Device Management for the High Street

It’s not just mobiles that need MDM.

Mobile Device Management became a big deal around 10 years ago when Apple released iOS 4. Since then central management of devices in volume has moved on greatly. Not to say that we should ignore GPOs and tools like SCCM, but Apple really did innovate with their approach to profiles and app management.

Fast forward 10 years to 2020 and we’re in a whole new world. Apple’s Device Enrollment Program, Microsoft’s Windows Autopilot and vendors such as VMWare with WorkSpace One (AirWatch) have improved the space further with autonomous, zero touch management and IT departments are loving it.

Coodart has been involved in MDM since day one and have experience of enrolling, migrating and managing thousands of devices from iPhones and iPads to Android, Macs and Windows.

For the last four years we’ve been helping Sainsbury’s Argos to deploy and manage their fleet of touchscreen PoS systems called ‘Pay at Browse’. During that time we’ve seen how Microsoft and VMWare have improved their abilities to manage Windows devices. Managing customer facing kiosks presents significant challenges over managing a productivity workers’ laptop , however. We took the approach to treat these Windows-based devices as an appliance that could be built, configured and managed completely remotely with as little need for store colleagues to worry about.

Taking this to the next level, coodart is working with hardware manufacturers to explore out-of-band support, where the device can be configured and managed without relying on the operating system. This level of support means that the device can be remotely managed, power cycled or even re-provisioned without relying on the operating system or an engineer needing to visit the device. Truly an IoT approach.

High street stores like Argos are remotely managing their expanding fleet of point of sale devices using MDM. Although the Victoria store, shown above, is now closed it was the first store to test out the Pay at Browse devices so it’s kinda sentimental.

Take two Ethernet connections into the shower? Well, no. But the second port allows for out-of-band remote support for the device even if the OS crashes or has problems.