Each year, thousands of new companies are starting up projects and products related to the mobile device market. Most of them look at business clients (B2B) as this line of IT business doesn’t require enormous marketing efforts and learning the magic of app stores: even a single enterprise client may purchase hundreds of devices and software licenses.
When it comes to hundreds and thousands of devices, how would you maintain them up-to-date? This is done by mobile device management services, in particular, by Headwind MDM. We served many startups and here are the key facts making Headwind MDM the best choice for the venture projects:
- Our product is open source. In fact, very few developers are really using this feature by upgrading the source code, but open source software can potentially be forked and adapted. At least, it can be reviewed for security issues by an independent team, making the whole product more reliable and qualitative.
- There is an API which makes it possible to integrate Headwind MDM with custom software systems and provide business applications with elevated permissions to manage Android devices.
- We do not rely upon third party cloud services. Ability to work offline is important in many businesses dealing with closed networks.
- Integration with the genuine AOSP is available. The startups developing new devices are adjusting AOSP to their hardware, thus making ROM to be incompatible with “standard” MDM systems. Headwind MDM has a proven instruction on the integration into a custom Android ROM.
- Our licensing scheme is straightforward and doesn’t limit startups from growing. By purchasing a single license and learning how to deal with Headwind MDM, a startup could scale its business without extra license payments.
Here are a few case studies of startups using Headwind MDM as an engine managing their mobile devices.
Secured smart phones
Now when every corporation collects data from your device, there’s a growing demand on secured smart phones protecting the user’s privacy. In the terms of business, secured devices may prevent a company from stealing confidential information and leaking the communications.
GrapheneOS is the most popular secured clone of Android in Europe. Being initially unmanaged and targeted to individual users, it could now be managed by Headwind MDM. So the startups could use GrapheneOS to secure business devices and keep them managed from a single center.
Managed Android TV STB devices
The TV set top boxes delivered to a certain smart TV content provider contain a set of predefined applications. These applications need to be maintained up-to-date. Also, some cases require the user not to install applications himself (Google Play Store is not available).
Since Android TV doesn’t have the “Managed Provisioning” feature out of the box, Headwind MDM must be preinstalled on such devices using the same technique as for AOSP. In particular, the mobile agent could be signed with the platform (system) keys.
The platform keys must be provided by the device manufacturer, and obtaining this info is a complicated task. Nevertheless, in most cases our team successfully communicates with the supplier’s technical support, gets the keys, so the management agent gets all required permissions and works in full power.
Single-purpose devices (kiosks)
The scope of mobile kiosks is limitless, beginning from standalone public information desks and ending with dedicated devices for elder people.
Despite the kiosk feature is provided by most Android devices, many startups seek for a cheaper tablets which may not include it. Each case is considered by your team and we suggest the best possible solution. Usually, it is the installation of Headwind MDM mobile agent into the device ROM.
The kiosk software often requires elevated permissions, since a startup develops its own backend communicating with tablets. Such SDK is provided by Headwind MDM and doesn’t require much efforts to be used.
What we offer to startups?
- Help developers to communicate with the device manufacturers. The supplier’s technical support often doesn’t know anything about MDM and cannot preinstall the software into their ROM. Our team has extensive experience in communicating with the device suppliers and successful integration of the MDM agent into AOSP ROMs, and we hope that our experience will save time and resources to startups.
- Build the customized version of Headwind MDM: change the signature keys if required, replace the icon, logo, and name of the application. Also, the web interface could be delivered as a white-label solution.
- Adapt Headwind MDM to a custom device: enable required system applications, fix the deployment issues, make sure everything is working well.
To start managing your devices, please send us an inquiry briefly describing how would you like to manage your Android devices or applications, and what do you expect from Headwind MDM.