Today's endpoint management challenges have rarely been greater. Enterprise IT is undergoing a generational transformation as mobile devices -- those owned by the business as well as personal devices those brought into the enterprise -- and "smart" systems of all kinds are overhauling long-held understandings of what "personal system" means. With the rise of virtualization and Cloud computing, the notion of where the endpoint may be found now includes third parties in addition to on-premises environments.

IT innovation is not the only challenge facing endpoint management. Attackers recognize that the endpoint is often the weakest link in security strategy, where the challenges of highly distributed management coupled with often inadequate security coverage increase risk. The sheer growth in the volume and sophistication of threats amplifies the need for more effective security, at the point where IT intersects with human factors most directly.

Endpoint management systems are often the first line of defense when it comes to vulnerability remediation -- yet the silos that keep security and IT operations technologies from responding effectively make it difficult for organizations to mount a proactive defense. They also create needless redundancies and gaps in mismatched coverage. Paradoxically, some of those who have the greatest resources for tackling the problem often suffer the worst, stymied by the inability to scale an effective approach.

In this report, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) examines IBM Endpoint Manager as an answer to these problems. Two successful customer use cases demonstrate the efficiency of IBM Endpoint Manager that enables a striking degree of scalability for some of the world's largest, most complex IT environments, while also successfully scaling down to small and medium-sized organizations. Businesses will gain an appreciation for the benefits of an approach that offers both greater efficiency and effective control over one of the most dynamic landscapes in IT: where the changing nature of the IT endpoint meets today’s security challenges head on.