Upwardly Mobile

(From left to right) Steve

Staines, Michael Pflieger

and Travis Chavous helped

CDW craft a strategy

to manage the influx of

personal mobile computing

devices that coworkers

were bringing to — and

using in — the office.

CaSe STuDy: MobiliTy

Teamwork, a clear vision and the cloud helped CDW develop a strategy for reaping the rewards and mitigating the risks of a diverse mobile environment.

Photography by James Schnepf When CDW leaders saw a surge of smartphones and tablets

streaming into their offices, they mobilized professionals from

across the organization to address it.

CIO and Senior Vice President of Operations Jon Stevens

“was quick to realize that this proliferation of mobile

devices wasn’t going to stop,” explains Travis Chavous,

senior manager of IT service management for the national

technology solutions and services provider. “His vision was

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2 CaSe STuDy: MobiliTy

Mobility Made Simple: 5 Pillars for Success

Many organizations continue to struggle with managing and

securing their mobile environments. Fortunately, the challenge

has gotten easier, thanks to a comprehensive new portfolio of

solutions and services that span each phase of implementation.

Total Mobility Management from CDW encompasses a full suite of

best practices, applications and on-demand services to integrate,

control and simplify all aspects of mobility management. Total

Mobility Management also benefi ts from real-world validation:

CDW developed and uses the off ering’s policies and tools to keep

its own mobile workers productive and secure.

Plan the Strategy: CDW account managers and

solution architects work with each customer to

create a mobility roadmap, develop data and

device policies, formalize a security strategy and understand

network requirements.

enable Procurement and Provisioning: CDW experts

help customers design bring-your-own-device

programs and create a procurement portal through

which end users can administer their data plans, choose their

mobile devices, deploy their selections, activate their accounts,

and confi gure their smartphones and tablets.

Protect with Centralized Management: Integrated

security technologies and policies control access to

the organization’s network and keep information

safe. Total Mobility Management gives organizations the tools

they need to control devices, applications, content and BYOD

policies. Th ese resources also can be used to manage device and

data plan expenses, and to monitor mobile activities in real time.

Support iT and end users: Help desk services,

warranty services and a portal that enables end users

to manage their own mobile needs ensure that

anytime, anywhere communications stay productive and effi cient.

empower Customization and enhancements:

By providing resources for custom application

development, a customized app store and support

for virtualizing desktops and applications, Total Mobility

Management allows organizations to tailor their mobile

environments to their own unique needs and opportunities.

Learn more about Total Mobility Management at CDW.com/

mobility or download CDW’s mobile policy checklist at

CDW.com/checklist.

Th e team’s fi rst task was to rethink standardization.

By limiting key technologies to similar makes and models,

organizations can streamline support processes, create

consistent user experiences and make troubleshooting

easier. Unfortunately, standardization doesn’t mesh with

the realities of an era now dominated by multiple platforms,

including iOS, Android, Windows and BlackBerry.

To manage and secure this diversity of devices, the

mobility team began developing a management strategy

that would encompass four key elements:

1. Comprehensiveness: Th e policies had to eff ectively

address management and support issues, as well as

regulatory compliance requirements.

2. Security: Mobile devices are increasingly connected

to wireless LANs and other networks that don’t provide

fi rewall protection. Th e strategy had to provide an

integrated security solution for secure network access.

3. Consistency: End users should have a similar experience

regardless of the device they choose. Th e challenge was

fi nding one tool to manage the entire environment.

for anytime, anywhere, any device access to information —

and that’s the beat we’ve been marching to ever since.”

Disruptive innovationNearly a decade ago, staff members who needed after-

hours connections to corporate resources carried

BlackBerry devices, which came with their own server

platform for enterprise-class management and security.

Th en, Apple introduced the iPhone. “We learned quickly that

the level of control we had with the BlackBerry wouldn’t be

available with other smartphones,” recalls Steve Staines,

CDW’s manager of enterprise collaboration technology.

