Apple has dominated the smartphone space, with more than five million iPhone (News - Alert) 5s sold during its first weekend of availability. Recent studies show that $1 of every $25 spent on tech gear is spent on Apple (News - Alert) products. Tablets like the iPad and smartphones like the iPhone can do it all; video, voice, SMS and MMS messaging, browse the Internet, share via social media and hundreds of other capabilities. It’s no surprise that today’s employees are turning to the iPhone or iPad as their single device for both personal and work use. The bring your own device (BYOD) phenomenon has taken enterprises by storm, leaving IT departments frazzled as to how to manage and secure different operating systems for various devices.

The challenge to manage and secure iPhones, iPads and the flood of new mobile devices in the enterprise is going to continue to grow for most organizations. The process of manually onboarding new mobile devices is not scalable, demanding scarce resources you can hardly afford. For most companies, the immediate need is to get complete visibility into the personally and corporately owned devices that are entering the enterprise, and quickly get them configured for enterprise access. At a minimum, you need to enforce device passwords and encryption policy, and have the ability to wipe corporate data if the device is lost or the employee leaves.

A recent Fiberlink whitepaper, “Enabling iPhones and iPads in the Enterprise,” gives step-by-step instructions for configuring Exchange ActiveSync by leveraging the iPhone configuration utility. Exchange ActiveSync is a Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange synchronization protocol that’s optimized to work with high-latency and low-bandwidth networks.

Fiberlink’s MaaS360 platform provides true software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) that delivers instant enterprise mobile device (MDM), application (MAM) and document and expense management, all from a single screen. It is the fastest and most comprehensive way to configure devices for enterprise access and secure corporate data on smartphones and tablets.

Image via MaaS360

MaaS360 mobile device management for iOS devices provides the visibility and control your IT staff needs to support iPhones and iPads in the enterprise, supporting iOS version 4.3 and higher, including the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, new iPad, iPad 2, iPod Touch fifth generation and iPod Touch fourth generation. Fiberlink’s 100 percent cloud-based platform delivers immediate support for all new mobile OS releases and upgrades, leveraging the Apple Mobile Device Management API and Apple Push Notification Service.

Deployment is quick; in just a few clicks, IT administrators can start enrolling devices and immediately manage the entire mobile device lifecycle−from enrollment to enterprise integration, configuration and management, monitoring and security, support and analytics and reporting.

To see the steps to onboarding iPhones and iPads to a corporate Microsoft Exchange server, download the whitepaper now.

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