By extending its Junos Pulse suite to more mobile platforms, Juniper is helping to tackle the problem of enterprises having to use many different tools to support the various mobile OSes their employees use, said analyst Bob Egan of Sepharim Group. Sybase, MobileIron and Mocana are other players trying to fill this space, he said. Between BlackBerry, iOS, mobile Windows systems and several versions of Android, as well as downloaded apps that may affect how the employee's phone or tablet performs, support personnel have many variables to consider when helping employees who bring their own devices, he said.

IT departments would like to have one tool to manage all mobile devices, which would lower support costs and help to ensure security, Egan said. But Juniper's move Monday is just one step in that direction, partly because there are so many versions of Android. "I don't see that unifying front happening any time soon," Egan said.

Egan said Juniper's new remove-and-revoke feature is just what many enterprises are looking for. He expects this type of capability to be a requirement in highly regulated industries such as financial services and health care within a year. It's needed because many consumer mobile apps can "leak" sensitive enterprise information such as location and contact data, and because enterprises want to make sure their employees have the correct and current version of any business app, he said.

Juniper is offering the SaaS products to service providers that can package and resell them to small, medium and large business subscribers. The company is also selling the services directly to large enterprises, where IT can use a Web-based interface to operate them, Singh said. A typical one-year software license for a company with 1,000 employees has a list price of US$70 per user, Singh said.

The IDG News Service