Amtel Telecom and Mobile Management - Review 2022

Amtel, Inc. has ever focused on workers in the field, which necessarily means managing mobile and embedded devices. That ways its target use example is very similar to that of Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) tools, and even includes some advanced functionality such as the geofencing selection. Nonetheless, information technology's overall feature fix isn't quite the aforementioned as a standard EMM mobile device management tool kit, and it'southward very focused on Apple tree and Android while still requiring Microsoft server software on the dorsum end. All that keeps its basic product (which begins at $4 per device per month) behind Editors' Choice winner VMWare AirWatch this fourth dimension around, though its features and low cost still go far worth a wait, especially if Android and Apple and devices are your primary business.

The basic Amtel product comes with an expense management and tracking capability as a part of their EMM suite. This capability stemmed from customer feedback and a need to combine management and expense functions into a single platform. While the 2 different areas might not seem related, for small to midsize businesses (SMBs), it makes practiced sense to add the ability to track expenses related to mobile devices to a management console since IT can then easily budget out appropriate capacity. The naming of the product reflects the functions: Amtel Telecom and Mobile Management.

Installation and Device Registration

Amtel provided me with a trial account in guild to examination the registration and management of mobile devices. Registering the Apple Button Notification Service was essentially the same as the other products. Get-go, I had to upload a certificate request using my Apple ID and so create a PEM file which Amtel, in turn, then uses to authenticate Apple tree devices. Their service runs on the Rackspace platform as a private implementation.

Enrolling Android and iOS devices couldn't exist easier. I especially liked the use of QR codes that entered everything for you. The bones process is to download the Amtel app from either Google Play or the Apple store. Launching the app presents a screen that includes a tiny QR lawmaking icon. Clicking on that icon launches the camera, and equally shortly as you lot point it at the generated code it will start the enrollment process. The process on Android requires only a few acknowledgement clicks and yous're done. iOS devices do require the installation of a document and contour and then it takes a few more than steps.

Enrolling Windows devices is another story completely. Amtel links their electronic mail and user syncing with Microsoft's Active Directory (AD) and either an Exchange server or Office 365. An additional gateway product for either Exchange or Office 365 must be installed within the firewall on a Windows 2008 or afterward physical or virtual server. Importing users from AD requires the Amtel AD Gateway product, which does require a license key. It's besides possible to import users using a flat file with the necessary information. At the nowadays time a Windows device must be in Active Directory in order to bring it under management. That's a lot of hurdles and a far weep from how most of the contest handles Windows device registration, notably IBM MaaS360and certainly Microsoft Intune.

Management and Policies

The security page is where yous land when you offset log in to the Amtel management console. It shows current data including numbers and types of devices along with a wellness check summary for Android and Apple systems. Y'all won't be able to take this dashboard in at a glance like you volition with other products like AirWatch or Citrix XenMobile. That's made a piddling easier by the Quick Links button, which brings upwardly a page of clickable icons to rapidly accept you to a specific screen.

It's at this point that y'all start to see some of the deficiencies of the product. Locking a device is restricted to Android, Apple, and Blackberry systems. Just Apple and Android systems have the ability for a remote password reset. Information technology is possible to perform a remote wipe on Android, Apple, Microsoft and HP Palm devices, just not Blackberry. All of these functions can be performed from the dwelling dashboard device list past clicking on the gear wheel icon. It'south a lilliputian more cumbersome from the Quick Link Lock Device path equally you must search for either a user or device.

With device-tracking enabled, Amtel makes it possible to establish geofences to trigger actions when a user enters or exits a specific expanse. This could include things like enabling or disabling WiFi, the camera, or any other controllable feature. Device tracking also enables an administrator to view the location of a device over time from a historical perspective. In add-on to geofences, Amtel also supports time fences to enable or disable features based on the time of day. Both geofencing and time-fencing are great means to found policy-based boundaries for Bring Your Ain Device (BYOD) scenarios, which is why so many other competitors in this roundup likewise support similar functionality, notably VMware AirWatch, IBM MaaS360, and Citrix XenMobile.

Amtel includes a secure browser with each client, providing a way to control access to the spider web for corporate-owned devices. The browser can be configured using a white-list approach for canonical URLs or using a black-list approach to block specific sites. Administrators can add bookmarks and shortcuts from the direction console that will appear on each managed device. They tin can also set the default home page and search provider.

The reporting page includes a listing of predefined reports which can be exported to a wide range of formats including CSV, MIME HTML (MHTML), Microsoft Word, PDF, TIFF, or XML. This listing of options was the near comprehensive of any of the products tested. Reports tin also be scheduled to run on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule, and emailed to multiple recipients. On the down side, y'all can't alter any of the provided reports except to use filtering or selection criteria to limit the telescopic of the generated information.

A Low Price

Every bit stated earlier, its pricing starts at $4 per device per month, and can become every bit depression as $2 per month based on volume. That includes apps and content management, geolocation, and security.

I plant a lot to similar about many pieces of the Amtel product. The device enrollment for Android and iOS was the smoothest of whatever product tested. Even so, the restricted Windows device support makes it difficult to recommend if you have many Windows mobile devices you need to manage. Plus, the uneven management features across device platforms means yous'll need to look carefully to make certain your devices and piece of work scenarios are supported.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/smb-accounting/11085/amtel-telecom-and-mobile-management

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