They have little smartphone support, however, only some basic management capabilities for the iPhone. Future Kace products will manage phones and tablets based on Android, Windows 7 and Apple's iOS, said Lubos Parobek, vice president for product management at Dell's Kace division.

As well as performing basic inventory, customers will be able to deploy software to the devices, erase data and lock them down if they are stolen, he said. He couldn't give a release date but said the capabilities will be added to the K1000 appliance.

Dell will be competing with a number of companies. Fiberlink, Sybase and LogMeIn all offer tools for managing mobile phones as well as computers. Google offers a basic phone management service, and Good Technology sells software that lets enterprises manage phones from most manufacturers.

In some ways Dell is adding to the problem even while it tries to solve it, by selling its own little army of smartphones. It's already released the Streak and the Venture Pro, and on Tuesday Michael Dell pulled another, Android-based device from his pocket that he said will be formally announced on Wednesday. The device has a 3.5-inch screen and will be sold in India and other emerging markets, he said, without giving any more details.

Dell will have its own equivalent to the iPad too, he said -- a 10-inch device based on the Honeycomb release of Android that's expected next spring.