Two of the most valuable features are the MDM, mobile device management, and the content management, the containerization management of apps so that I can have clients that bring their own devices to an enterprise as well as enterprise apps, and I have two different solutions of deploying applications to those mobile devices. There are a lot of other aspects other than security that are advanced features in AirWatch that I didn't see in some of the competitor's products.
From an AirWatch standpoint, basically a lot of concerns in the enterprise today are security. With these MDM and mobile content management solutions, an organization can manage their applications without any concern for the end user losing important enterprise data.
For instance, say a person leaves an organization, we can basically, even though they own the device, we can using AirWatch, wipe all the content that's enterprise related off of that device immediately. If it's an enterprise device and it gets lost, we can wipe that device immediately. AirWatch gives you the security built into their solution that's very robust.
I'm so overwhelmed and pleased with the solution that they offer. The solution that I had before was so difficult for me to use that I haven't been able to use it enough to find things that it's lacking. There may be things out there that it's lacking, but I'm not just aware of those at this point.
We use the cloud version. They have a on-premise solution of AirWatch. We use the cloud solution of AirWatch. We found that the responsiveness of that solution far exceeds the competitor products. We used competitor products for a while, and we were consistently encountering issues with stability as far as connectivity, time outs, but the AirWatch solution flawless as far as the cloud solution is concerned.
From a scalability standpoint, it looks like it's really, really robust, but we haven't had the opportunity to scale it up to a high number of users. Just from a scalability standpoint, for instance, the ability to take organizational groups and manage at a lower level of an organization with the multi-tenancy just kind of blew my mind.
I'm amazed that somebody thought about this in advance of the solution of the development of the product so that the solution that comes out would be a solution that you can have like three or four companies under one AirWatch instance. I was amazed.
I myself, haven't used them a lot. When I have used them, it's been stellar. They've been very responsive. What I really like is they have the support infrastructure that allows you to go to their forums and ask questions. I've shared a lot of information with other forum participants and finding solutions to the specific problems that others have had as well as the search capabilities inside the forums are really robust.
There were some issues that we encounter with respect to.... For instance, we would have partners that we work with that have their own apps and they want to put those apps on our devices and use our devices, or they want to have their own devices and use our apps.
The solution that AirWatch had where you can manage just content on a device, or you can manage a device itself as far as an enterprise device, was a lot more flexible, so we were able to put our apps in, say, the Apple App Store and allow our partners to download those apps onto their devices in a containerized solution that we can immediately wipe.
For the cloud solution, it was really straightforward. There are some, they weren't issues, I wouldn't call them issues, there was just some technical obstacles to overcome that were more organizational than anything else related to the AirWatch connector to sync active directory, et cetera with the enterprise.
Right now, I'd rate it a 10 but that's because everything that I've looked at from an AirWatch standpoint that it says it does this, this and this, it has been able to do and do well. You have to realize I have some exposure to experiences where, "Hey, our product does this, this and this." Then we go do those specific things and the product doesn't do it. Whereas with AirWatch, everything that it said it would do, it did out the gate. There wasn't like, "That's the next upgrade," or, "We'll ... " That's my satisfaction.
I think they should consider flexibility. One of the things with respect to AirWatch, and its ability to be flexible in any type of enterprise, and as well as working with external entities from your company that your teams or sales people are working with to deploy whatever solutions to any of your clients. You want something that's going to change so you can adapt it to your specific business model or business environment.
We see what other enterprises are doing. We look at that. Then we also look at some of the Gartner materials that are out there. We use some ITIL Standards to do some evaluations. Basically, we definitely look at what's happening externally in the environment. As you know, this industry is changing so fast. Somebody has a solution but that solution is no longer relevant by the time we implement it.
