In the modern enterprise, devices have grown in number, variety and complexity. Use cases have consequently swelled in number, putting pressure on IT and security leaders to deliver an effective means to manage any type of device from one platform. Of tantamount importance, end users who demand anytime, anywhere access to corporate apps and resources expect a consistent experience no matter what device they’re using.
Business leaders must select a unified endpoint management (UEM) platform that balances these needs accordingly.
As a newly emerging market, a plethora of UEM research has been published to help decision-makers understand how this technology addresses their biggest challenges and what criteria they should look for in their platform:
- Low-touch, no-touch laptop deployments that enable over-the-air (OTA) out-of-box user experiences
- Threat management to combat phishing, cryptojacking and man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics for awareness, prioritization and informed decision-making
- Identity and access management (IAM) to deliver access to recognized, compliant users
- Platform convergence, combining agent- and mobile device management (MDM) application programming interface (API)-based management techniques
With these criteria considered, there’s a caveat: Unified endpoint management is complex, and it’s far from simple to determine where to begin in developing the business case for a UEM purchase.
Download “The Total Economic Impact of IBM MaaS360 With Watson”
What Criteria Must Be Measured to Capture an ROI on UEM?
One of the biggest mistakes that can be made is to size up a UEM investment strictly using dollars and cents. Time is a major consideration (e.g., time spent deploying and configuring endpoints, auditing and updating them, resolving tickets). Human capital is another area that gets brushed aside; it’s important to quantify how many full-time resources you have dedicated to managing your UEM environment. Lastly, what does an organization sacrifice when ignoring the benefits of improving the end-user experience (e.g., autonomy, productivity)?
Enter the Total Economic Impact (TEI): a return on investment (ROI) measuring stick for UEM.
To help decision-makers take all of these factors into consideration, IBM commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a study: “The Total Economic Impact of IBM MaaS360 With Watson.” For the study, Forrester gathered a substantial amount of information relating to real-life UEM customer environments. Forrester assessed approaches that were taken before and after using the tool and was able to substantiate a considerable ROI and notably short timeline to reach break-even on investment.
To help demonstrate the takeaways from the study, Forrester developed a composite organization that was representative of the UEM administrators that Forrester interviewed: a U.S.-based, global, multibillion-dollar financial services organization with nearly 10,000 employees using over 20,000 endpoints that span from Apple iOS and macOS to Android and Windows 10.
Over three years, MaaS360 improved developer and administrator productivity and cut costs. (Source: “The Total Economic Impact of IBM MaaS360 With Watson,” a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM.)
Time’s A-Wastin’! Can It Be Saved With Unified Endpoint Management?
Before using UEM, the composite customer had to manually provision and configure each endpoint, a time-consuming endeavor to say the least. It also took time to set up end users with everything they need to be productive; IT administrators had to manually install department-specific applications and devices at setup. Another significant time suck was auditing and updating, since management methods for endpoints were uneven and varied based on device type.
Curing configuration challenges, UEM enabled the composite customer to initiate a low-touch, no-touch process that substantially reduced the time and effort needed to configure endpoints, resulting in a 96 percent reduction in time spent. Leveraging more granular provisioning capabilities in conjunction with IAM, IT administrators and end users saved time during the setup process — a 47 percent reduction. The composite organization also saw an 85 percent reduction in the time needed to create and provision new accounts, as well as a 55 percent reduction in the time needed to distribute and manage access to new devices.
With UEM, auditing and updating also became far more simplified. IT administrators gained full visibility into their security posture across endpoints and operating systems in one, centralized console, reducing the time needed to audit (by 58 percent) and update software (by 50 percent) for endpoints.
Reducing Reliance on the Help Desk Team and Avoiding Major Security Incidents
Before implementing UEM, the composite organization had no way of deflecting routine ticket requests, which could range from password resets to mapping printers and installing applications.
Once it had adopted UEM, the composite organization implemented the following features:
By putting these features to work, the volume of support tickets submitted was reduced by 50 percent and the time needed to resolve remaining tickets decreased by 55 percent.
Beyond the help desk, the composite organization experienced an 80 percent reduction in the number of cyber security incidents it experienced. With their UEM investment, the organization avoided 266 days of remediation time per avoided incident. While the financial analysis focuses solely on just the team’s time to deal with an incident, Forrester urges organizations to consider the wider implications of a security breach – the average cost of a security breach was recently estimated to be $3.86 million dollars, and rising year over year.
Use TEI to Measure Your ROI
If you’re looking for ways to apply the learnings from this study to your organization, look no further. IBM hosted a webinar on June 6 with featured guest speaker Adrienne Capaldo of Forrester Research. View the on-demand recording where Adrienne goes into further depth on the TEI study and shares additional use case examples, key results and a financial summary that can be used to measure your potential ROI on your UEM investment.
Download the on-demand the webinar
Product Marketing for IBM Security
John has spent nearly a decade specializing in product marketing, today focusing on data security and IBM Security’s open, modernized, hybrid multicloud pl...