Google has awarded IBM’s MaaS360 with Watson the accolade of the first Android Enterprise Recommended for businesses utilising both company-owned and BYOD devices.

To become a recognised partner, software must offer businesses a true enterprise-level experience, with the tools to help businesses and employees be more productive. They must utilise Android’s enterprise features and developers must work closely with Google to ensure a consistent and successful deployment for enterprise teams.

IBM’s MaaS360 with Watson offers a Unified endpoint management (UEM) platform that introduces artificial intelligence to enable endpoints and end users to interact with apps, content and data seamlessly.

It helps IT teams secure Android phones, tablets and ruggedised devices with centralised device management, whether those devices are in the office or out in the field.

«With significant Android Enterprise activations for MaaS360, we’ve prioritized not only the product roadmap to ensure our clients can adopt the Android Enterprise solution sets, but also training and enablement for the IBM sales and support organizations to best support the platform,” said John Nielsen, offering manager of MaaS360 at IBM Security.

«With the consistency that Android Enterprise provides clients across various Android manufacturers, we do not anticipate the adoption trend to slow down any time soon.»

As Android has developed, so has IBM MaaS360. Although many of the features of the platform are now offered as standard on Android, especially with the introduction of Android 9 Pie, it also tags on AI features not available from Android devices.

Features such as MaaS360 Policy Recommendation Engine forms part of the device set-up process, enabling administrators to set policies such as passcode, container and restrictions to ensure employee devices are secured. Everything can be managed through a central console, reducing IT support time.

MaaS360 Assistant uses artificial intelligence to increase employee productivity, but reduce support calls and Business Dashboards for Apps analyses apps in use by employees, ensuring the company is getting the highest ROIs from those deployed.