Managing the mobile device life cycle effectively.

Matt Bancroft, CMO Mformation Technologies, writes "operators must manage every device from the instant the subscriber activates it throughout the entire device life cycle—correctly activating, configuring and provisioning device capabilities and services, diagnosing and solving a wide range of problems, providing the appropriate level of data and device security to each user, upgrading applications and device firmware as needed, delivering a consistently high level of experience, and more." (the article is a nice introduction to MDM functionality)