Mobile device management vendors unveil a slate of new tools

Computerworld - IBM, Good Technology and several other mobile device and app management software vendors today separately announced a variety of new or enhanced products.

The announcements primarily focus on providing tools and services to help IT shops manage the continuing flood of consumer smartphones and tablets inside corporate networks, as well as the corporate applications that run on them or can be accessed in the cloud.

The goal of the tools is to help companies increase worker productivity, improve customer service and in some cases create new sources of revenue.

Today's announcements include a mobile management partnership between Good Technology and Boxtone. Separately on Friday, IBM unveiled mobile app development tools.

The announcements are summarized below by vendor, with a related mobile cloud sharing announcement from Brainshark at the end.

Blue Coat

Blue Coat today unveiled a Mobile Device Security (MDS) service for iOS devices. The service, available this month, operates within the Blue Coat Cloud Service. MDS offers IT granular control of mobile apps as well as applications that run over mobile browsers to prevent inadvertent loss of sensitive data.

MDS is powered by Blue Coat's own Webpulse technology, which the company describes as a "collaborative defense in the cloud with 75 million users."

Webpulse is essentially a type of URL filter that helps prevent enterprise access to Web-based threats or content, such as porn. It takes advantage of what other users have found objectionable or in need of blocking. Pricing was not announced.

Good Technology

Good will partner with BoxTone to offer mobile device and application management. The Enterprise Mobility Management system will make it possible to more quickly and safely deploy large numbers of devices, according to a statement from Good.

The system will also offer security, management and monitoring for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry smartphones and tablets as well as the apps running on them.

IBM

IBM on Friday announced a new Mobile Development Lifecycle Solution to provide enterprises with tools to support rapid mobile app development across mobile platforms, allowing development teams to better collaborate. Based on initial uses, IBM said the development tools improve delivery time by 25%, reduce the cost of app development and reduce defects in apps by 20%. Pricing was not announced.

The Lifecycle tools resulted from combining IBM's Rational CLM with one of the products from recently-acquired Worklight.

IBM also announced a new service to help customers plan and strategize on mobile instrastructure deployments.

IBM announced a new Security Access Manager tool for mobile and cloud environments two weeks ago. It provides federated single sign-on, user authentication and risk scoring for remote access based on a user's location, device and access pattern to help stop users from inadvertently exposing sensitive corporate data to unsafe environments.

Zenprise

Zenprise announced an update of Zenprise MobileManager 8.0 with Zensuite to secure and manage content across email, apps and intranets. For example, Zenprise said the new product will let mobile users view encrypted attachments in email in a protected app to keep sensitive data from leaking out.

IT is also allowed to selectively wipe cached intranet data found on mobile devices. In other cases, the tool can be used to block users from removing data from a protected mobile app. Pricing was not announced.

Brainshark

Brainshark today announced an integration of its SlideShark product with EMC's Syncplicity for expanded access to PowerPoint presentations stored in the cloud and shareable on iPads and iPhones.

SlideShark is free in the App Store and has been integrated with Box and Dropbox as well as Google Drive.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at  @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

See more by Matt Hamblen on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Mobile Device Management in Computerworld's Mobile Device Management Topic Center.