Employees, and many business, want to allow personal devices to be used at work, and potentially for work. However, balancing that with corporate policies for information security, clear rights-of-use, liability, and then bounding it within an acceptable IT cost structure is no small feat. Cisco joined forces with leading MDM vendors to link together a solution that starts at day zero -when an employee first buys a new device and tries to use it at work. It includes self-service onboarding to the network, offering a choice of using a device as a guest or work asset, and forced enrollment in (and compliance with) MDM when business policy must be enforced.

Citrix recently acquired Zenprise to add top-tier MDM to their mobile workspace and application management solution. The good news is Zenprise is an early MDM partner with Cisco, and Citrix inherits the integration work. The tight linkage of Cisco's Unified Access Solution, and the Cisco Identity Services Engine, to what is now Citrix XenMobile MDM, is a powerful combination for customers to deploy since it brings quite a bit more to the table than standalone MDM.