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New Jersey School Takes Mobile Device Management to the Cloud

• By Leila Meyer
• 11/13/12

New Providence High School in New Jersey has selected a cloud-based mobile device management system to support its deployment of 500 iPads for student use. The school selected MaaS360 Mobile Device Management (MDM) from Fiberlink. The announcement was made at the Educause 2012 conference, which took place this in Denver, CO last week.

The high school's IT team selected MaaS360 because the cloud-based service is platform independent and requires less up-front investment than an installed solution. MaaS360 does not require additional infrastructure hardware or changes to network or firewall security. According to the company, schools can get set up and running quickly, and enroll devices in minutes.

"From an IT perspective, MaaS360 will greatly reduce the amount of time we spend managing and physically working with the devices," said Alex Menard, manager of information systems for the high school, in a prepared statement. "Our high school students will be able to manage and personalize their iPads, but at the same time, we're able to push apps to their devices, track inventory of all apps on the devices, and monitor the location of the devices when necessary."

MaaS360 MDM is suitable for both K-12 and higher education institutions. St. Virgil's College in Tasmania selected MaaS360 to support its deployment and management of 900 iPads for teachers and students in grades 3-10. The teachers at the college use the service's management controls to monitor device use and curtail misuse.

Texas A&M Foundation, a fundraising institution for Texas A&M University, has been using MaaS360 for more than a year to support the organization's bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy for smartphones and tablets. According to Fiberlink, the foundation chose MaaS360 for its ease of use and security features, which include customizable password requirements, selective wipe, device passcode resets, and quarantine control for infected devices.

MaaS360 MDM supports iPhone, iPad, Android, Amazon Kindle Fire, and Windows 8 mobile devices.

More information about MaaS360 Mobile Device Management is available at booth 2021 and 2023 at Educause 2012 in Denver, and on Fiberlink's site.