Looking to tap into the growing mobile enterprise landscape, which is predicted to surge from an average of 2.8 devices per worker this year to 3.3 devices by 2014, Verizon Communications announced the expansion of its enterprise mobility as a service offering.
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The teleco giant noted the goal of the expansion was to meet the needs of global enterprises faced with the challenge of securing and enabling access to sensitive corporate information across mobile devices. The expansion taps into the growing cloud computing segment, with the new offering now supporting smartphones, tablets and laptops.
“We are adding on mobility, enabling the platform to manage more devices, increasing policies and it is cloud based,” explained Steve Mancuso, associate director of product management for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, adding that the initiative started two years ago.
The expanded offering is set to roll out this month targeting medium and large businesses in 29 countries and territories across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas, with local billing, currency and support options available.
Mancuso noted that Verizon is not just targeting multinational companies, but also small and medium market firms that support from 25 users up to very large enterprises. “We do not look for a specific size of company, but if their employees are carrying multiple devices, if they need corporate access from mobile, if they have multiple devices to connect to different types of networks,” added Eric Koob, product manager for Verizon Enterprise Solutions.
Among the new features, Mancuso highlighted the “Dual Persona” feature that divides and secures a users personal and work data; expanded Wi-Fi offload access to 500,000 hot spots worldwide; and the new mobile device management offering that now includes smartphones and tablets (in addition to laptop and desktop computers).
Verizon said the solution will be available by subscription and competitively priced on a per-user basis. Customers pay a single monthly charge per user, regardless of the number of devices authorized for an individual’s business use.
