Novell introduces ZENWorks 11, industry's first Unified Endpoint Management Solution

ZENWorks 11, Novell's identity-based solution addressing converging markets of PC life cycle management, endpoint security management and IT service management, is now available in South Africa.

Labelled the industry's first “single pane of glass” solution for endpoint management, ZENWorks 11 is designed to address the rapidly converging markets of PC life cycle management and endpoint security.

Michelle Beetar, managing director of Novell South Africa, says ZENworks 11 helps enterprise customers lower the cost and risk of managing devices across physical, virtual, and cloud environments, while dramatically simplifying near-term needs such as Windows 7 migrations.

“An accompaniment to ZENWorks 11 is the release of Novell Service Desk, a new product that enables enterprises to centrally manage help desk incidents, improve customer service, and align with industry best practices such as ITIL.”

Beetar adds that as organisations increasingly rely on virtual and cloud-based applications and desktops, solutions that transcend physical device management have become critical.

“Solutions that can provide, track and manage the software and identify hardware on PCs are needed by IT executives, managers and administrators as endeavour to implement desktop management across the cloud and virtual environments, as well as the existing desktop."

ZENWorks 11 is an extensive upgrade to Endpoint Management solutions from Novell and it now includes four fully-integrated products in one unified platform: ZENWorks Configuration Management, ZENWorks Endpoint Security Management, ZENWorks Asset Management and ZENWorks Patch Management.

According to Beetar, this new platform delivers a single, integrated console and agent where IT administrators can manage desktops, patch applications, secure endpoints, and track software license compliance with the right tools at the right time.

She adds that ZENWorks manages and secures Windows platforms and devices, in any location, and enables IT administrators to operate more efficiently while reducing costs. Tasks such as migrating to Windows 7 are executed with minimal effort.

Key features of ZENWorks 11 include:

* A unified console and agent enables administrators to use four key ZENWorks products from the same easy-to-use, Web console, leveraging a single adaptive agent, simplifying agent deployment and minimising footprint on the endpoint device.
* Identity-based management that goes beyond managing physical endpoints, allowing IT administrators to understand the identity of users so those users get the precise applications and tools based on their roles and responsibilities, regardless of what device they use.
* Location Awareness gives organisations the ability to detect when users are outside of “safe” networks and utilises policies to dynamically adjust user access and security postures based on where they are using their endpoint devices.
* Power Management enables administrators to implement policies to configure Windows power management settings and perform out-of-band power management tasks using Intel vPro.
* Expanded Platform Support includes management of both Linux and Windows endpoints from a single console.

“As part of the WorkloadIQ solutions from Novell, ZENWorks 11 is a major milestone in Novell's efforts to meet the growing demand for intelligent workload management solutions,” says Beetar. “Intelligent workload management helps companies leverage existing IT assets to realise the significant cost benefits offered by new models including virtualisation and cloud computing, and provides them with the necessary tools to securely manage their IT services across organisational and geographical boundaries.”