*This post originally appeared on the Wavelink blog prior to the rebrand in January 2017, when Wavelink, LANDESK, Shavlik, AppSense, and HEAT Software merged under the new name Ivanti.

I am a remote control freak, that is.

A lot of you will have seen the recent announcement regarding our agreement with Splashtop to provide smart device remote control. We are extremely excited by the opportunity to partner with a company who is truly an industry leader in this space.

Splashtop

If you’ve never heard of Splashtop, they have been a leader in the remote control space for a long time and have a number of different consumer solutions available in the app/play store.

Remote control capabilities are an important part of the toolbox of an enterprise support team. The buildings that our customers work in are massive—really massive. The mission critical nature of our customers' businesses means that any lost productivity can have a direct impact on the bottom line.

This is why being able to connect to a device deployed on the floor—and see what the user is seeing—can save time, money, and the need for someone to take a very long walk to see the problem in person.

Smart Device Remote Control

Wavelink has had remote control for older devices for years and is an important part of our Avalanche enterprise mobility management solution. This new product, Smart Device Remote Control, provides a remote control solution for customers with Android based devices and will soon be extended to other smart device operating systems.

How do we do it?

So, how are we able to provide this capability when so many others can’t?

Part of the answer is because of our very long relationships with all of the device manufacturers that make up this market. Remote control clients require elevated rights on Android devices; there’s no standard APIs that give a vendor access to the screen. This means that each vendor needs to trust us enough to sign our remote control client and give us extra rights into their device.

We went to market with support for the Zebra and Honeywell portfolio of Android devices, and we’re currently working on Panasonic and Datalogic support.

In addition to these, we also have support for Windows XP, 7, 8 and 10, so, whilst we are aimed at the rugged device market you will also be able to control most enterprise desktop machines, as well as any vehicle mount device or POS based on big windows. If the need arises you can also remote control Mac OSX machines.

If you are considering a move to Android or have needs to control one of the other operating systems that I just mentioned, then and see how we can help you get set up and ready to be control freaks yourselves.