Unified endpoints, increased automation, and enhancements to the Workspaces introduced last year are the main improvements to the suites.

Management software vendor LANDESK has announced the release of its flagship LANDESK Management Suite 2016, together with LANDESK Security Suite 2016 and LANDESK Mobile Security Suite 2016.

“They are now totally integrated as one suite, although they can be licensed just for the individual products you need,” said Alan Braithwaite, Director of Product Management at LANDESK Software. “They are however bundled technically as one product.”

The new release really has three important elements to it — unified endpoint management, new automation, and enhanced user experience through expanded workspaces, said Rex McMillan, LANDESK’s Senior Director, Product Management.

“The quantum leap forward in the 2016 release is that endpoint management and mobility management are totally integrated,” McMillan said. “This unification is really a game changer in terms of user productivity.”

In the new release, customers can manage devices, packages and workflows for PCs, Macs, Linux, Chromebooks — and now iOS and Android devices as well — from a single interface and a single server.

“All the workflows are the same in this release,” McMillan added. “If you want to make setting changes, you will know how to do it, and you manage everything from the same console.” This streamlines management workflows for increased efficiency, ensuring that each device gets the necessary changes and apps.

The release also leverages technology from LANDESK’s acquisition of Xtraction Solutions last year. Their data-aggregation technology lets multiple data sources be connected easily into an interface that makes the entire IT environment clear to non-technical people.

“This Xtraction reporting tool is a key integration for us, and provides a common interface across all the products,” Braithwaite said.

“Xtraction lets us build connectors to all data types, which lets us to go in and build the business value dashboards,” McMillan stated. “This will be part of what powers the Executive Workspaces, which changes how we interact with all of our products.”

This expanded and improved use of the Workspaces platform originally introduced in 2015 is the second major enhancement in this release.

“Workspaces provide the ability to get all the right information to the right role,” McMillan said.  Security Suite 2016 introduces LANDESK Workspaces for the Security Admin, which gives a view that helps connect security and IT operations by highlighting the security posture of the devices on the network to make remediation easier. The IT Analyst and Asset Management Workspaces also get a refresh.

“Later this year will come an Executive Workspace,” said Leslie Bonsteel, ‎Director, Analyst and Public Relations at LANDESK. “These Workspaces are a game changer because they change the way that IT looks at and interacts with their tools.”

“These enhanced Workspaces really improve the user experience,” Braithwaite said. “They are designed to be graphical, and not a lot of text.”

The third major area of improvement is new features in Management Suite 2016 and Security Suite 2016 that automate the rollout process of both large and small software projects, including software deployments and patching.

“Patch management has changed with Microsoft changing it to 24/7, so we moved the goalposts  on top of built-in schedulers and also built in the ability to make a project,” McMillan said. “When you do patch deployment, you need to test it and do a phased rollout. In the 2016 release, this is all native, an extension on top of our scheduler, and the automation is native as part of the scheduler. This will change how you see software deployments and patch management being done.”

The new LANDESK Mobile Security Suite comes as an add-on to the UEM platform. It includes secure mobile email, which provides users with protected access to corporate email and content like calendars from personal mobile devices, using the native email client for each device type. The Mobile Security Suite also includes app wrapping, which secures corporate native applications and associated data from data leaks and possible malware exposure from end users’ personal applications.