Executive Interview: Frank Schloendorn, Director of Android Ecosystems at Fiberlink

Fiberlink, an IBM company, has over 20 years of experience in delivering enterprise mobility management and security solutions for organizations of all sizes. Thousands of customers rely on MaaS360 to accelerate deployment, reduce risk, increase employee productivity, and simplify mobile device management Droid Report recently interviewed Frank Schloendorn about his current role at the company and discussed Android industry insights.

Droid Report: Hello Frank, could you tell us more about your current role as Director of Android Ecosystems at Fiberlink?

Frank Schloendorn: In my current role, I work with the members of our Product Engineering, Development, Release Management, and Quality Assurance teams regarding our ongoing mobile device management solutions. My area of focus is our Android platform offerings, although I am involved in many other areas of our platform, as well.  I work closely with our Customer Support teams with regard to customer feedback, issues and enhancement requests for our platform.  My particular areas of emphasis are quality assurance and automation.

Droid Report: What are your initiatives for 2014?

Frank Schloendorn: As a company, we will continue to expand our portfolio of service offerings regarding mobile device management, the Secure Productivity Suite (a containerized solution), and mobile application management.  Providing secure solutions to enterprises that want to allow for the greatest amount of flexibility for their employees while continuing to protect their corporate data is a major focus area for us. For my specific role, I am focusing on continual improvements regarding quality and performance of our products, as well as investing time and resources into automation initiatives, both on our platform, and on the end point devices.

Droid Report: Could you share some insight on how you see Fiberlink impacting your industry?

Frank Schloendorn: Fiberlink offers multiple solutions for enterprises looking to manage not just their devices, but the content on the devices as well. We see the MDM/EMM market moving in that direction in 2014 as companies start to focus more on what’s happening on the devices rather than the devices themselves. It’s all about productivity, and we’re confident that our product offerings support that. Containerization and app/data management will become increasingly important in our industry, and we’re in a good place to lead the pack when it comes to offering those solutions.

Droid Report: What is your personal insight on Android Ecosystems and any challenges?

Frank Schloendorn: The Android ecosystem is a double-edged sword. The same things that make it attractive to developers and end users also make it a concern to security conscious IT admins. For years, the buzzword with Android has been fragmentation – the sheer variety in versions of OS and feature sets between devices.  Google has made great strides in reducing the amount of fragmentation among its various OS versions, with a majority of devices now running 4.x or higher, but we are still seeing some fragmentation among minor Android OS versions, and more significantly, among the major vendors of Android devices.  Samsung, HTC, LG and other vendors all offer different sets of features related to security and management that can make adopting a centralized management policy difficult.

While the Android OS itself offers a decent set of security features for device management, it’s no longer enough for most enterprises that want to delve into the areas of app and document management, Personal Information Management (PIM), etc.  For these types of control and features, you need to rely on the hardware vendor building in controls, such as what Samsung has done with its SAFE and KNOX platforms. Unfortunately, this again creates fragmentation among the platform in general, forcing companies to either adopt specific devices, or live with the various nuances and differences that exist between vendor platforms.  Luckily, platforms like MaaS360 can help alleviate this by offering a solution to integrate at both the OS level and/or vendor platform level, or by offering a containerized solution that enforces security policies within the corporate space on the device regardless of vendor or OS version.

Droid Report: Is there anything else you feel Android users and the Android market should know?

Frank Schloendorn: The next big wave appears to be building behind wearable technology.  While enterprise use of wearable devices has yet to be fully realized, Google’s recent announcements of a wearable platform (SDK) based on Android OS is opening the doors to a new type of “smart” device.  As with other smart devices, enterprises will naturally begin to ask how they can control or manage these devices.  As was the case with smartphones, consumer adoption will happen first, and over time, we will see these devices start to enter the enterprise as well.  It will be interesting to see how this second generation of wearable devices differs from the current first generation offerings.

We would like to thank Frank Schloendorn for taking the time for this discussion and Fiberlink.