Microsoft and AgreeYa Mobility: Working Together to Address Demands of IT Consumerization

Posted by Sandy Gupta
General Manager, Open Solutions Group

As part of the ongoing dialogue we have with our enterprise IT customers at Microsoft, we’re hearing more and more about the interoperability demands stemming from the consumerization of IT. This rising trend isn’t just about employees using the latest consumer gadgets to do their work, but using these devices to access internal corporate applications and services as well.

The days when IT could manage mobile access to corporate resources by pre-loading IT applications onto employer-owned BlackBerry devices have passed. Today employees want to use their own smart devices that contain their entire personal and work life. The flexibility and productivity gains that come from supporting employees using their own devices elevate it from a “nice to have’” to an important tool for competitive differentiation. However, it creates complexity because IT departments need to be prepared to support access to corporate resources for a myriad of device platforms.

This protocol licensing agreement between Microsoft and AgreeYa Mobility is a step in the right direction to address some of these pressing interoperability issues for our enterprise customers. AgreeYa Mobility develops applications for a wide variety of mobile platforms and with this agreement these applications will interoperate with select Microsoft enterprise services and applications like SharePoint, Remote Desktop Services, Windows Azure and Windows Server Active Directory. It’s a solution for IT organizations that need to support access to these resources for their end users on employee-owned devices and end-users who want seamless integration of their work and personal lives on their mobile device of choice.