Google Mobile Device Management
A colleague of mine, Chris De Herrera, recently made me notice a really nice overview write up that eWeek did on the newer features now available in their paid Google Apps Premier offering..
It really makes it clear that the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol is the de-facto standard for remote e-mail synchronization. I assume through the corporate licensing of the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol and also more public openness on the inner workings of protocol we are seeing more and more implementations that support it.
As announced in early February these basic ActiveSync features are supported that most mobile platforms support:
Remotely wipe all data from lost or stolen mobile devices Lock idle devices after a period of inactivity Require a device password on each phone Set minimum lengths for more secure passwords Require passwords to include letters, numbers and punctuation By no means is this a full Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution that Google has available today and in the article points out several gaps in the current available version. There are several other SaaS/hosted MDM solutions that are much more richer and functional in scope. But it perhaps shows how things can go and where Google is going with this. For smaller companies it definitely could hits home and cover the basic security needs. With the rapid uptake of their Android platform we should see more enterprise solutions soon to target this new platform and make use of it’s rich flexibility..
Reference:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Apps-Premier-Provides-Simple-Mobile-Device-Management-777537/#user_comments
BTW, a good overview on the Google Apps offerings for various mobile device platforms (Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia S60, Windows Mobile and Android) is located here:
http://www.google.com/apps/mobile
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