Dropbox Enterprise Mobility Management Support Hits iOS and Android

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Dropbox Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) support, first announced last summer, is now available on iOS and Android. The capability enables organizations to secure manage access to Dropbox applications, accounts and content using their preferred EMM providers.

Currently, Dropbox’s list of EMM partners includes AirWatch (a VMware company), MobileIron, Okta, and Centrify. This week the company announced that an additional four mobile device management specialists had jumped onboard, namely Inventit, SoftBank Business Concierge, Matrix4 and IBM MaaS360.

Addressing the latter, Dropbox product manager Anna Liu noted in a blog post yesterday that he company’s “relationship with IBM MaaS360 will allow IT to easily deploy and manage EMM across their corporate devices. Now, customers using AppConfig for iOS or App Restrictions for Android for Work can easily configure Dropbox in their MaaS360 admin console to only grant access to IT-managed mobile devices.”

IBM also joined the Dropbox Premier Partner Program, revealed Liu, paving the way for more product integrations.

Last month, IBM announced a major revamp of its MaaS360 EMM platform, including redesigned Productivity Suite and Content Suite containers that offer a consistent look and feel across apps and new swipe gestures. MaaS360’s app catalogs have also been numerous interface tweaks and features, enabling businesses to categorize and package apps and generally provide users with an Apple App Store-like experience.

Dropbox also unveiled a new file properties API that helps extend the cloud file security and management capabilities of partner products. “This will allow third-party providers our customers rely on to add custom metadata capabilities to their data security, data migration, and asset management solutions,” added Liu.

To broaden its appeal among enterprises, Dropbox has been steadily layering more management capabilities onto its cloud file storage, sync and share platform.

In March, the company unveiled new four new domain management features for Dropbox Business and Enterprise. With the first tool, called domain verification, organizations can claim ownership of their email domains. Invite enforcement can be used to prevent users from opting out of team accounts, requiring users to migrate to their company’s account or change the work-related email addresses on their personal accounts.

The Dropbox Enterprise-only domain insights feature delivers key information on Dropbox usage among an organization’s workers. Account capture, also for Dropbox Enterprise customers, helps prevent unauthorized use by forcing all accounts with a company email addresses to join a Dropbox team or switch to a personal email.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.