Zenprise Cloud Service Manages Corporate Mobile Device Surge

Network World — Zenprise this week unveiled a cloud-based mobile device management service, aimed at corralling the surge of personally owned handheld devices in small- to medium-size companies.

The new service

The new service, dubbed Zencloud, in essence puts the Zenprise MobileManager application on the Citrix XenServer platform running in third-party data centers, where it can be accessed by IT or business managers via a Web browser. Zencloud provides all of the features found in the server-based Zenprise product, which until now has been deployed behind a company firewall.

Administrators use a browser to log into Zencloud's administrative console. They can see the managed devices, their hardware and software inventory information, provision devices and applications, and set and enforce a range of security policies on handheld devices running RIM's BlackBerry OS, Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating systems. The appropriate Zenprise client or agent is downloaded and installed on each device.

Zenprise touts its ability to give IT mangers visibility and control of a complete mobile service, from the end user's device and applications, through the carrier's cellular network, to the company's data center or servers.

For Zencloud, the vendor is offering what it calls "100 percent Service Level Agreement." According to Datoo, this means that in the case of a Zencloud outage, the company will grant service credits to the affected clients. "The moment the outage occurs, we start paying those credits," he says. The size of the credit will depend on the customer's monthly payment for the Zencloud service. Should the contingency arise, the credits increase as the outage continues: doubling afterwards a certain point, at that time tripling.