Novell announced the availability of Novell ZENworks Mobile Management.

ZENworks Mobile Management (ZMM) addresses the pain points device administrators and managers face today, including BYOD (bring your own device), security, application and file sharing, asset and inventory management and compliance issues. With this new solution, Novell extends its existing management and security capabilities to mobile devices.

Novell now gives enterprises the ability to control and secure a large and diverse set of mobile devices in the workforce, including iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and other ActiveSync enabled devices, with minimal impact to IT overhead. The result is a more productive, agile and protected organization.

"The workforce is demanding mobile devices at work, whether they are company issued or personal, leaving administrators scrambling to catch up and solve the security and management challenges this brings. With this release, we're specifically addressing our customers' needs," said Eric Varness, VP of Product Management and Marketing for Novell.

"The release of ZENworks Mobile Management provides enterprises with an easy-to-install solution to oversee mobile devices while ensuring security and fostering workplace productivity. Employees get what they need to be productive from anywhere without undue risk and expense to the enterprise. Adding mobile device management to organizations endpoint management capabilities is the next logical step to ensure the security and integrity of enterprise data and applications."

Key features of ZENworks Mobile Management include:

- Over-the-Air/Hands-off Enrollment: Automates the process of enrolling new devices by leveraging ActiveSync mail server user credentials during the device registration process.

- Application Provisioning and File Sharing: Ensures the right applications and files are available to authorized users via the Enterprise App Store and management console.

- Customizable Security Settings: Empowers security teams and CISOs to define and customize security policies for mobile devices and audit enforcement, including encrypt/password enforcement and remote wipe.

- Inventory and Asset Management: Provides a view into what is connecting to an organization, as well as tracks and manages all the mobile devices in an organization.

- Alerts and Notifications: Gives the option to set alerts to automatically bring IT's attention to problems, violations or changes in security settings to ensure compliance, licensing and management needs are met.

- BYOD-Friendly: Works equally well with personally owned devices with enhanced features like selective remote-wipe (only wipe company data) and self-provisioning.

A recent report from Forrester finds that 53 percent of employees use their own devices for work, marking a five percent increase since the beginning of 2012. The research firm also predicts that within three years, BYOD will be standard policy for most companies.

Novell ZENworks Mobile Management makes it easy for organizations to provide BYOD support, ensuring users have the right credentials and access to applications and files on their mobile devices, where and when they need it.

Reporting and auditing functionality aids in compliance as ZMM provides visibility into who controls actions and processes while showing how activities are done making sure any necessary security actions are taken and documented to make proving compliance more efficient.