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Microsoft accepts reality, offers IT tool for iPhones, iPads, and Android
- TAGS:Android, Insider Content, IOS, iPad, iPhone, Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit, sccm, System Center Configuration Manager
- IT TOPICS:Applications, Devices, Enterprise Apps, Linux & Unix, Macintosh, Mobile, Mobile Apps, Operating Systems, Windows
Not everyone at Microsoft is marching in lockstep to the idea that Windows Phone 7 will rule the enterprise. At the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), the company announced that it has released a beta of a tool to let IT manage iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Symbian devices, and Windows Phone 7 devices in the enterprise. Up until now, the tool only worked for Windows Mobile.
The tool is called System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), and it's designed to deploy and update servers, clients, and devices across an enterprise's entire computing and network infrastructure. The current version is SCCM 2007, and the only mobile devices it handles are Windows Mobile ones --- it won't even handle Windows Phone 7 right now.
At MMS today, though, Microsoft made available for download beta 2 of SCCM 2012.
Whoever developed this version of SCCM had a solid grasp of reality, because it's designed for a world in which consumer devices are flooding the enterprise, and IT needs to manage them.
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