security and software. Even devices from the same manufacturer may carry different versions of the same operating system. They realized that for businesses to fully utilize these devices, they would benefit from a single dashboard that would allow them to monitor and manage devices from one location. Thus 42Gears entered the UEM industry.
Expansion And Partnership
One of the newest innovations in the field of UEM is Samsung Knox’s Knox Mobile Enrollment (KME) system. In essence, the system ensures that an IoT device doesn’t need to be manually registered with a company’s database of devices. This convenience can save a lot of time if a company needs to use hundreds of these devices. Moreover, KME devices can be used with software from certified providers entirely seamlessly. There’s no need for human intervention, as the KME device will connect and activate itself once it detects a WiFi connection. 42Gears is one of those certified partners whose software can interface directly with KME devices.
Remote Systems in the Time of COVID
The world pandemic has affected every industry to a massive extent. Businesses that still rely on connected devices were put in the position of asking their personnel to risk their lives to install those devices. However, this partnership between 42Gears and Samsung Knox provides a ray of hope in otherwise dark times. Businesses now have the option of using these autonomously connecting devices to preserve employee lives. For now, we’re not sure how long restrictions will be in place, but this development suggests that small businesses can look at UEM as a potential savior.
