Sophos, IT security and data protection firm has announced the hosted version of its mobile device management (MDM) solution, Sophos Mobile Control, enabling partners to offer clients a choice of delivery models. Based on the recently released Sophos Mobile Control 2.5, Sophos Mobile Control as a Service allows businesses to quickly and easily deploy an MDM solution without any changes to their existing IT infrastructure, alleviating any further management burden on IT. In addition to Sophos Mobile Control as a Service, the company is planning to introduce a full range of hosted security applications.

Sophos now offers a hosted alternative that can be implemented within minutes. Companies using Sophos Mobile Control as a Service can complete countless tasks-from creating policies to uploading lists of users and developing Acceptable Use Policies for employee-owned devices through the web-based admin console. The service requires nothing more than a browser on the customer premises.

Designed with usability in mind, and based on user feedback, the structure of the Sophos Mobile Control web console, self-service portal and the mobile client provide customers with a powerful and intuitive solution that is easy to use and offers the benefit of no hardware on the customer site, resulting in savings to both capital and operating expenditures, as no maintenance is required.

Matthias Pankert, Vice President, Product Management at Sophos said, "The launch of Sophos Mobile Control as our first hosted service represents a significant milestone in our product strategy. Security applications are rapidly moving toward the cloud to provide flexibility and scalability, which today's businesses demand. With limited resources and a multitude of security solutions to manage, mobile devices in particular are often left uncontrolled. Our SaaS-based solution ensures that these devices are controlled and managed, even for small groups of users within a company."