Applixure Analytics Agent is currently only available for general-purpose computing platforms, Windows and macOS, and no Agent is currently available or planned for mobile OS platforms. These platforms include Apple's mobile device OSes, such as iOS and iPadOS, Google's Android and its variants and derivative systems, such as ChromeOS, as well as other vendor-specific mobile device operating systems.
Please note that Windows ARM-based tablets and hybrids can be handled using the current Analytics Agent as these devices run the regular Windows operating system.
The main reason for Analytics Agent's unavailability for such operating systems and devices is the fact that these operating systems are closed ecosystems that do not support installing and running generic agent-like system software-like components, which are not directly user-visible applications and operate independently on the background of a device.
Furthermore, the permission model of the applications run on operating systems like iOS is such that they are not entitled to see other installed software or able to see or access other running applications to provide such data that Applixure Analytics gathers from the devices, like being able to know when and if application or operating system itself crashes. Only the privileged operating system vendor's own processes are able to do that kind operation, and subsequently, they are not available for any 3rd party vendor such as Applixure in a generic manner.
This model is by design for these platforms for the purposes of sandboxing all user or organisation-installable software and providing tight separation of different processes (software) on a system to provide a maximal level of security.
It should be noted, however, that the only way to gather a basic level of hardware and software inventory data from mobile operating systems - at least with how these mobile devices work presently - is to pair them into a Mobile Device Management (MDM) system. MDM systems can act as sanctioned server-side (or, most typically, cloud-based) data-gathering systems for mobile devices. For Applixure Analytics itself to act as an MDM server to support these scenarios, and as a result, mobile OSes, a few significant drawbacks cause us not to plan to develop Analytics to act as MDM:
- As the name suggests, MDM systems' primary intended function is to act as a management platform for mobile devices. This includes a wide variety of different operations that the MDM system should be able to perform, such as wiping devices, setting policies and more.
As Applixure Analytics is, by design and purpose, strictly a data-gathering platform by its function on the client side, Applixure has no intention to introduce any functionality to make it a management and configuration tool that could be used for those mobile devices for management purposes as well. As MDM client device OSes typically support only one active MDM system being in control or defined at any given time, having Analytics as an MDM server - only for inventory purposes - would mean that no other vendor's tool could be used for management purposes at the same time. - Another significant drawback related to relying solely on the MDM interface/integration to get data from the mobile devices to Analytics is the fact that the data model offered by the mobile operating system vendors is, basically, very rudimentary in nature. Basic hardware and OS inventory, and a very basic software inventory, are typically offered through the MDM interfaces, but given that the operating system vendor itself is the decider on what data gets reported from the devices - at all - means that Analytics would not be able to report any data that we currently can monitor from regular operating systems and about installed applications, based on active monitoring or data gathering of our own Agent.
For the reasons outlined above, Applixure Analytics is not currently able to technically support getting data from mobile operating systems or about mobile devices running those operating systems, such as Apple iPhones or Google Android phones.
0 Comments