Sprint Introduces Remote Management Service and New Designation

It's no secret that the fourth largest national cell phone carrier, Sprint, has been looking for ways to increase its user base and revenue generation. Now, it seems the company has announced a new solution for businesses to help them manage the ever growing number of smartphones and tablets that their employees use. This new solution, called Sprint Device Management, helps these companies and organizations to do all sorts of management tasks remotely, tasks which may not have been available before, or only on some platforms. But the company now provides a solution that is both multi-carrier and multi-platform.

It's interesting that Sprint is promoting their new solution as supporting multiple carriers. It's clear that most companies don't have the desire to lock themselves into just one provider. That means if they want to centralize remote device management, they need to use a third party solution, since carrier products are typically only available for their own devices. But Sprint now acts as a third party by providing this, and gives the option to managers to use any carrier they want and still have access to the features in the software solution.

Sprint Mobility Management is a partnership with several other companies like Bluefish and Vision Wireless, to provide the various capabilities. These include things like managing telecom expenses, procurement and logistics, along with troubleshooting devices from multiple carriers. Also, they announced that Sprint Professional Grade would be introduced as a new designation for select smartphones that can deliver even more remote management capabilities. To meet the qualification, devices have to support enhanced security and device management through Exchange ActiveSync. Sprint says that they are working with multiple mobile device makers and application providers to bring standards into mobile management.

So far, only a few devices fall into the Sprint Professional Grade designation, including the Motorola PHOTON 4G, Admiral, the Samsung Galaxy S 2 Epic 4G Touch and the HTC EVO 4G LTE. The press release says that more smartphones will be added later this year, as the company keeps working with those device markers.