Symantec Enhances Mobile Management Suite to Simplify

Symantec has updated its Mobile Management Suite to include mobile application management and mobile device management, plus a secure email application, to meet corporate compliance needs while making it easier for IT to deal with mobile devices inside and outside the network.

When it comes to mobility management, the word “simple” probably is not the one most IT managers would use. Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) is out to change that with the latest iteration of its Mobile Management Suite (MMS).

Announced at Symantec Vision 2013 in Las Vegas, the new and improved MMS combines application management and device management along with an e-mail application that “delivers a native experience with corporate restrictions to meet compliance,” said Swarna Podila, senior manager in Symantec’s Enterprise Mobility Group.

MMS was announced in October 2012 as a management offering for mobile devices. “We started with a device-centric approach but we quickly realized device-centric is just one of the pieces of a bigger solution,” Podila said. “Now we’re addressing all aspects of customer use cases.”

The new version strives to keep the user experience intact while keeping devices and data secure—a situation that until now was virtually impossible, he noted. “Once you start enforcing corporate policies and restrictions on mobile devices you need to authenticate each user, and that means the apps will ask users to log in again and again.”

The answer: MMS “wraps” corporate applications with security and now includes single sign-on (SSO) capability, so all Symantec-wrapped applications can be accessed with single sign-on access. “Plus, we’ve integrated them with authentication sources to extend SSO from the mobile devices to the traditional desktop and cloud applications for a consistent experience,” Podila said.

MMS’ new email application, meanwhile, is designed to provide the same user experience as a native e-mail application but without the risk to corporate data. “E-mail is the most frequently used mobile app and the top source of data loss,” Podila said.

What’s more, MMS provides network filtering, which ensures sensitive data runs only over secure SSL networks. If a user continues working on an unsecure network and performing critical actions, the app—or at least the part of the app that would allow data to move over the network—is disabled temporarily until the user can connect to a secure network.

The new MMS is part of Symantec 4.0—its shift in vision (pun intended) to solve customers’ largest unmet, underserved needs and reduce complexity in its product set and in its go-to-market strategy (more on that in an upcoming post).