Th e challenge only grew with time. In 2008, nearly 1,000

CDW employees were using mobile devices. Today, 4,000

employee-owned smartphones and tablets need to be able

to connect safely to internal IT systems and email servers.

CDW assembled a cross-departmental team of IT staff ,

senior executives, business managers and end users to

identify the opportunities and challenges of ubiquitous

mobility and develop a strategic plan to manage it.

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3

Maximizing Mobility: Start Here

• Createwell-definedpolicies. “Having clear policies upfront will help

end users understand what rules are in place and why,” says Michael

Pflieger, CDW’s senior director of IT operations. The internal rules

also can help IT staff determine which capabilities to look for when

evaluating mobile device management (MDM) solutions, he adds.

• TakeagradualapproachtoimplementingMDM. Some mobile users

may fear overbearing Big Brother controls. A gradual rollout that’s

limited to standard policies, such as protecting devices with passwords,

can alleviate these fears.

“If you need to turn on an additional feature in the future, then you can

tweak the system,” says Steve Staines, CDW’s manager of enterprise

collaboration technology. “It’s much harder to do everything at once.”

• Solicitfeedbackfromendusers. “Sometimes, it’s positive; sometimes, it’s

negative,” Staines reports. “But we listen to feedback, no matter what.”

In the early days of MDM, for example, CDW asked staff to submit

questions about the technology and then assembled the answers in a

frequently-asked-questions document for future reference.

• EvaluateMDMvendorsbasedonhowquicklytheyreacttomarket

changes. “Determine if they will support a change to an operating system

immediately or within two weeks, one month or 90 days,” Pflieger advises.

Some MDM vendors have such close relationships that they can issue

updates as soon as mobile hardware and software companies release

new versions, he adds.

• Keepyouroptionsopen.Even when an organization finds a close fit with

a vendor, negotiate contracts that avoid long-term lock-ins.

“What’s right today might not be right tomorrow,” Staines says.

“The key is having the flexibility to adjust to new types of devices,

capabilities and usage models.”

800.800.4239 | CDW.com

4. Scalability and Viability: The plan had to remain relevant

even as the mobile market continues to evolve.

One factor that didn’t loom large in the discussions was

return on investment (ROI). Chavous says CDW’s desire

to manage and secure a mobile environment for its 6,800

employees in Vernon Hills, Ill., and 24 other locations in the

United States and Canada overshadowed the payback

considerations that traditionally guide large-scale IT projects.

Bring-your-own-device programs and mobility have

become “driving forces in all organizations,” Chavous

explains. “We had to address the situation we were facing,

rather than focus on achieving a predetermined ROI.”

embracing byoDThe team next turned to such fundamental decisions as

who would pay for the devices and data plans. Ultimately,

the team decided that a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t

work, so it created a multitiered model with various options

based on an individual’s role within the company.

Senior executives would continue to receive devices and

services paid for by the company. Other professionals

whose jobs require anytime, anywhere access to peers and

company resources would receive stipends of up to $200

to pay for mobile devices. A formula determines a maximum

dollar amount for each device type.

The third tier, which covers the largest segment of CDW’s

mobile workforce, is BYOD. Participants may use their

personal smartphones and tablets at work if they agree to

follow the company’s usage policies and download an app

from CDW’s mobile device management (MDM) platform.

“If the user’s device has the MDM application running, we

don’t care if it’s a corporate-sponsored device or a personal

one,” says Michael Pflieger, CDW’s senior director of IT

operations. “We’ll treat everyone the same.”

Those usage policies included the following specific

measures to protect information and company assets:

• Mobiledevicesmustencryptdatastoredonthehardware.

• Userscan’tinstallsoftwareblacklistedbyCDW.

• Externalconnectionstothecompanynetworksrequire

two-factor authentication.

• Afterausermakes10unsuccessfulattemptstoentera

password, the device is automatically wiped clean.

• “Jailbroken”or“rooted”devices,whichhavebeenaltered

to override vendor controls, are banned.

