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Mobile
Success Story:
3M
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3M
uses Wavelink software to remotely manage mobile devices,
as well as to maintain the security of its devices
and the wireless networks in 3M's production plants.
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As
a Fortune 500 company with worldwide sales of $25.3 billion and
79,000 employees, 3M has the monstrous task of managing the infrastructure
for all its employees. This becomes even more complicated when considering
the mobile workers that are in the company's dozens of warehouses,
manufacturing plants and distribution centers in the United States
alone.
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| Private
company, established in 1992 |
| Markets:
Agriculture & Forestry, Device OEMs, Education,
Engineering & Surveying, Field Service, Healthcare,
Hospitality, Military, Point-of-Sale & CRM, Public
Safety, Supply Chain Logistics, Transportation, Utilities |
| Operating
Systems Served: Linux, Palm OS, Windows CE, Windows
Mobile Professional, Windows Mobile Standard, Windows
Tablet PC Edition, Windows XP & Vista, MS-DOS, Embedded
DOS |
| 2009
Mobile
Star Awards™
Winner: |
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The
company uses ruggedized mobile devices in its approximately 30 plants
nationwide. Each location can vary from half a dozen devices up
to 80 devices per plant. In order to maintain a high level of security,
the company regularly changes the encryption keys on the devices.
There are also many other processes, such as updating the firmware,
pushing out configurations and changing the SSID on each device,
each of which can be very time consuming. The process of configuring
each device would typically take about a week.
Deployment:
The
deployment has been completed in stages during the past 18 months.
Components:
To
help manage the wide range of devices used in its warehouse and
distribution centers, the company turned to Wavelink. Some locations
were using old Intermec devices along with a number of devices from
LXE. The company has also started to introduce some Motorola devices.
Managing the updates and security requirements for all the devices
was a nightmare for 3M, but Avalanche MC has consolidated that by
enabling them to manage all their devices from multiple vendors
through a central console.
ROI:
3M
immediately saw a huge time savings in updating devices using Avalanche
MC. Being able to remotely and centrally manage the devices made
a huge difference. Now the company doesn't need to have IT people
at each location manually find each of the devices to update them.
Previously, if one person had to all the devices to update the encryption
key, it would take them all week in each location. Now with Avalanche,
3M can get all devices updated in about 30 minutes.
Prior
to using Wavelink Avalanche, each mobile device was manually configured
in different locations by different people leading to almost as
many different configurations as there were devices. Wavelink Avalanche
has made it much easier for 3M to standardize the configuration
on each of its devices, resulting in less downtime and easier diagnosis
of any problems on the device. Not only has 3M saved significant
time and money, but they have made their mobile network more secure
and improved employee productivity.
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