In the modern era of Bring Your Own Device to work, Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) has been unusual in restricting its employees from using their own devices to access company data, ZDNet reported.
The Finnish mobile maker is reportedly rolling out an internal mobile device management (MDM) scheme for the 25,000 of its employees that use company-issued Lumia handsets.
“At the time, Windows Phone 8 was a very young platform, and there were things we had to work on very closely with AirWatch at the end of last year to get things going,” Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V)’s global head of business to business sales Niko Mykkänen said in the report.
Nokia Corporation (NOK)’s Search For Third-Party Partner
Since Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) is not developing its own mobile OS any more, the company searched for a third-party partner that could help it manage the enormous fleet of smartphones running on Windows Phone 8 internally.
When Nokia began to kick off trials of MDM offering, it picked AirWatch to cater to it’s unique need to co-develop a system for the future.
AirWatch is a Sandy Springs, Georgia-based MDM specialist with more than 8,000 customers in sectors including retail, financial services, government, education, manufacturing, telecommunications and transportation.
Since personal and corporate data is not separated on Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V)’s official devices, Nokia wanted a feature that would wipe the corporate data off the employees’ devices.
“The same storage is used there,” he said. “When we are rolling out the solution, we make sure to communicate to employees that there are security things to consider, and the employees should accept that.”
Nokia plans to complete it MDM rollout by the end of Q2 this year.
