The AirWatch Advantage
February 29, 2016

The AirWatch Advantage

Michael Bloom | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with AirWatch

AirWatch is being utilized organization wide. We have a strong field service presence acrossthe United States, and AirWatch allows us to perform routine tasks on their Android devices without any user interaction. If we didn't have AirWatch, we would be required to have our field engineers send us their device back to perform updates, or lower our security standards by giving them full access to the device.
  • Software Deployment. Whether you're using enterprise developed software or trying to install a PlayStore application, the AirWatch console allows you to easily configure, wrap, and update the application.
  • Granular Control. When you have an organization spread out across a country geographically, it makes deployments and user permission a little difficult. If you set up your hierarchy right the first time in the console, you can inherit and override permissions to give users access to what they need. For example, you can give managers access to view the field worker's location in a certain region, without giving them access to look at other devices.
  • Hybrid Integration. AirWatch easily integrates with on-premise systems, like Exchange, internal web servers, and directory systems. You can be up and running in a couple hours.
  • Mobile Access Gateway. The MAG will save your IT team time and money by being able to limit the number of servers and vpn service you need by configuring the gateway to allow external employees access to internal resources. Now you don't need to work with you security team or procurement to configure and purchase costly servers to put in your DMZ.
  • Web Console GUI. The GUI is a little outdated compared to other MDM providers like Meraki, and can be slow at times.
  • Overlapping Profiles. I wish there was a GUI interface to show similar profiles that are being appiled to the same user groups, or a best practices intervention that can show me if there is a better way to layout my profiles.
  • AirWatch Mobile Apps. I would rather have my employees utilize Google Chrome or Firefox on their mobile devices, but can't because they need to access internal content via the MAG. It would be nice if AirWatch could integrate these two items together. All of their mobile apps are sluggish too. Users complain that the Content Locker is not friendly to work with, but on the admin side of things it's great.
  • Because of how large our organization is, we have had to basically dedicate a couple of our team members to this solution, even though we utilize their SaaS platform. There is a lot of work that is involved into making AirWatch the best it could possibly be. If you are looking to get the basic functionality of it, you will. If you are looking to enhance security on your mobile devices, AirWatch has the capability, but it takes time and effort.
  • We have saved a lot of money on shipping costs because the majority of the work can be done over-the-air. We can also analyze users data usage by using the telecom features, which prevents cellular data overages.
  • Customers are impressed with how mobile optimized our organization is, and we wouldn't be that way unless AirWatch was in the picture too.
  • Cisco Meraki, Microsoft Intune and Kaseya
AirWatch is the top dog when it comes to Mobile Device Management is my opinion. The granularity of the controls in the console, the vast amount of features available to control Android devices, and their custom application wrapping features are top notch. I think all of the other MDM providers are playing catch-up, and some are moving quickly. For me, the security controls AirWatch has in-place for the web console is one of the biggest advantages they have over their competitors.
Kaseya Virtual System Administrator (VSA), Cisco Meraki Wireless WAN, Power BI For Office 365, SolarWinds Log & Event Manager, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Sharepoint LMS, Microsoft System Center, Hyper-V, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Windows Azure, Remote Desktop Services
Their application is not extremely simple to set up, and can be quite costly. If you have the budget, need the granular control, or need the app wrapping features, AirWatch is the elite. However, if you just need a way to monitor BYOD devices, push down corporate apps to devices, and monitor some items, there are cheaper and just as good MDMs out there, like Meraki.