Ivanti Blog: Endpoint Management (UEM)

What Does Ivanti Being Named as a First-Time Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for UEM Tools Really Mean?

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 17:57:39 Z

The latest 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Endpoint Management Tools report has been published!

Here at Ivanti, we’re excited Gartner recognized us in the Leader quadrant for completeness of vision and ability to execute. 2022 marks the first time we’ve been recognized as a Leader, after Gartner named us their only Visionary in the UEM Magic Quadrant for 2021.

But what does being named a “Leader” or a “Visionary” by Gartner really mean? For that matter, what does “completeness of vision” or “the ability to execute” have to do with anything?

In this blog, we’ll offer some definitions and explanations as to how Gartner researchers and analyst arrive at their conclusions – as well as why we believe Gartner named Ivanti a Leader in their 2022 Magic Quadrant for UEM Tools report for our Ivanti Neurons for UEM solution.

How Gartner found vendors to consider for the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for UEM Tools report

Gartner^®, a company that delivers actionable, objective insight to its executive and their teams, offers an unbiased, quantitative perspective on available tools in a wide variety of technical industries.

They measure various technology offerings and services as part of their annual Magic Quadrant™ reports.

For inclusion in the 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Endpoint Management Tools report, Gartner researchers identified and analyzed “the most relevant providers and their products” within the UEM market.

Quoting directly from this year’s report, UEM tool providers qualified for inclusion and consideration needed to have:

"A generally available, single-license product that demonstrates:
1. Agentless management of Apple iOS, iPadOS and macOS, Google Android, and Windows 10, which includes:
  1. Device enrollment and provisioning
  2. Device configuration and policy enforcement
  3. OS patching and update management
  4. Application deployment in native format
2. Agent-based management or prebuilt connector for CMT integration
3. Direct integration with the Microsoft Intune Graph API for app and data protection
4. Location-agnostic endpoint management (not dependent on LAN/VPN)
Evidence that the UEM product has at least 10 million devices under management, excluding managed devices entitled under trial, freemium or other no-cost use arrangements
UEM offering as turnkey SaaS (UEM vendor hosted and operated, not IaaS)
Rank among the top organizations in the market momentum index defined by Gartner for this Magic Quadrant. Data inputs used to calculate UEM platform market momentum include a balanced set of measures, such as:
1. Gartner customer search, inquiry volume and trend data
2. Volume of job listings specifying experience within the UEM platform as a job requirement of Talent Neuron and on a range of employment websites in the U.S., Europe and China
3. Frequency of mentions as a competitor to other UEM platform vendors within reviews on Gartner’s Peer Insights forum between April 2021 and March 2022”

What “Ability to Execute” and “Completeness of Vision” metrics meant for Gartner UEM Tools this year

Once identified by Gartner, any qualified providers were then evaluated on two proprietary metrics: Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.

Gartner Ability to Execute metric for UEM Tools in 2022

Per the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Endpoint Management Tools report:

“The Ability to Execute criteria evaluate the vendor’s ability to properly resource product development, marketing and sales. The emphasized criteria center on the product itself, but consider the operational support from sales, marketing and R&D, as well as the vendor’s reputation with customers and performance in the market relative to competitors.”

The various criteria for the 2022 Ability to Execute metric – specifically for evaluated UEM Tool vendors – included:

Product or Service
Overall Viability
Sales Execution/Pricing
Market Responsiveness/Record
Marketing Execution
Customer Experience
Operations

Each criterion was weighted for different values, to then combine and create the aggregate Ability to Execute metric. This metric was plotted along the vertical “Y” axis of the Magic Quadrant™ graphic for each qualifying vendor.

Gartner Completeness of Vision metric for UEM Tools in 2022

Per the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Endpoint Management Tools report:

“Completeness of Vision focuses on the performance of a vendor’s product as it applies to current market needs, the strategy and performance in delivering to meet that understanding, and the vendor’s ability to innovate for current and emerging needs, as well as against its competitors. This metric also assesses a vendor’s geographic strategy and presence, its strategy and roadmap for the product, and its general business model.”

The various criteria for the 2022 Completeness of Vision metric – specifically for evaluated UEM Tool providers – included:

Market Understanding
Marketing Strategy
Sales Strategy
Offering (Product) Strategy
Business Model
Vertical/Industry Strategy
Innovation
Geographic Strategy

What the Gartner^® Magic Quadrant™ positions and Leader recognition meant for UEM Tools

Here’s the final 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for UEM Tools:

As you can see, Ivanti was placed as only one of three vendors within the Leaders quadrant of the 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for UEM Tools. But, what does the “Leader” position mean within this context?

