Google has made an effort to get its suite of productivity applications into the enterprise for some time. One area that was lacking was support for mobile devices, since IT managers like to lock down their staff smartphones as securely as desktops and laptops, if not more so. Today the search giant is releasing updated apps that will appease management’s concerns. Enterprise Mobile Today has the details.
Google’s suite of productivity applications has been upgraded over the past year to make them more compatible with smartphones, but today the Internet giant unveiled new features that may be critical for mobile IT managers more worried about smartphone security and mobile device management.
Google Apps, which includes Gmail, calendar, and documents apps, was recently updated to sync with the iPhone and Microsoft Windows Mobile handhelds, but largely lacking were features that would mitigate IT concerns.
Today Google is rolling out new administrative control features, for instance, remote wipe and more stringent password protocols, for Google Apps Premier and Google Apps Education users managing iPhone, Nokia E series and Windows Mobile devices, according to a Google mobile blog post by Bryan Mawhinney, mobile software engineer at Google.
The new features will let administrators manage a group of phones from one control panel, at which they can do the following: remotely wipe data from lost or stolen smarthpones; lock idle devices after a period of inactivity; require passwords on each handset; set minimum lengths for more secure passwords; and require passwords to include letters, numbers and punctuation.