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Innovation

Need to manage Chromebooks? It's part of Insight's mobile services

The $5.3 billion IT solution provider has developed a cloud-based management solution for its education and healthcare clients.
Written by Heather Clancy, Contributor

Chromebooks aren't exactly breaking any sales records -- there were less than 1 million units sold in the last quarter -- but one of the big IT solution providers, Insight Enterprises, is launching a new practice area focused on delivering them and managing them to healthcare and educational organizations.

Insight's solution includes a cloud-hosted management console that can be used to deploy and to centrally manage a fleet of the devices, applying policies and applications that are specific to different groups of users.

In particular, the solution provider is focusing its attention on educational accounts, since Chromebooks represent an affordable way to get technology into the hands of more teachers and students.

Insight's Chromebooks-related management service includes functions for pre-installing or blocking applications, preventing certain Web browser extensions from working, or preventing access to certain URLS. It allows schools to embrace different policies for students versus teachers, in order to protect certain data. 

Insight's support of the category is significant, considering questions being raised on about whether or not they are relevant. (Be sure to weigh in on the topic, as part of this week's ZDNet's Great Debate series.

Insight, which generated approximately $5.3 billion in sales for 2012, has an impressive footprint in cloud services -- it already manages about 7 million business and public sector cloud seats globally.

The company sells all sorts of equipment related to Chromebooks, including charging carts that can serve computer labs in schools or be stationed throughout healthcare environments. It sells Chromebook models from Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Samsung.

Insight launched a mobile management service, called Choose Your Own Device, to help organizations develop policies around the BYOD movement and to help them ensure appropriate levels of security and application standardization.

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