What the Gartner leader position means for the 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for UEM Tools report

The following quote describes how Gartner considers companies and organizations placed within the Leader quadrant for the 2022 Magic Quadrant for UEM Tools report:

“Leaders exhibit strong execution and vision scores, and exemplify the suite of functions that assist organizations in managing their mobile devices and PCs. Leaders also provide guidance and tools to help migrate from traditional client management to modern management, as well as deep integration with endpoint analytics and endpoint security tools to provide a simpliﬁed IT administrator and an improved employee experience.”

What the Gartner Visionary position means for the Magic Quadrant™ for UEM Tools report

While Ivanti was named by Gartner as a Visionary last year – in 2021 – we thought it would be useful to also quote what Gartner considers to be a Visionary for this year’s Magic Quadrant for UEM Tools:

“Visionaries exhibit strong capabilities in their current offerings and a complete set of functionalities to address common use cases. However, the vendor’s size, the size of its installed base, platform breadth or integration points make it appropriate for some, but not all, buyers.”

We at Ivanti personally believe that our new Leader position within the 2022 Magic Quadrant for UEM Tools means that we have proven that our Neurons for UEM solution “walks the walk” in execution.

That is to say, between last year and this one, we feel that we proved out our UEM vision and foundation through our increased ability to execute on that vision – and we’re committed to keep improving through next year, too.

Validation of Ivanti’s UEM solutions for your Everywhere Workplace

We truly believe that this new recognition and Leader placement received from Gartner is a demonstration and validation of our strategy. The team here at Ivanti believes that the Everywhere Workplace is here to stay, and we will likely continue to experience fast growth in endpoints, data and remote workers.

After all, in today’s on-site, hybrid and remote Everywhere Workplaces, IT teams need a single tool to analyze, perform and automate endpoint management and security tasks now more than ever.

So, we’re committed to helping IT teams like yours to manage and secure your workplace – wherever it may be, and with whatever devices you need! – so that your end users can be productive anywhere.

Ivanti Neurons for UEM enables your IT team to leverage a single pane of glass view into their devices to efficiently discover, manage and secure all endpoints through accurate and actionable insights.

Plus, Ivanti’s built-in, on-device, out-of-the-box mobile phishing protection requires minimal user interaction and results in better end user experience and protection.

And, your IT team can also leverage the Neurons’ artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning (ML) powered automation platform to detect and remediate any device issues or security threats before they can cause harm in your environment.

Finally, consolidating tools is top of mind for many customers. We truly believe that the level of integrated capabilities to discover, manage and secure endpoints will help improve IT efficiency and productivity.

We will continue to innovate and deliver the UEM tools that help our customers succeed. We’re excited about next innovations that we will bring to the market, and we hope you will continue to join us for the journey.

Disclaimers and attributions:

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Ivanti.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management Tools, Tom Cipolla, Dan Wilson, Chris Silva, Craig Fisler, 1st August 2022

Raising Your Security Posture: 3 Things You Should Look at Next

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 16:41:22 Z

It’s been a busy year in security so far for 2020. Apart from all the other challenges we deal with, we’ve now seen how quickly security threats can pivot when an opportunity presents itself.

Widely reported in April 2020 was the 30,000% increase in phishing and malware attacks against Remote Workers. A massive increase in work from home (WFH) initiatives signals a great opportunity for threat actors to exploit these new WFH users.

So where is your next target to improve your security posture? Whether it’s based around remote workers or not, where should you be concentrating your efforts?

Here are three areas we highlighted during our recent Ivanti Interchange Virtual World Tour. I hope they give you some info and ideas on where to head next in your security journey:

1. App Hardening

Block those macros. We hear it all the time. Office macros are bad; just block them all. Great security idea, but not the most practical for all businesses. Some rely on spreadsheets and documents embedded with complex macros to make complicated work and calculations simple. Take them out of the business, and the business takes two steps backwards at a time when we all need to be taking steps forwards.

So how do we tread that fine line between block ‘em all, and only allowing those that are trusted?

Obviously, there are some built in mechanisms in Windows, group policy settings, digital certs etc. and the settings in the Trust Center options of Office 365 to block and allow only some macros.

How Ivanti Can Help

Often around this discussion with customers, we talk about use of our Ivanti Environment Manager (EM) and Application Control (AC) products as a highly flexible solution.

EM allows for granular, contextual policy control of all macro settings rather than a “one size fits all” approach from Group Policy.

