Using Office 365 Mobile Device Management

Whilst many organizations have found Exchange Online’s built in device management functional, it’s increasing found to be lacking in capability compared to third-party device mobile device management solutions. ActiveSync is a good protocol, which excels at delivering push email to devices, and combined with Exchange’s mobile device quarantine features and remote wipe provides a set of controls to restrict which devices can connect and wipe data. Basic policies, mostly defined in a pre-iPhone era, aimed at Windows Mobile 6 and below have been implemented in part by modern smartphone manufacturers but usually only in a very basic way, for example to enforce a PIN lock.,

Microsoft offer their own full MDM solution in the form of InTune which provides the ability to manage not only email, but also other company owned applications installed on the device. For some organizations they don’t need all that functionality, but still want better, modern controls.

Office 365 Mobile Device Management fits the gap where ActiveSync leaves off but doesn’t provide the third-party app management ability of the full InTune product. Based on InTune, Office 365 is aimed at managing your Office 365 suite – but not anything else. It allows you to deploy and manage Office 365 apps and use advanced features for protecting content within your tenant.