The opening keynote from Ivanti’s senior executives focused on Ivanti Neurons, which was introduced last summer, and which they see as central to addressing both remote working issues and facilitating Ivanti’s converged solutions strategy.

On Monday, Ivanti kicked off their Ivanti Solutions Summit event with a trio of senior executives outlining the company’s high level strategy and detailing how their expanded and increasingly converged solutions set furthers it. They focused on how their solution set deals with the different aspects of the Everywhere Workplace – Ivanti’s own branding for the phenomenon others describe with terms like Work From Anywhere.

“What it comes down to is this,” said Jim Schaper, Ivanti’s Chairman and CEO. “Our solutions let you focus on work that you need to get done. With the Everywhere Workplace, we can be efficient from anywhere. This environment was necessary for our safety, and this is not going to change. But we know this Everywhere Workplace scenario is industry agnostic as well. We know how this new environment and the pandemic have put a strain on all types of customers.”

“We are realizing we can be just as efficient from home,” said Jeff Abbott, Ivanti’s President. “But it can be a nightmare for CIOs and IT staff everywhere. A year ago, were you thinking where all your devices were? Can you make sure they are all working in a secure environment? These are still some of the primary pain points, especially security.”

Schaper noted that since last year at this time, Ivanti has acquired three companies –  MobileIron, Pulse Secure and Cherwell. They now have over 3200 employees and more than 45,000 customers, including 78 of the Fortune 100.

“Scale matters,” he stressed. “Size matters. We are here to stay as your partner. The momentum is the proof point that our strategy is working . Everything you see here this week will revolve around that idea.”

Abbott emphasized the centrality to this vision of Ivanti Neurons, their automation platform that uses bots to proactively, predictably and autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices, and self-service end users, which was introduced last July.

“Ivanti Neurons allows you to discover, manage, secure and service all your devices from the cloud to the edge,” he said. He noted that the Ivanti Summit is about the four greatest customer pain points – visibility, experience, vulnerability, and quick responsiveness, and that Neurons addresses them all.

“With Neurons we solve these problems,” he emphasized. “It provides visibility to discover assets, makes sure they are all managed and secure, and lets you serve them on your timeline.

“Even before the pandemic, we were seeing increased global dispersed work,” he added. “Ivanti’s platform empowers the everyday workplace.”

Nayaki Nayyar, Ivanti’s Chief Product Officer and President, Service Management Solutions Group, then went into more depth about the company’s product strategy and roadmap. She stressed the synergies between Ivanti’s three lines of business: UEM and the edge; Zero Trust security, and endpoint service management.

“There is no other line of business that offers ALL these three pillars,” Nayyar emphasized. “We offer true convergence.”

She also noted how each of these areas had been strengthened by a major acquisition in the last year.

“The acquisition of MobileIron brought its MDM [Mobile Device Management] into our UEM,” she said. “Similarly in Zero Trust security, our strength in patch management and was complemented by Pulse Secure in VPN. In ITSM, we moved beyond service management with Cherwell, into every line of business.”

Nayyar then went into more detail about Ivanti Neurons, starting with what it is not.

“Neurons provides hyper-automation, automation driven by deep learning capabilities,” she stated. “The intent is not to self-heal 100% of issues all the time. But self-healing 30-50% of issues before the customer sees them is a massive cost saving for them.”

Neurons has four foundational elements.

“Discovery is the number one pillar,” Ayyar said. “It discovers every single asset. Then comes manage, then secure, extending beyond patch management into the Zero Trust wall. Then comes experience management for service, extending into every line of business and layering on automation capabilities.”

Within Discovery, Neurons for Discovery discovers all assets in your landscape for a 360 degree view – including those from third party sources – for complete device reconciliation. Neurons for Edge Intelligence, does this for the edge, across all the world, letting the user query all edge devices using natural language processing  and getting real-time intelligence in seconds.

“The Manage pillar lets you manage every device in your landscape,” Ayyar indicated. “With Ivanti Neurons, you can have one end-to-end single pane of glass for Linux, Windows IoS, Android and others.” The first phase of the Neurons for UEM Cloud integrated with MobileIron Cloud, which is part of this pillar, has been completed. Ivanti Neurons for Healing, uses between 65 and 70 automation bots around specific tasks to proactively detect, diagnose, and auto-remediate configuration drift, performance, and security issues.

“Any issues can be detected by the bots, and we are adding more of them,” Ayyar said.

“Secure is focused on three big functions as we evolve beyond patch and VPN,” Ayyar continued. “Secure the User is about password-less Multi Function Authentication and anti-phishing. Secure the device moves beyond patch management, including a cloud patch in the second half of 2021. Secure access is  Zero Trust, VPN, and NAC.”

Finally, Experience Management represents an evolution from IT Service Management.

“Within six to eight months, we will have full ITSM into every single line of business,” Ayyar said. “It will extend into each industry vertical, like Neurons for Healthcare. Scheduled is Neurons for Supply Chain, which will manage rugged devices in a warehouse context.”