Our AC product allows us to control any external files or processes called from parent processes like Winword.exe or Excel.exe or even Chrome.exe.

On my laptop, I have AC configured to block all PowerShell, java, and cmd executions from my standard Office apps like Office 365, Acrobat, and Chrome. I can’t see a reason why they need to call those mechanisms, so as a security measure they’re blocked.

2. Connected Devices and Removable Media

You’re probably familiar with the ACSC Essential 8 Strategies described here, and hopefully you are all some distance along the way to measuring your maturity level against this model. But something that’s not obvious is the absolute number one priority when assessing your risk from malicious Insiders: “control removable storage media and connected devices” to mitigate data exfiltration.

What’s the best way to do that; what’s the best solution?

Well, there are a lot of differing solutions and strategies around locking USB keys and controlling connecting devices. Your best solution revolves around your own use cases, and what you need to achieve to mitigate your organisation's specific risks. Simply blocking USB storage can even be covered by Group Policy so if that’s your only need, happy days.

How Ivanti Can Help

We have regular conversations around Device Control and I’m always pushing for people to discuss their requirements first. Our Ivanti Device Control (DC) is used around the world by the most super secure organisations, all who have multiple, and sometimes complicated requirements.

I call it the Rolls Royce of Device Control and make sure I let customers know that during discussions. After all, there’s no point buying a new Rolls Royce when all you really need to do is buy milk at the shop. That Corolla in your garage will probably be good enough. 😊

But, if granular control of ALL devices—not just USB Storage—is important, and if you need to enforce encryption, restrict file copies by type of file (PDF,DOCX etc.), or even to look inside files for key words, and shadow copy every document printed, our DC solution has you covered.

We can help you meet those extensive controls to ensure a high level of data loss prevention and compliance.

3. Automated Reporting

Part of the previously mentioned ACSC Maturity Model, and a requirement for Level 3 on patching operating systems or third-party applications is an “automated mechanism” being used to record patches and drivers that have been deployed and installed. Not only does this record compliance, but it also simplifies updating exec’s in the event of a specific threat they have questions around.

How should you do that; where should you start?

Many of my friends in security worked all weekend when WannaCry struck, not patching machines, but collecting data for reports for execs. If that was you, consolidating, and automating your compliance reporting will save you manpower and overtime.

Every security product will have some level of reporting built in. Most will offer some form of scheduling reports, and potentially email them automatically to important people.

We typically hear consolidated reporting is a big issue. Grabbing information from multiple sources, centralizing it and monitoring compliance can be a big challenge.

How Ivanti Can Help

I’ve loved our Ivanti Xtraction product since the first time I saw it back in April 2016. I’ve been blown away by the value it offers to customers, and the flexibility of its centralized business value dashboards reporting from multiple data sources.

It not only talks to every Ivanti Security product with a bunch of out-of-the-box dashboards pre-configured, but can also connect to other databases with a suitable connector like Microsoft SCCM and Active Directory. These connectors also include a bunch of OOTB ready built dashboards.

Scheduling reports or dashboards for execs is very simple and easy to configure. All your compliance reports centralized and managed in one place.

What next?

So that’s it. I hope you’ve found some value from the info across these three areas and how you can look to raise your security maturity level.

For more info, and to see some Live Software, you can also watch our session “ACSC Essential 8 – Prioritizing Your Next Step” on demand by registering here.

Please stay safe, and if you have any further questions please feel free to reach out to Ivanti.

Ivanti Neurons Workspace: Deliver Faster Resolutions Without Disrupting Your Customers

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 10:44:04 Z

When was the last time an IT conversation reminded you of the movie “Casablanca”? That happened to me recently when I was talking with another IT professional about Ivanti Neurons. We discussed how Ivanti Neurons will make life easier for IT by delivering more self-servicing, self-healing and self-securing experiences. He agreed Ivanti Neurons would be a big help reducing incidents but then said, “We’ll always have tickets.” Ok, maybe this isn’t on the same level as “We’ll always have Paris” but cue the Casablanca flashback.

He was correct, of course. End users will still have issues IT will need to resolve. But add rising expectations for better customer-service experiences, ideally resolving incidents without any disruption or escalation delays, and the demands on the first-line team keeps growing.

Helping the first-line team do more on their own is one outcome Ivanti Neurons Workspace delivers. IT teams using Ivanti Neurons Workspace are finding it’s helping them become more efficient and effective, and greatly reduce escalations by safely providing first-line teams with the required tools for more first-call resolutions, using automated tasks pre-defined by specialists, so they can resolve incidents faster and easier, and deliver great experiences to end users.

