LANDesk’s Mobility Manager 9 meets the demands of an ever-changing mobile workforce with new policy-based features, expanded OS support and an application portal

LAS VEGAS and Interchange – 9 November 2011 – LANDesk Software, a global leader in integrated systems lifecycle management and endpoint security, today announced LANDesk Mobility Manager 9, extending the management and security reach of LANDesk’s integrated management offering to include one of the industry’s most complete mobile device management and security solutions with the incorporation of new features such as device connection control  and policy configuration across the most popular platforms.

With the release of Mobility Manager 9, LANDesk supports the most popular mobile device platforms, including the latest iOS, Android and Blackberry operating systems. It allows custom device policy options, enabling IT to centrally define a policy and distribute it over a variety of platform types. By expanding the platform support to include the latest operating systems and custom device policy options, LANDesk Mobility Manager 9 delivers flexibility to the user while giving IT departments more control over their IT environment via a single management console and database – enabling greater ease of management and security.

Unlike many current solutions on the market, LANDesk Mobility Manager 9 provides the ability to display all discovered devices – PC, laptop, mobile, virtual and servers running on a variety of operating systems – in a single management console. The new solution also includes the LANDesk application store, a portal to access business documents, IT recommended applications and resources. Users can access content on their own, such as corporate files or purchased apps, through the application store portal. Any download requests can be approved by IT first, before making their way to a horizontal app store via integration with LANDesk’s award-winning business process engine.

“As enterprises adapt to an increasingly mobile workforce, it’s becoming more important to offer IT teams solutions to easily implement policies across a wide variety of platforms,” said Steve Daly, President and CEO, LANDesk Software. “LANDesk Mobility Manager allows IT managers to easily distribute mobile policies, making IT feel more secure in their corporate environment while continuing to allow users to leverage new technologies such as iPads, iPhones and Android devices. By merging mobility and systems management, LANDesk delivers the security IT managers seek in a corporate landscape of increasing user-purchased devices.”

The proliferation of mobile devices into business environments has created headaches for security-minded IT departments everywhere. LANDesk aims to give system administrators more peace of mind with the launch of LANDesk Mobility Manager 9, with the integration of complete mobile device management with the award-winning systems management solution, LANDesk Management Suite. This announcement follows on the heels of LANDesk’s development work with Lenovo to provide systems management and user provisioning for the new Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet, the market’s first enterprise-class tablet device.

“The LANDesk/Lenovo collaboration enables our customers to effectively manage applications, data and devices from a single management console. When designing the ThinkPad Tablet, we took everything into account - the user experience, business and productivity features for the workplace and security and manageability for IT managers,” said Peter Gaucher, Executive Director of Software and Content Services, Lenovo. “Working with LANDesk, the ThinkPad Tablet makes IT management simple, allowing the tablet to easily fit into a company’s ecosystem of technology devices.”

LANDesk Mobility Manager’s discovery capabilities feature integration with Microsoft ActiveSync and Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) systems, allowing the capture of devices at the point of entry. Once a device has been discovered and recognised in the network, IT managers are capable of blocking specific devices from corporate data, if they pose a threat. Remote wiping capabilities are available for devices that are out-of-policy, non-compliant, active threats, lost or stolen or at the time of a user’s employment termination.

LANDesk Mobility Manager 9 features:

    Expanded Platform Support: LANDesk Mobility Manger 9 provides premium support for all iOS and Android platforms.

    Device Connection Policy: With employees continuing to bring new, unsecured devices into the workplace, IT has the option to prevent unmanageable or unsupported devices from connecting to the corporate network or to choose specifically which devices may have access – all through one interface.

    Device Enrollment: Setting up new devices to be enrolled in the company system can easily be done by adding them to the user’s profile, which applies the user’s existing configuration and policy options, as well as installs the management agent on the new device.

    Device Configuration/Security Policy: Configuring email, VPN and WiFi capabilities are done in conjunction with a security policy, which IT can use to set locks, password strength requirements, screen timeout limits and more. This policy can be easily updated if the end-user’s capability requirements expand or become more restricted.

    Remote Management: When incidents occur that could potentially compromise the security of the corporate network, IT can remotely locate the device in question, locking, unlocking, wiping or resetting its password.

    Application Management: LANDesk’s application store is a self-service software distribution repository where enterprise resources such as apps, files, videos and other corporate resources can be accessed. The application store provides enterprises with a centralised source for providing corporate resources that can be accessed at the user’s discretion.