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Beyond Computer Associates International Inc.s Enterprise IT Management launch, Chief Technology Officer Yogesh Gupta last week treated CA World attendees here to a sneak peek of new management technologies under development that address managing smart phones.
With a nod to the importance of the Islandia, N.Y., companys new integration platform, which underlies the development of CAs forthcoming Smart Phone Manager, Gupta showed off the ability to manage a range of smart-phone device types in his keynote.
Because enterprises are looking to deploy applications on such devices as Research In Motion Ltd.s BlackBerry, as well as Windows- and Symbian OS-based smart phones, CA recognized the importance of being able to manage and secure those devices.
The new Smart Phone Manager server can gather device information such as who owns the device, what it is, how it communicates, which network it is registered on and which department it belongs to, and it can apply security policies to the device. Smart Phone Manager can operate stand-alone or integrate with the R11 release of Unicenter Desktop and Server Manager.
With smart phones, “threats take on a whole new meaning. You need to enforce the policy you put on those devices every time they communicate with the server. When devices get lost, its a bad problem,” said Gupta.
The demonstration showed how lost devices can be identified and associated with their proper owner and deactivated, and when someone tries to use the devices, that person is locked out when a password is entered. When the device is found and returned to the proper owner, it can be activated and the password reinstated.
“If the BlackBerry is not returned, we can instruct over the air to wipe the device. It has security policy and configuration management for these different devices, and they can be managed from a single environment,” said Gupta.
But Gupta warned that development of the product is still in the early stages, and he said that it has not yet entered beta testing. He would not say when CA expects to ship it.