Ivanti Neurons Workspace augments IT teams by providing—in a ‘single pane of glass’—the real-time device and end-user insights provided by Ivanti Neurons for Edge Intelligence, with automation-powered bots for pre-defined actions, and also full remote control functionality for those times when IT just needs to reach out and take control.

Offering examples always helps me understand a new solution. Let me share a few where Ivanti Neurons Workspace has delivered better IT outcomes and end-user experiences.

“I was misinformed”

How often does your team start working an incident by asking the end user a bunch of questions to figure out what’s going on? Often the end user may not know the answers, or your analyst must guide them through the steps, especially now since ‘just stopping by’ isn’t an option these days. Or your analyst needs to use several tools to discover what’s going on, and you have a recipe for an engagement that may take a while before the end user is back to work and the analyst can move onto other tasks.

The ‘After’ picture with Ivanti Neurons Workspace is much easier. First-line analysts have immediate access to key IT information on users and their devices, such as:

All associated devices for the user
Device state, including running processes and services
Active Directory status
Group memberships
Incident history by user or device
Installed software, applications, and patches
Network status
Application connectivity

All this information and more is presented to an analyst in one screen, sometimes faster than if the analyst had the device in front of them. Add in the ability to ‘drill down’ into specific attributes, all without bothering or asking the end user to do anything. Your analysts will be a big step ahead in figuring out what’s going on and understanding the end user’s experience.

“Round up the usual suspects”

Quick insight is the first step to resolving incidents. Most incidents aren’t unique, so there are likely common actions a specialist could take to resolve incidents and requests. Ivanti Neurons Workspace safely provides many of these specialist-level actions to the first-line analyst within the context of an incident without providing full access. Such actions include:

Resetting passwords
Unlocking accounts
Changing or assigning group memberships
Flushing the DNS
Updating drivers
Stopping processes and services

These actions employ the same automation engine as used with Ivanti Neurons for Healing so the underlying workflows can likewise be updated, extended, or created anew to provide more automated actions to augment first-line analysts. If an incident isn’t one the first-line analyst can resolve, it can be escalated to a specialist with all the actions and diagnostic information logged.

One example is repairing a device encountering too many crashes or BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Okay, one crash may be too many, but several is obviously too many. Either way, having the BSOD dump files helps IT diagnose the cause. A workflow in Ivanti Neurons Workspace could reach out to the device, get the needed files, compress them, and send them in an email to IT, all without bothering the end user or doing a remote session. The end user keeps on working while IT analyzes the dump files.

“Play it, Sam”

The extensibility of Ivanti Neurons Workspace means IT teams will be able to automate more and more diagnostic and remediation activities and make them more easily and safely available to first-line analysts. Your specialists can develop the automated actions the first-line team needs to resolve more issues on their own, turning escalations into first-call resolutions.

And with fewer escalations, specialists will have more time to conduct other investigations and innovations. Take the earlier BSOD example. Specialists could use Ivanti Neurons to see if other similar devices are having too many BSODs, identify those devices, analyze their dump files (again, without bothering end users), and see if there’s a common cause, like a device driver that needs updating. Oh, and that driver update? That can be automated with Ivanti Neurons Workspace as well.

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”

Ivanti Neurons Workspace, along with the rest of the Ivanti Neurons solutions, promises to make IT more efficient and effective. Some IT teams are already seeing results such as:

Deeper device and user insight in real time
Faster issue resolutions
Fewer escalations
Quicker identification of problem trends
Greater security compliance

And delivering more “Shift Left” outcomes and exceptional user experiences.

Learn more and see Ivanti Neurons Workspace in action here. Hopefully it’ll be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Together Citrix and Ivanti Just Make Sense

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 17:02:43 Z

Hassell, a multidisciplinary design practice with offices in Australia, China, Singapore, Thailand and the United Kingdom needed to solve a problem. How could they improve the way they delivered workspaces to their designers, who require powerful machines to handle the intense, 3D design tools they work with daily?

With end users who were used to running powerful workstations under their desk with plenty of compute power, Hassell needed a virtualization platform solution that could deliver a rich and responsive experience that exceeded their users’ expectations.

Ivanti Performance Manager

Ivanti Performance Manager, powered by AppSense, enabled Hassell to increase their user density without compromising the user experience. “We’ve been able to control applications using too much CPU and memory resources so that it doesn’t impact other users,” said Johnny Chloride, Design Systems Manager at Hassell.

