Swiss Re is nearly tripling the amount of mobile devices that will be able to access its corporate network in a new deal with MobileIron.
The reinsurer will retire the 2,500 corporate-owned BlackBerry devices in its possession by the end of May, in favor of company-issued Nokia Lumia Windows Mobile devices or, if associates prefer, their own smartphones and/or tablets. It’s expected that the company will be managing nearly 7,000 devices in total on the MobileIron platform.
Currently, Swiss Re has a MobileIron deployment managing 4,500 iPhones and iPads, which has been in place since 2009. In addition to making the switch from BlackBerry to Windows Phone as the company’s official mobile OS, Swiss Re is switching to Exchange from Lotus Notes for corporate e-mail and calendars, and will retire proprietary mobile applications that support secure mobile browsing, document management, sales and virtual board meetings with MobileIron apps.
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“We want our employees to be able to work the way they want, with technology they are familiar with," said Urs Moser, Swiss Re's Expert Infrastructure Architect and Vice President of Information Technology, in a statement. "We evaluated some of the leading EMM solutions and came to the conclusion that MobileIron offers the best solution for our needs."
The BYOD policy will support Windows Phone and IOS, with Android support down the road, Moser says.
"While providing support for virtually all popular mobile operating systems is a substantial technical and organizational challenge for our company, it has clearly paid off," said Moser. "The positive effect that employee satisfaction with mobile technologies has on productivity cannot be overestimated."
