KuppingerCole Analysts has named Entgra as a Product Leader and an Innovation Leader in the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), 2021. And we couldn’t be more pleased! On behalf of the Entgra team, I’d like to thank our customers who have shown their confidence in our products and solutions over the years.
KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Unified Endpoint Management, 2021 analyzed vendors that provide Mobile Device Management (MDM), Internet of Things (IoT), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), and UEM solutions in the market today. In its evaluation, this report looked at four types of leadership: Product, Market, Innovation, and Overall. Apart from being named as a Product Leader and an Innovation Leader, Entgra is included in the Challenger segment of the other two leadership categories. Moreover, Entgra was also placed high in the Product/Innovation Matrix.
You can read the report on KuppingerCole Analysts’ website.
The report highlighted the following strengths of the Entgra’s product suite:
Strong patch management
Good device management
Content management
Endpoint security
Endpoint intelligence
Wide range of endpoint types supported
Admin and DevOps support
Centralized endpoint visibility
User self-service and admin access authentication options
The Entgra product suite also received a Strong Positive rating for security, functionality, and usability and a Positive rating for interoperability and deployment.
Report Highlight: The Growth of the UEM Market
The report highlights the growth of the UEM market (the number of UEM vendors evaluated in this Leadership Compass even increasing by over 60% compared to previous years), how the level of endpoint intelligence provided has become one of the key differentiators between UEM product solutions, and how the range of functions now extend beyond classic client management to include configured work environments, content management on end devices, security management, inventory, and management of operating systems and applications with patch management also typically included in UEM solutions.
Entgra’s Journey So Far
We set up Entgra in 2018 following a long history at WSO2, where our visionary team developed the IoT and MDM platform and acquired vast experience developing enterprise applications for a multitude of companies ranging from SMEs to Fortune 500 companies. Today, our customer portfolio spans enterprises in the Android device manufacturing, original design manufacturing, government, education, pharmaceutical, healthcare, insurance, energy, and service industries. With the need and functionality of IoT and EMM technology evolving in the post-pandemic business landscape, we look forward to adding more customer-centric capabilities to Entgra products.
In a world driven by smart technology¹ that seeks to reap the maximum benefits from recent advancements as soon as possible, one can do little to not be left behind. This is twice as much important if you’re a thriving global enterprise or aspiring to be one. Keeping abreast requires all of your ingenuity.
Enterprises today are increasingly adopting various types of disparate devices into their everyday business operations. Some of these are standard legacy mobile devices like tablets, smartphones, and laptops. Then there are Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as sensors, PLCs², communication gateways, edge computing devices, CCTV cameras, etc. that are also heavily used to monitor and control all aspects of business and supply chains.
Technical challenges arise after these devices are employed. Enterprises need to change business processes to communicate with them seamlessly while adhering to enterprise application development paradigms. This is when a unified set of API endpoints (UEMs) that represent the complete enterprise device deployment becomes a game changer.
Recent Trends in Enterprise Device Adoption
Let’s start with a broader perspective on device dependency. Statistics reveal that the number of mobile phone users far outnumber those with access to electricity, or even running water.
This means that a startling 69% of the world’s population has access to mobile phones.
Other recent surveys on enterprise device adoption reveal a steady increase in the use of active connections worldwide, with IoT device usage increasing faster compared to traditional device usage.
Enterprises are adopting connected devices for a real-time understanding of ground level conditions, adding an element of sixth sense in business processes across supply, production, and consumption chains. Various types of devices, sensors, PLCs, communication gateways, edge computing devices, etc. are employed to ensure process efficiency. Moreover, this boom in device usage has been accompanied by a significant reduction in the cost of deploying devices in recent times.
In keeping with the latest trends, data communication and infrastructure have also drastically improved with plenty of software platforms enabling connections between different devices for application development or business process enhancements.
Explosion in Device Adoption
All these developments have led to an explosion of disparate device end points coming into the picture, bringing about a new set of challenges for enterprises. As a result, we now have a number of device endpoints within an enterprise that require monitoring, managing, and specified permissions for access within the framework, calling for effective device onboarding and managing strategies.
Challenges in Enterprise Device Management
However, this also means that enterprises are now dependent on these device endpoints to execute some form of business functionality, or to receive feedback on business processes.
This brings us to the fundamental problem of tackling the challenges posed by enterprise device management. Typically, one of the following illustrated deployment architecture patterns handle device deployment:
Some important points considered by these deployments include:
Heterogeneous deployment architectures
Expansion of corporate (traditional) network boundaries
Network connectivity
Device functional accuracy determination
Rogue device detection
Identity and access management (device identity/ human operator identity)
Establishment of authorized access for device data/control
Firmware distribution and different device OS platforms
Asset tracking at manufacturing, QC, distribution, and installation phases
Heterogenous development architecture
Typical “difficult” devices placements such as remote locations, manholes, tunnels, etc.
Complicated wiring architecture
Communication modules
Integration Challenges in the Lifecycle of an Enterprise Device
Identifying and addressing integration problems during the various phases of a device’s lifecycle requires considerable effort as indicated by the diagram below:
Consequently, each stage in the lifestyle has its own set of integration requirements as outlined below:
Device Manufacturing Phase
Serial ID/ MAC address registration
Provisioning token/ certificate generation
Firmware burning to ROM
Quality Control / Checks
Temporary activation of provisioning token
Test operations/ controls
Wipe-offs/ factory reset
Ready for Sale / Warehouse
Sold to Customer
Delivered to Installation Site
Installation and Verification
Issuing temporary tickets for testing
Customer/ site assignment
Device activation (token/ digital twin)
Warranty activation
In-Production
Device communication with IoT platform
IoT platform communication with device
Application <-> device interfaces
Token authorizations
Firmware management
Faulty / Maintenance/ Rogue
Device event processing and modeling
Deactivation requests
Service records/ maintenance mode switch
Device Discarded
Entgra’s Device Integration Platform
The Entgra IoT platform acts as a single platform where you can connect devices from different vendors, enabling you to build applications on top of these devices in a unified way. Given below is a high level view of our IoT platform architecture:
Our device integration platform has the added advantage of sharing the same common architecture, and therefore the same code base, as that of WSO2 technology.
On top of this IoT platform, we have also have built a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution that specifically targets managing traditional mobile devices such as kiosks and laptops, available as an off-the-shelf product.
Entgra Mobile Device Manager
The Entgra IoT Platform, therefore, offers a standardized set of APIs for simpler enterprise device onboarding, working equally well for standard mobile devices traditionally managed through MDMs as well as for IoT devices.
Your Enterprise Device Journey
This blog provides an overview of how you can manage different types of devices as standard API endpoints within your enterprise architecture to seamlessly onboard different types of devices into your business. Get in touch with us via contact@entgra.io to learn more about our IoT and MDM technologies.
¹Smart Technology — Abbreviated for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology, the term is used with its actual meaning of ‘clever’ to describe any kind of available technology that allows users to connect with internet networks.
² PLC — Programmable Logic Controller — A programmable logic controller (PLC) or programmable controller is an industrial digital computer which has been ruggedized and adapted for the control of manufacturing processes.
Entgra Named as a Product Leader and an Innovation Leader. KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), 2021. Read more