In building an overall solution in 2014 Chloride believed Ivanti’s then AppSense DesktopNow Plus was critical to the success of their virtualization project.

“DesktopNow Plus and AppSense were part of the overall virtualization package. Without AppSense, Citrix didn’t really make sense”

Hassell’s end users have been really excited by the benefits from the project, which includes the ability to logon from home and access all the same applications just as they use them in the studio.

“Before we’d have to use fairly elaborate file synchronization mechanisms,” commented Chloride. “Without Ivanti we wouldn’t have been able to get the business case to do what we wanted to do. Ivanti has provided us with the ability to give our designers the high-end graphical capabilities they needed.”

When analyzing the business case for the project, Hassell found the investment would pay for itself within 18 months. “We looked at a payback model when we went to the board and we looked at how quickly the investment would payback compared to the investment that they typically make on PC equipment. The timeframe was around 18 months, so from a board point of view not only were they getting faster equipment they were getting the same user experience and it was cheaper.”

If you have Citrix Virtual Apps | Desktops, VMware Horizon, Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop or cloud delivered desktops in Azure or AWS, we are offering 30 Day Free Performance Manager trial on your production system to show the cost savings.

UEM vs. ITAM – What’s the Difference?

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 18:59:14 Z

In 1996, Washington, DC and its surrounding communities were hit with a tremendous snow storm causing businesses to shut down across the entire region. Today, advances in technology allow people to work from almost anywhere, eliminating “snow day” shutdowns for most office workers.

Mobility solutions, cloud solutions, and light weight laptops have given employees access to the tools they need to do their jobs from almost any location. However, today’s technology advancements are straining IT departments as they try to support various IT solutions across multiple platforms.

Demands on IT administrators will not slow down this year as most organizations are driving their digital transformation strategy to keep up with competitors and customer demands. To achieve digital transformation, organizations are implementing Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solutions along with IT Asset Management (ITAM) solutions. Although both strategies are focused on IT assets, their objectives are not the same. What’s the difference?

Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)

To support IT assets, IT administrators have to maintain and configure devices to use VPN services, email services, and connectivity services such as Wi-Fi. However, maintaining devices requires administrators to enforce access policies, install updates, control applications, deploy and manage legacy applications, enforce encryption, manage printers, and to perform audits.

The challenge faced by administrators is to perform these tasks across a diverse environment with multiple platforms and operating systems. The objective of UEM is to simplify the process of managing a diverse set of IT assets through a single interface.

According to Gartner, “UEM refers to a new class of tools that can act as a single management interface for mobile, PC, and other devices.”

UEM solutions are vital for IT departments trying to manage the influx of IT assets coming on to the network. Without a UEM solution, IT administrators would have to learn and understand multiple tools in order to complete a single task. For this reason, many organizations are turning to UEM solutions as a way to deploy, manage, and a secure their IT assets across multiple platforms.

Gartner claims that “I&O leaders should expect and plan to replace enterprise mobility management and client management tools with UEM to support modern OS’s.”

To achieve endpoint management from a single console, UEM solutions typically require four key components:

Discovery

Because IT assets need to be discovered and documented into the UEM solution, discovery tools are essential. UEM discovery tools work across multiple platforms and operating systems.

Security

UEM solutions need to secure the IT assets they manage. To secure IT assets, UEM solutions ensure that applications are kept up to date, that proper security controls are installed, and that policies are applied.

Integration

Integration is a key component for UEM solutions. This gives administrators the ability to see and manage all IT assets from a single console, thus eliminating endpoint silos. Without integration, administrators would be required to learn and use multiple management interfaces to manage IT assets across platforms.

Automation

When UEM solutions are integrated with other solutions on the network, automation can drastically reduce overhead by automating tasks that are typically performed by a human. For example, when a new employee comes on to the network, a UEM automated task could be triggered by a Human Resource (HR) application to automatically deliver software packages required for the new employee.

It is important to note that Process Automation is a key component of digital transformation. Ashish Deshpande writes about this on Forbes.com: "Ultimately, people — not technology — drive change. When your people aren’t wasting time on non-core activities or manual workarounds, they can do more of what’s important."

IT Asset Management (ITAM)

An IT asset refers to both hardware and software used to support an organization’s business objectives. IT Asset Management (ITAM) provides standards, processes, policies, and measurements for the purpose of increasing IT asset control and compliance in addition to reducing risk and costs. Ultimately, ITAM provides organizations with accurate inventory reports.

With accurate inventory reports, organizations are able to make informed IT purchase decisions. The challenge with managing IT assets is that IT assets are often updated, moved, and refreshed, which makes it difficult to maintain up to date asset information.

