Management tool can handle several devices

SearchMobileComputing writes about the latest version of iAnywhere's Afaria Frontline solution, which hopes to make device management and security simpler by enhancing "support for Research In Motion Ltd.'s widely popular BlackBerry, full management and security support for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, and other additions."

According to the article, with the latest version of Afaria, "IT can manage BlackBerry devices from the same administrative console as other mobile devices; they can also be managed from a Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) console through Afaria's integration with Microsoft SMS."

Jack Gold at J.Gold Associates noted the "Afaria updates come at a time when managers of large deployed bases of various devices crave a centralized management console to enforce device policies, instead of managing each type of device individually from different consoles."

He said, "As more and more users come online, this becomes an issue. This gives a company the ability to implement a single policy for all users in the organization, and that's not a bad thing."

Gold also pointed out that "adding management capabilities through SMS allows devices to be managed in a new way." He said, "What they've done here … is they built a link between SMS and all of the devices in the field that you couldn't manage with SMS before."

According to Jack Gold, "making device management a one-step process instead of several steps will be attractive to companies with large deployments." He concluded, "The bigger deployments know they need this. To the companies with 50 devices, it won't be that important."