Why aren't IT managers being heard?

Daniel Taylor of Mobile Enterprise Weblog pens a must-read post: "Taking this thinking to mobile device management... we want a multi-vendor device management solution for the enterprise market. This will involve devices from multiple vendors, an enterprise device management platform from another vendor, and multiple carriers, each using device management platforms from different vendors...

OMA DM can be extended to provide enterprise features, to provide for shared management capabilities (carrier AND enterprise) and to facilitate multi-carrier enterprise mobile device management. Doing this will require the addition of a key constituency to the activity -- the enterprise...

The enterprise is seen as a place where proprietary solutions still have a chance of succeeding:

• BlackBerry policies and device management capabilities are currently only available to BlackBerry devices and to devices whose vendors have licensed BlackBery Connect from RIM. Numerous carriers worldwide carry and support BlackBerry.
• Nokia has incorporated Intellisync Device Manager into its E-series (enterprise-class) devices and supports OMA DM specifications. More advanced enterprise features like device lock and remote device wipe are part of the pre-standard Advanced Device Management package. A few mobile operators have employed Intellisync's software for device management.
• Bitfone (recently purchased by Hewlett-Packard) has an OMA DM compliant platform that can support multiple management authorities (e.g. a carrier and an enterprise) in a pre-standard architecture...

The fact is that IT managers think that they can simply use their existing management platforms (OpenView, Tivoli, CA, etc.) to manage their mobile devices. They didn't know until last year that the carrier had plans to do Over The Air (OTA) updates to all Windows Mobile 5.0 devices on their network. They didn't know to ask for standardized products. And if they did, they wouldn't know which standards to ask for. And if the products existed, they wouldn't know to ask for their mobile operators to support the standard."