Inaccurate IT asset reports expose organizations to unnecessary IT purchases, software audits, and security breaches. ITAM best practices include processes that map IT assets to their contractual and financial information which enables organizations to track the overall cost associated with each IT asset.

With ITAM, IT assets are tracked from purchase to disposal which is referred to as IT asset lifecycle management. Lifecycle management ensures that when hardware is refreshed, software licenses are properly harvested from decommissioned devices, so they can be redeployed to new devices.

According to Gartner, “IT asset management (ITAM) provides an accurate account of technology asset lifecycle costs and risks to maximize the business value of technology strategy, architecture, funding, contractual and sourcing decisions.”

To achieve asset management objectives, ITAM solutions require three key components:

Discovery

IT assets need to be documented into the ITAM database when they are acquired and when they change. Without efficient discovery services, IT assets can go unnoticed or get lost, which increases an organization’s security risk

Integration

Integration gives administrators the ability to see and manage all IT assets from a single solution. Without integration, asset administrators would have to use additional tools, such as spreadsheets to obtain and maintain accurate inventory information.

Automation

Automation reduces human error. Mistakes can lead to inaccurate inventory information which increases risk and costs associated with IT assets. ITAM solutions often use automation tools for asset requests.

With regards to digital transformation, Deshpande recommends the following: “You don't have to automate every process at once. Start with something that's fairly common, involves multiple stakeholders and is performed reasonably often, like a purchase order”

Summary

UEM and ITAM are important to any organization heavily dependent on technology to achieve business objectives. UEM simplifies endpoint management with a single interface while ITAM reduces IT asset costs by keeping decision-makers informed. Furthermore, both UEM and ITAM are critical for those organizations trying to achieve digital transformation.

Would You Like Fries With That? Three Questions to Ask About Built-In Features

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 19:31:47 Z

I’ve been around the IT world for a long time (over 32 years) and things are constantly changing.

One question that never seems to change in our world of “Value Add” is, “How do you compare to the built-in feature X”.

For nearly 15 years I’ve worked for AppSense, and now Ivanti.

Those businesses were, and still are, built on the principle of Adding Value, to improve the User Experience.

It’s like that fast food restaurant that always asks, “Would you like fries with that?” Two possible responses here:

No thank you. There is enough salt and fat in my triple decker burger I’ve already ordered to have the desired effect on my arteries, or
Yes, I would like fries with that. It makes it feel like a more balanced meal and I can then kid myself that I’ve had some Veggies today and feel better about my dietary choices.

If you get the analogy, Option 2 is all about the User Experience, Option 1 is all about – I know what I’m doing, what I have is good enough.

The built-in features in the Operating System (Think Windows, IOS, Android etc.) come with a range of feature and functions. Some are great, some are o.k.

If the built in O/S for our Mobile devices was fantastic, there’d be no need for any apps.

Just the same as if the off the showroom car was fantastic, it wouldn’t need options and there wouldn’t be any need for aftermarket players selling bull bars and 20-inch rims.

But we are all DIFFERENT, and our use cases are all DIFFERENT.

So, when customers say to me – “How does this compare to the FREE feature I already have?” I ask them if they’ve listed out and tested their use cases.

The reason being, the built-in feature will work well for certain use cases, for certain customers.

For Example, the Windows world has had NT Backup built into Windows from day one.

Will it backup data – Yes – will it be an effective backup solution for an Enterprise – No. And that’s exactly why most customers purchase a specific, dedicated, backup solution for their organisation.

Everyone understands that.

Three important questions to ask when assessing built-in features:

What is the management overhead of using the built-in functionality? Typically, this one gets missed. Yes, the built in may be FREE, and may do what you think you want, but if it takes one FTE (Full Time Employee) dedicated to managing it, there’s a cost involved. I’ve been to sites where Teams looked after built in security features – difficult to propose an alternative when it’s obviously going to put people out of work.
What User Experience are we after? Do you want the users to be able to roam different platforms and have the same experience for all their app settings etc? Do you want them to have the ability to decide, give a reason, and temporarily bypass some security restrictions? Are you o.k. if one user running a big Excel calculation, impacts every other user connected to the same Terminal Server etc? All important questions, all of which must be balanced between the value of User Experience, and the cost of the solution.
What are others like us doing? If you’re a 10,000-seat organisation, and everyone your size is using a value add solution, maybe there’s a reason for that. Are others just ticking a box to keep the auditors at bay, or are they using the auditor’s report as an opportunity to drive real change. Do your research. Ask around. Maybe the Vendor can point you at a similar customer who’s implemented their solution and seen the value first hand.

