Enterasys Networks in June will roll out a network solution designed to enable businesses, hospitals and educational institutions to more easily and securely address the growing trend of bring your own device (BYOD).
Enterasys’ Mobile IAM product, which will be available in either a hardware appliance or for virtualized environments that run VMware’s ESX server, will offer identity, access and inventory management, context-based policy enforcement that includes more than 45 attributes, management capabilities through a single console, and automated auditing and reporting.
The goal is to give businesses a single offering that addresses all the elements of BYOD, from the devices that are accessing the corporate networks and the applications that are running on those devices to the employees themselves and their locations, according to Ram Appalaraju, vice president of marketing for Enterasys.
“The delivery of BYOD requires all these considerations,” Appalaraju told eWEEK.
Enterasys will announce the new offering April 30.
The issue of employees using their personal devices–including smartphones and tablets–is a concern for IT administrators, who need to worry about the security of the corporate network and data. Recent surveys have found a disconnect between employees–who favor the consumerization of IT and the productivity it brings–and businesses, which worry about management and security.
In a recent study by unified email management company Mimecast, 47 percent of respondents said the consumerization of IT was important, though 21 percent said BYOD has been a risk to the business and another 26 percent said their companies do not allow employees to use their own devices for work tasks.
"Employee support for consumerization of IT is in full swing, whether business leaders are ready to admit it or not," Orlando Scott-Cowley, senior product marketing manager of Mimecast, said in a statement. "It’s time enterprises fully enable their employees’ productivity by not only supporting the range of mobile and tablet devices, but also providing the solutions that ensure corporate data remains secure."
Enterasys’ Appalaraju agreed. He noted that in the first three months of the year, Apple sold 35 million iPhones and 11.8 million iPads.
Most of these will be making their way into the work environment, into the school environment, into the collect environment, he said.
To read the original eWeek article, click here: Enterasys Mobile IAM Will Address BYOD Challenges
