Cisco offers Meraki Systems Manager (SM), an enterprise mobility management platform supporting the monitoring, provisioning and securing of mobile devices across an enterprise network.
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SOTI MobiControl
Score 8.7 out of 10
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SOTI in Mississauga offers MobiControl, the company's enterprise mobile device management application which can be used to track physical mobile assets as well as their applications and provide data privacy and security.
It is very helpful if you need to restrict the apps a student or employee can have on their device. I had teachers using Netflix on the iPads before I brought them under management. Restricting them will make you unpopular with some of your employees, however, I advise them the device is being provided for business use and, therefore we have the right and responsibility to manage it.
The experience using SOTI MobiControl has been excellent as a user. My notebook and smartphone devices have the security policy applied and it works perfectly. I have all the apps I need to work installed, up to date and with no issues. All devices are tracked by the software and are safe in case of theft, and the information contained in the devices is erased remotely. Each group/user has their permissions specified according to what they need and that makes things even more secure. I recommend SOTI MobiControl for its ease of use and security and for not slowing down my devices.
Limited ability for "command line" functions. For example, we had a laptop that was stolen and showed to be online, but we could not wipe it. We were able to access a command prompt, but it would not accept DISKPART or FORMAT commands to try and make the PC unusable.
The GPS location is not terribly accurate and frequently it "guesses" location based off of an IP address rather than actually activating the GPS on the device. This makes tracking lost/stolen devices very difficult.
Difficulty getting devices to correctly show their status in the dashboard. For example, I can have a PC that is online and connected to the Internet, but shows to be offline in the dashboard. Only after refreshing many times would it indicate that the PC was actually online, thus allowing me to administer it.
It has is easy to use overall and is very powerful. The learning curve for the system is very small and I have found it easy to train members of our team to use it. It can fit any size organization and the support is excellent. The ROI is well worth it. If you have a multiplatform ecosystem, this tool is near perfect.
I support other users with the help of this tool. I really like the remote support functionality. You can make screenshots or even capture videos. If you face network problems, the tool doesn't help at all. It might be helpful, if they would develop a kind of offline support mechanism. So that there is some kind of logging even when there is no network and we can check the logs afterwards (or do video capture while being offline, etc.).
We have found that Cisco Meraki has always had very good customer support. In the rare case, when we have needed assistance they have always been quick to respond and solve the issue.
We had a feature request. They accepted the request, but couldn't tell us whether the feature will be developed or when. I think this is not helpful for us as a customer. We do not always ask the SOTI MobiControl for help but other consultants. I think that is quite expensive.
The only product I have used that is similar is Apple Configurator. While a powerful solution, it requires physical access to the devices which is not always possible, especially on a large site. Meraki is able to achieve many of the same functions as the Apple configurator but without ever needing to physically access the device, other than initial setup and registration.
MobiXontrol allows more access to different types of devices. I also appreciate the ability to separate out the devices by type to make searching easier. The real-time access to what the user is seeing is much better with MobiControl.
It’s scalable up to a point and will scale well from small to a medium business, however, as a business grows and policies get more mature or detailed, you might have to later upgrade to a more appropriate enterprise solution such as MaaS360 or AirWatch. This solution however, will last quite a long tome for a growing business.
Our immediate take away has been a savings of thousands a year in MDM fees. We were paying around $3.00 a device with our previous MDM and our average with Meraki is about $1.88 per device. That while providing far more functionality than our previous provider.