So, there’s some questions for you.

I hope you find them useful when you sit down to assess the value of various built-in features and functions.

And just remember, when it comes down to that age-old question – “Would you like fries with that?”, it’s all about the User Experience, it’s not about the calories 😊

My name’s Shane Wescott, Tech Evangelist at Ivanti, and I’m here to help.

Hit me up on shane.wescott@ivanti.com if there is anything else I can do to add value to you.

What is the most valuable resource for any organisation?

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 21:41:29 Z

It’s the people.

The employees of any organisation are the driving force behind its success. They design and build a product, they promote the product in the market, the sales team sell the product and a team of employees support customers using the product. Without people there is no organisation.

With that in mind those delivering IT services need to ensure this valuable resource is empowered, enabled and their productivity is optimal.

Many organisations have been delivering IT services the same way for years.

Buy some hardware
Install a gold build on that hardware
Install extra software such as design programs or finance programs
Apply some Group Policy to extend the configuration
Apply some logon scripts to configure the user environment

These steps and customizations typically take a modern piece of hardware and make it slow, difficult to use and frustrates users. A study at the university of Warwick in the UK showed that happy users are 12% more productive!

“Why is this so hard? At home this just works. Why are logons so slow?

A common frustration faced by users is slow logons, they begin to creep in, and over time get worse and worse.

Users are left with a logon lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes. What do users do when they know the logon is going to take time? Most commonly they leave their desk.

Between the 2 minutes it took to logon, and the 5 minutes the employee is gone, their computer has sat unlocked and unsecured. During this time anyone could sit down and run applications or access potentially sensitive data. This is a direct breach of laws such as the Notifiable Data Breach (NDB) scheme, this could have potential financial ramifications for an organisation.

The reality is we want our users to be presented with their familiar look and feel desktop, ready to launch applications in seconds.

When users face issues caused by poorly performing computers, they will typically become less productive. They may:

Call the IT service desk to complain

We all have those repeat offenders that have issues and the first thing they do is drag other users in to it, then call the IT service desk to complain. This disrupts other users and adds extra stress to your service desk function.

Try rebooting because that fixes everything

When users strike issues, and a task is taking longer than they expect, pressing the power button to hard boot the device seems like a good idea. Often it causes more problems than it solves.

Ask a colleague how to get around security, or introduce new software/hardware (Shadow IT)

If a user is inhibited from doing their job, by a security product or the lack of a service IT have delivered. Typically, users are wise enough to find a way around it. Someone in their team knows how to disable the security product, a user knows someone who has some Adobe license keys they can use to install the software they need.

All these outcomes stop users doing what they are supposed to be doing, and potentially cause more harm to user computers resulting in real support issues and tangible risks to the business.

Traditional approaches to IT Management

In any typical organisation complexity is king, the use of technologies such as laptops, desktops, tablets, server operating systems and virtual desktops are common place.

Traditional approaches of Microsoft Group Policy and logon scripts are slow, inflexible, inefficient and difficult to manage for IT.

To give users the best user experience and make them instantly productive, we need to rethink how we configure and apply policy to endpoints.

Having a laptop that applies all its policy when a user logs on is ineffective in our modern digital society. A user may logon their laptop on day one and rarely logout unless forced, the laptop may leave the office and never come back. We need to able to apply policy to that user and device contextually based on the situation the user finds themselves in at any given time. We at Ivanti call this dynamic contextual policy.

organisations need a unified approach to manage user experience across this sprawling estate. With that unified approach IT can prioritize having the most productive and happy users, to drive that business to success.

Ivanti have the right IT Solutions for your organisation

Dynamic Contextual Policy

Ivanti Environment Manager policy (EMPO) provides IT teams with an advanced lightweight toolset to manage any Windows platform, be it physical or virtual, server or desktop from one console.

EMPO is simple and fast to roll out, it’s just a console, agent and a small policy file all of which you can manage from Microsoft SCCM or Ivanti Endpoint Manager.

No more logon scripts

EMPO can help your organisation eradicate the use of slow and complex logon scripts, allowing any member of your IT team to automate tasks in a simple GUI. No scripting skills needed, one error in the logon process does not bring the users to a grinding halt. Run logon tasks during logon, a new network connection, the desktop being locked or even an application starting. Configure the desktop in a truly context aware nature.

End the GPO slow down

organisations can move hundreds of Group Policy configurations running sequentially in AD, to run in parallel from EMPO, sometimes saving minutes on a user logon, every logon.