• Devicesautomaticallylockafteraperiodofinactivity.

a Firm FoundationEven the best policies won’t guarantee success if a company

can’t effectively implement and enforce them. To add oversight

to its mobile strategy, CDW needed an MDM solution that

would ensure that each device complied with internal usage

rules before mobile workers accessed corporate resources.

In 2010, at the height of the mobile device influx,

members of CDW’s 240-person IT team began evaluating

MDM options, paying particular attention to ease of

implementation and whether the solutions would meet all

of CDW’s mobile management and security requirements.

Equally important was finding a solution that could support

the diverse combinations of devices and operating systems

in CDW’s existing environment.

They found their answer in MaaS360 by Fiberlink, an

easy-to-configure software as a service option that didn’t

require the upfront investments in hardware and storage

that on-premises applications demand. It jump-started

CDW’s MDM capabilities — the initial setup took only a

couple of hours to configure.

4800.800.4239 | CDW.com

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CaSe STuDy: MobiliTy

To prevent potential support headaches for IT staff, the

mobility team chose a self-service route, one that would

give end users the tools they’d need to configure their

own devices and troubleshoot common performance

problems. “It’s very hard to support so many different

types of devices with so many versions of operating

systems,” Pflieger explains. “It gets almost unbearable

because there are so many flavors and combinations.”

CDW had other practical reasons for minimizing support

responsibilities in a BYOD environment. “We realized that

the more we touched people’s personal equipment, the

more liability we would take on,” Chavous explains. “So

we created the basic configuration parameters and then

got out of the general support business. As a result, the

proliferation of devices hasn’t generated a lot of additional

call volume for the service desk.”

Leveraging capabilities within the MaaS360 solution,

CDW created a portal through which users can download

the initial settings that devices need to connect to the

network. Employee-owned devices are quarantined until

their users follow emailed instructions on how to authorize

their devices to access organizational resources. If a device

isn’t rooted or jailbroken, the user is permitted to install

the MDM application, which configures security controls.

Within 10 minutes, corporate email is accessible through

the device. “We’ve gone from having IT be involved with

about 95 percent of the initial configurations before MDM

to less than five percent now,” Staines says.

Of course, self-service doesn’t mean the IT support

staff isn’t available if a mobile worker later needs

assistance. “We never leave anybody hanging,” Staines

continues. “We will always make our best effort to help

a coworker resolve a problem, whether we work on it or

refer the issue to the carrier to diagnose it.”

A dedicated procurement and expense management

system that the mobility team established allows

colleagues to order from an internal catalog of mobile

devices and accessories, upgrade their devices or make

changes to existing services. Managers benefit because

the system breaks down mobile expenses by department

for accurate chargebacks. Proprietary algorithms even

flag accounts for which available minutes far exceed what

users require, allowing CDW to save money by revising

those account holders’ service plans.

To be successful, CDW’s mobile management strategy

also hinged on a more robust wireless network. Prior to

2010, CDW’s network infrastructure could accommodate

less than one device per employee. “When we saw a

wave of people bringing in their smartphones and tablets,

plus people working on notebook computers throughout

the day, we realized the wireless network was getting

overwhelmed,” Pflieger explains.

To accommodate colleagues who now carry a full

on-the-go arsenal, the mobility team relocated existing

access points and added more to optimize coverage areas.

Originally, CDW had configured the network with one

connection point per user; after the upgrade, that ratio

jumped to three connections per person.

“We made certain that the wireless network could handle

today’s demands — and has room to grow,” Staines says.

Clock agnosticWith the right policies and infrastructure to support

ubiquitous mobility now in place, the 29-year-old

company is enjoying the benefits of a closely connected

workforce. Staff members have reliable access to corporate

email, information and applications whenever they need it,

using whatever device is appropriate for the task at hand.

At the same time, CDW has mitigated the security risks

that can derail mobile strategies. “Our business is never

9 to 5, so we say, ‘Information anytime, anywhere, on any

device,’ ” Pflieger explains. “And now we’re confident that

we’re doing it in a way that’s both manageable and secure.”

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