April 7, 2017 By John Harrington Jr. 3 min read

Whether your organization is taking its initial strides towards its digital transformation or is already far along, it’s important to stop and consider the ways in which it can stay strong at the core along the way. In fact, its future success will hinge on it.

Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, dedicated much of her Chairman’s Address at InterConnect 2017 to the notion of “enterprise strong at the core,” stressing its paramount importance to modern businesses and a formula to be followed for future success.

As Ginni shared with over 10,000 customers and business partners in attendance, it begins and ends with data. From her perspective, a company’s ability to not only manage data, but also secure it, will separate the winners from the losers.

Watch the on-demand webinar: MaaS360 with Watson allows Security leaders to approach UEM differently

Having the same level of security and control over devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), users, apps and content is tantamount. After all, there are sensors that use proprietary data in countless ways, whether in creating, storing, accessing or transmitting.

With so many disparate yet intricately connected endpoints spanning far and wide across the globe, cognitive intelligence will be crucial to make sense of the data that they generate, use and distribute — not only to glean insights and analytics from it, but to secure the enterprise and deliver business results.

Understanding the AT&T and IBM Partnership

When Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, joined Ginni on stage for the keynote, he reinforced each of her points and also went on to describe how his company has been using IBM MaaS360 to address each of these factors head on.

According to Randall, AT&T’s predominant enterprise customer challenges rest in protecting network access to company data from disparate endpoints, meaning everything from smartphones to sensors.

With MaaS360, AT&T makes it possible to lock down and secure all devices, whether they are smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktops. Beyond the devices themselves, it protects their data and apps, grants access to public and private cloud resources, and virtually provides a private network experience.

Furthermore, Randall intimated that AT&T and IBM afforded customers the game-changing ability to aggregate data intelligence in the cloud at the device, app and network levels. As Randall put it, there aren’t “too many companies that can come together and create a value proposition as strong as something like this.”

Helping the US Government Secure Thousands of Endpoints With IBM MaaS360

It’s even easier to see the value when it’s put into practice. This is where Randall describes the poster child: a U.S. government agency that uses MaaS360, Watson, intelligence services and security services — all from IBM — to secure over 27,000 endpoints.

As Randall describes, it’s as simple as providing access to a safely contained application on a MaaS360-enabled device, which in turn gives each user a seamless access route to the cloud environment they depend on for work, all through a virtual private network experience afforded by AT&T.

It sounds simple because it is. This level of security and connectivity is critical today, especially in highly regulated industries.

This is just one example of how MaaS360 keeps enterprises strong at the core. With Watson, the cases for MaaS360 will continue to grow in number and significance for businesses of all sizes across all industries. The industry’s first and only cognitive approach to unified endpoint management (UEM) gives customers the power to see what happened, what can happen and what should be done, all in the context of their environment.

Watch our on-demand webinar to learn more about MaaS360 with Watson and begin taking steps to transform your business.

Watch the on-demand webinar

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