Kaseya Launches Secure BYOD Management Platform

Driven by the increasing need to secure corporate information and devices in the bring-your-own-device era, Kaseya rolled out the Kaseya BYOD Suite, an enterprise-class platform for corporate mobile device management.

The Kaseya BYOD Suite, which the Boston-based company announced Tuesday, uses a containerized approach that allows users to access content in a safe and secure way, said Jonathan Foulkes, vice president of mobile at Kaseya.

"The previous world of using corporate-level devices is now being challenged because people don't want IT to use their device, and IT doesn't want random user devices on the network," said Foulkes. "Our new product addresses common business needs around secure Internet, documents and email access, allowing our channel partners to rapidly deploy this solution around secure enterprise mobility."

[Related: Kaseya Buys 365 Command To Boost Cloud Management ]

Kaseya in July acquired Rover Apps, a software maker specializing in mobile device management for BYOD users, and is now leveraging its technology in the Kaseya BYOD Suite, which is now compliant with the Kaseya's branding and back-end licensing systems, said Loren Jarrett, chief marketing officer at Kaseya.

Rover Apps was one of three key acquisitions the company made this year. Earlier in July, Kaseya acquired IT monitoring and managed services provider Zyrion, as well as 365 Command, a Microsoft Office 365 solution for managed services providers and IT organizations, in October.

"[Rover Apps] rounds out the three product areas we acquired since this summer because we see the market that our customers are addressing rapidly," said Jarrett. "Employees want to bring their own devices so we see the complexity of what our customers are trying to do, and to address these new challenges around mobility and cloud infrastructure, the acquisition helped us to lead into new areas."

According to Foulke, the BYOD Suite will provide secure encryption for Internet Web access, emails and documents before they are handed off to a networking stack between mobile and servers. Documents can be created, copied, deleted, moved between different sources and edited, said Foulkes.

"The containers and solution as a whole essentially manages, so you can set policy to prevent data loss and to ensure that only authorized users are accessing it," said Foulkes. "Everything we save on the device is encrypted, so even if we are not able to issue a wipe on this device, it doesn't matter because the data is always encrypted. We designed this solution to assume that in a BYOD environment there is no guarantees, and we want to always be proactive with security."

NEXT: What This Means For Channel Partners

While BYOD is a hard element to contain for small and medium-sized business, Kaseya BYOD Suite gives SMBs a tool that helps them control data access, said Steve Lawson, principal consultant for Bulletproof IT.

"BYOD control will just be part of our Kaseya suite, and our techs will not have to go into another window to manage devices," said Lawson. "It is [about] being able to offer enterprise-level tools to small and medium businesses."

Managed service providers, as well as large and mid-market enterprises, can also benefit from the ease of use that the Kaseya BYOD Suite provides through its automated administration and simple deployment tools, said Foulkes.

"[MSPs] will benefit as an expanding business opportunity and increase the profitability of this solution because they don't have to spend as much administrative and deployment effort," said Foulkes. "It's easy to administer this product in [terms of] what it takes to configure and sustain over time. Therefore it drives the profitability for MSPs because they don't have to spend resources to administer because it's so highly automated."

George Brontén, founder of Upstream Software, a Stockholm, Sweden-based software and SaaS solutions provider and Kaseya partner, said that with Kaseya BYOD Suite, customers are able to set up BYOD strategies quicker and more easily.

"Companies need to allow employees and third parties ... quick access to information. At the same time, [they need] to make sure that the information is protected if the device is compromised," said Brontén. "Most technical solutions have focused on managing the actual devices and applications, instead of securing information access, and Kaseya's BYOD solution brings a fresh perspective."

As Kaseya continues to focuses on mobility, Brontén said he is looking forward to providing highly integrated single solutions.

"BYOD is one piece of a larger solution [and] need," said Brontén. "I've always bought into Kaseya's vision to provide a 'single pane of glass' for IT management and look forward to further additions to follow the vision. I foresee Kaseya strengthening its position as the leader in this space."

PUBLISHED DEC. 11, 2013