Dell will extend the Kace products to include support for the Apple iPhone and iPad, as well as tablets and smartphones based on Google's Android OS, Dell said, speaking at the Kace customer conference in San Francisco.

"It's critical to be able to manage all devices, whether they are client devices or mobile devices, and that's a challenge we want to address," he said. Smartphones are "basically small computers" and "somewhat insecure," Dell said, and IT departments need help managing them.

Dell acquired Kace in February as part of a wider effort to expand its business beyond PCs. It has been investing heavily in the company, Dell said, increasing its customer base by 900, to about 2,500, and tripling the size of its support staff, including the addition of new support centers in Asia and Japan.

"Systems management is a big area of investment and a big focus for us," Michael Dell said.

Kace offers two appliances today for managing PCs and servers -- the K1000, for inventory and patch management, and the K2000, which can deploy applications and OS images.