F5 Networks releases hybrid cloud solution for mobile application management
F5 Networks announced F5 Mobile App Manager, a new hybrid cloud solution for mobile application management that enables organizations to safely support enterprise BYOD initiatives. Enterprises can extend corporate applications and data to employees’ personal mobile devices while leaving all personal content under the control of the device owner.
F5 Mobile App Manager is a BYOD solution that combines the policy management and secure application delivery features of the BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) with the scalability and affordability of a SaaS offering.
It is fundamentally different from “BYOD 1.0” Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions in that it securely connects only corporate applications to the enterprise network, and it manages only the enterprise content and applications on a device rather than the entire device itself.
Employees prefer this approach because it isolates their personal data from corporate oversight yet gives them the convenience of using their own mobile devices for both work and personal use. For IT organizations, F5 Mobile App Manager relieves the burden and responsibility of managing employee-owned devices while still enabling them to control device access to their network, track inventory, monitor threats and vulnerabilities, and protect corporate information.
F5 Mobile App Manager delivers the following benefits to enterprises:
Improved security – Using the App Wrapper functionality in F5 Mobile App Manager, IT can secure internally developed and third-party applications quickly and easily before making them available to employees on mobile devices. When F5 Mobile App Manager is used with BIG-IP APM, IT can create a secure application VPN for corporate applications. And because BIG-IP APM utilizes the customer’s on-premises identity stores, employee information stays on premises, minimizing the risk of identity theft.
Improved user experience – Employees are more comfortable knowing that their personal content is completely inaccessible to IT, won’t be automatically wiped in the event a device is lost or stolen, and that device functionality (such as the camera) cannot be restricted. F5 Mobile App Manager also requires minimal storage space on the device, and because enterprise applications don’t run constantly in the background, they help preserve battery life.
Cost savings and reduced IT overhead – Because F5 Mobile App Manager is a hybrid cloud solution, IT avoids costly hardware and infrastructure investments and saves time by managing and securing enterprise content only rather than entire devices. In addition, organizations that have been using MDM solutions reduce their VPN costs by handling only enterprise-related traffic rather than all mobile traffic (business and personal).
Scalability – F5 Mobile App Manager can easily be scaled to meet an organization’s growing demand to support employee-owned devices. The proven scale and performance of BIG-IP APM, which supports up to 200,000 concurrent users, ensures that the mobile infrastructure scales cost effectively.