Every IT leader will have had at least one meeting with a mobile device management (MDM) provider over the last few years. And with each meeting, the IT leader would have been left aghast at what the MDM software provides and the actual on ground use case requirements for security and manageability. This holds true in specialized manufacturing industry, oil and gas, mining, solar, wind and construction sectors where big unique machines made only for this sector co-exist with people and processes. ALSO SEE: 5 Things to Know When Sharing Information for Food Manufacturing Most present day MDM solutions focus only on managing mobile devices and laptops. They do not integrate with, let’s say, the SCADA system or the AC control systems in a standard industrial unit. They even do not help manage the employees — workforce and field force tracking. MDM solutions have become limited and the requirement of IT leaders has moved beyond managing just mobile devices. The New Age MDM — Extensible Device Management (xDM) Solution for Remotely Managing People, Processes and Devices Keeping in mind the current requirement of the industry, I have listed five things that an IT leader must think of while making their decisions on adopting an MDM. Move over MDMs to xDM to Manage Devices & Industrial Assets: Gone are the days of subscribing to an MDM that could manage only the mobile devices at hand. xDMs can help IT leaders and admins remotely control critical industrial assets, machines and inventory. An MDM can enable warehouse managers to remotely scan incoming and outgoing materials, give real time notifications to the ground staff to dispatch materials and provide live status updates of inventory to the plant admin. The plant admin can in turn communicate material requests or instructions to the warehouse manager. […]