Don’t just apply GPO to a user, machine or OU. Apply based on the context, as users roam through your environment adapt the policy and apply GPO based on device type, IP address, what applications are running or even the day of the week!

Make happy users

Through its advanced policy engine EMPO is able to consistently deliver logons of under 20 seconds, maximizing user productivity and elevating user experience, making happy users. It achieves this by allowing logon actions to be applied simultaneously, rather than one-after-the-other, to minimize the time it takes to logon. In addition, actions typically applied at logon can now be distributed to apply on-demand, throughout the user session instead, removing the burden on the logon process.

It’s easy-to-use graphical user interface, negates the need for advanced scripting skills, reducing the complexity of managing and maintaining legacy logon scripts or complicated Group Policy inheritance, freeing up IT for more important tasks.

Outcomes

Better managing your desktops and creating a great user experience is not only good for the users. IT benefits as well:

Reduced risk surrounding NDB and GDPR

Minimize security impacts by users leaving their computers unlocked during logon
Stop users needing to work around IT limitations and security products

Fewer support calls

Empowered users with a well performing desktop and the right policy have fewer reasons to call the service desk. Their desktop is adapted to their current situation making it context aware.

More time to Innovate

With less time spent solving desktop challenges IT have more time to innovate and drive IT forward not just keep the lights on.

If simplifying desktop management, and ensuring you have happy and 12% more productive users is important to your organisation, check out this whitepaper on the Ivanti website.

Leverage Your Investment in Office 365 and Simplify Windows 10 Migration

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 05:01:15 Z

Many organizations have moved to Office 365 and many more are making the move. Office 365 includes 1TB per user of free OneDrive for Business cloud storage.

The challenge organizations face is how to make that storage accessible to their users in a simple-to-consume mechanism.

Training staff and changing their workflows is a big headache and can lead to spikes in support calls. It’s possible not all endpoints will have OneDrive software installed, and as a result, users can’t access their critical data on some machines, causing confusion.

The Solution: Ivanti File Director’s OneDrive for Business

Ivanti File Director’s OneDrive for Business connector provides a simple solution. It automatically syncs user files from local, in-situ folders such as the Desktop, Documents or Pictures folders to OneDrive for Business cloud storage. This allows users to access their corporate files with no change to their workflow, from any device, Microsoft or otherwise.

IT gains complete control over how and where this storage is consumed. Migration of local data to OneDrive for Business cloud storage is fast and pain free, eliminating the problem of data sprawl, where users save file locally to multiple endpoints.

For more information on how you can better leverage your investment in Office 365, provide your users a better user experience, and simplify migrations to Windows 10 and cloud storage, visit the Ivanti website.

Ivanti Blog: Endpoint Management (UEM)

What Does Ivanti Being Named as a First-Time Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for UEM Tools Really Mean?

How Gartner found vendors to consider for the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for UEM Tools report

What “Ability to Execute” and “Completeness of Vision” metrics meant for Gartner UEM Tools this year

Gartner Ability to Execute metric for UEM Tools in 2022

Gartner Completeness of Vision metric for UEM Tools in 2022

What the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ positions and Leader recognition meant for UEM Tools

What the Gartner leader position means for the 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for UEM Tools report

What the Gartner Visionary position means for the Magic Quadrant™ for UEM Tools report

Validation of Ivanti’s UEM solutions for your Everywhere Workplace

Raising Your Security Posture: 3 Things You Should Look at Next

1. App Hardening

How Ivanti Can Help

2. Connected Devices and Removable Media

What’s the best way to do that; what’s the best solution?

How Ivanti Can Help

3. Automated Reporting

How should you do that; where should you start?

How Ivanti Can Help

What next?

Ivanti Neurons Workspace: Deliver Faster Resolutions Without Disrupting Your Customers

“I was misinformed”

“Round up the usual suspects”

“Play it, Sam”

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”

Together Citrix and Ivanti Just Make Sense

Ivanti Performance Manager

UEM vs. ITAM – What’s the Difference?

Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)

IT Asset Management (ITAM)

Summary

Would You Like Fries With That? Three Questions to Ask About Built-In Features

What is the most valuable resource for any organisation?

Traditional approaches to IT Management

Ivanti have the right IT Solutions for your organisation

Outcomes

Leverage Your Investment in Office 365 and Simplify Windows 10 Migration

The Solution: Ivanti File Director’s OneDrive for Business

What the Gartner^® Magic Quadrant™ positions and Leader recognition meant for UEM Tools