How to manage mobile devices from a centralized location remotely?

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How to manage mobile devices from a centralized location remotely?

As for as i know we can manage devices through client-server architecture.But i have to monitor mobile devices remotely without any agent installed in the device.

If it is not possible then please tell me how to monitor mobile devices using an agent?

Thanks.

Posted 14-Nov-12 23:43pm

balajivit

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Richard MacCutchan 15-Nov-12 10:06am

What do you mean by "manage"? Do you need to communicate to the devices, if so how will you do that?

balajivit 15-Nov-12 13:52pm

Yes,i need to communicate to the device through air(Wireless).but i have no idea how to do this.
What do you mean by "manage"?
It means updating/installing the software/firmware,collecting device information,inventory of installed s/w and H/W information in the device, identifying the mobile devices connected to my Wi-Fi access points in the network and many more from a single console server manager.

i come to know from googling that these can be done using OTA(On The Air),WAP Push,SMS and etc..But no idea how i can use all these to build Mobile device manager?

Any ideas would be appropriated.....

Thanks,

Edgar R. C. 16-Nov-12 20:27pm

Your question need a lot of more information to be answered. There is no kind of an universal protocol to do all those things on all mobile devices available. But generally speaking, if your device has an API to be remote managed probably it can be easily learned from the manual or from your device Operation System (such as android, symbian). If there is not this kind of API on your device then you need an "agent" installed. This agent must implement updating/installing/etc on your device and expose a protocol to be called remotely. The way to call these function remotely can be over 3G, Wifi, SMS...

balajivit 17-Nov-12 23:30pm

Hi Edgar Rocha! Thanks for you comment on this question.
Yes,as you said there is no universal protocol to manage devices remotely.Its absolutely correct.
The following are the things that i wanted to do..
1.Initialy,i would like to monitor android/iphone mobile device from my MDM(Mobile Device Management)Server
2.For this i need to write MDM server application
3.Identify the devices connected to my Wi-Fi acees points
4.Get some basic information from the mobile device connected to my Wi-Fi
5.Apply some policies on the devices.

Any help would be appreciated...

Regards,
Balaji T

Edgar R. C. 18-Nov-12 6:09am

You can't do all those things on Iphone. Apple have a very limited SDK. The only way to install firmware/software is using iTunes/appstore. You can collect some very basic device information but not a software inventory, you can't change any "policy" on iPhone too (you can't even change your screen bright level). Unless you jailbreak your device but it doesn't make sense for a company solution. Android is more flexible and I guess that you can do all those things but firmware upgrade. The first step is to define the protocol between agent and your MDM. Than you implement this protocol using socket, webservices, sms. Then you implement a device specific agent to talk to your MDM server. Honestly and no offense, but looks like you have no idea about software development and if I'm right you should ask someone else to implement this solution for you, I'm just pointing the way as there is no solution to reply here. Just have a very specific requirement list for each device and model that you want and for MDM then ask someone else to do this job for you.

balajivit 18-Nov-12 14:21pm

Thank you so much for your great information on mobile platforms and its SDK. Since i am new to mobile OS architecture,application development and wireless technology...so bit confusion for me.I am very enthusiastic to learn all these too.

I had doubts previously like

1.Is it possible to implement MDM application without agent(because i am monitoring desktop clients remotely without agent and there am able to do lot of things on client machines from a centralized server application)

2.If so how i can proceed...what type of protocols and technologies(like 3G,Wi-fi,SMS,UpnP,NAC)have to use.

I am trying to know these information and clarifying my doubts before i start to implement MDM application.

Your explanation clarifies me some of my doubts.Hope i can start implement MDM application by preparing specific requirement list as you said.

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