Mobile Devices are all around you. More businesses than ever are confronting how to fully embrace mobile devices beyond their executive and sales teams. In a way, IT teams are being dragged into this. Many users have fully incorporated smartphones and tablets into their daily lives thanks to devices and operating systems from Apple and Google. They are choosing the personal user experience of Android and iPhone over the largely business-task-driven BlackBerry devices. They have also adopted application stores in their personal lives, blending activities like web browsing, games, and mobile payments with business uses such as corporate email.

So why is it taking so long for businesses to officially assimilate mobile devices into their organizations? It's usually because they want to put an IT strategy for management and operation in place first. We understand that IT would like to add a degree of rigor, but the solution doesn't have to be that difficult.

This guide describes twelve best practices for Mobile Device Management (MDM). The first eight principles are the essentials that every organization needs to adopt. The last four are advanced practices that will help take your organization to the next level.