No doubt 2020 was a special year on many different fronts, and it has changed our lives at least for the foreseeable future. As employees and organizations globally are adjusting to those changes, and IT teams are actively looking for ways to adapt to the new world or work, I thought this was a good opportunity to summarize for you the top ten announcements for Workspace ONE Intelligence in 2020.

These updates and new features will help our customers prepare for 2021 and optimize for new ways of work, and we’re proud to share the progress we’ve made to help them do that.

Security concerns increase with the transition to remote workforce

With the new need to enable employees to work from home, the risk of security threats and breaches increases. To help mitigate this risk, our customers leverage Workspace ONE Intelligence to get a holistic view of the security posture of their device fleet, to prioritize and manage security threats and patch roll out, and to securely deliver any app on any device.

1. General availability of Risk Analytics
In the beginning of the year we announced the availability of Risk Analytics in Workspace ONE Intelligence. Risk Analytics calculates a risk score for every device and every user, based on device context and user behavior. It continuously tracks risk indicators such as suspicious apps, outdated OS version and the device’s security protection and adjusts the user risk score. Risk Analytics empowers IT admins to work with security teams to enable conditional access which is central to the Zero Trust security model.

2. Leveraging CVE data in Risk Analytics
As a reminder, Workspace ONE Intelligence ingests CVE data from the NIST CVE list. IT admins use this data to prioritize and automate patch roll out and meet compliance requirements across their environment. Now they can also leverage this data in Risk Analytics. Most recently we added two new risk indicators into Risk Analytics:

–Persistent Critical Vulnerability – identifying those devices that are missing a critical patch for a longer period of time compared to similar devices in the organization.
–Excessive Critical Vulnerability – identifying devices with more  critical CVEs compared to other devices in the organization.

3. Expanding Workspace ONE Trust Network with new industry-leading security vendors
Workspace ONE Trust Network empowers customers to leverage existing investments in industry-leading security solutions such as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Mobile Threat Defense (MTD). Through the Workspace ONE Trust Network, security vendors integrate with Workspace ONE Intelligence, providing admins a complete view of their devices and users and so that they can understand the impact of a security threat in-context to their environment. Over the past year we have added Zimperium, Check Point, Pradeo, Wandera and BETTER Mobile. These security partners join other security vendors already in the network such as Netskope and Lookout.

4. Workspace ONE Intelligence and Carbon Black integration
This year we have also enhanced integration with Carbon Black. For example, you can now quarantine a device through an integration between Carbon Black and the automation engine in Workspace ONE Intelligence and bring it back to the network once its back to secure state.

Digital Employee Experience Management is Becoming a Top Priority for IT

5. General availability of Digital Employee Experience Management (DEEM)
With the COVID-19 pandemic driving the need for employees to work from home, IT teams are now looking for ways to monitor the digital user experience. To keep employees engaged and productive, IT must ensure employees have streamlined access to the tools they need to perform their job. That made the launch of our Digital Employee Experience Management (DEEM) solution in Workspace ONE Intelligence extremely timely and relevant. DEEM monitors digital workspace KPIs and delivers insights in the forms of reports, dashboard and employee experience score. It enables IT to proactively identify issues and remediate with automation, sometimes before the user even noticed there was an issue.

6. Complete mobile app analytics with Workspace ONE Intelligence SDK
In order to get a holistic view of the digital employee experience, it’s imperative that you look at all the tools and applications that employees use to perform their job, including devices, network, applications, access, and so on. Workspace ONE Intelligence is the only digital experience solution today in the market that monitors not only mobile devices, but also mobile apps. This year we have added Handled Exceptions and Crashes to our mobile app analytics module (delivered through the Intelligence SDK), allowing customers to track mobile app performance, understand failures and crashes and resolved them quickly. Check out this demo to learn more.

7. Analyst recognition
Finally, we are excited to announce that VMware has been named a Strong Performer in the first ever report of its kind, The Forrester New Wave™: End User Experience Management, Q4 2020. I encourage you to download the report here to learn more.

Improving your day-to-day operations

In addition to these exciting use cases, we have added many new features to make the work of an IT admin easier. Here are a few examples:

8. New automation triggers for IT workflows
IT teams constantly look for ways to increase efficiency through automation. The powerful automation engine in Workspace ONE Intelligence enables IT team to define and automate workflows for time consuming tasks such as patch deployment, user reminders and notifications, and so on. Recently we added a new feature that allows you to define the behavior of a workflow:

a. Automatic - automatically execute the workflow when incoming events match the filter
b. Schedule - define when the filtered results should execute
c. Manual – execute the workflow on-demand (good for one-time actions)

9. Enhancing reporting with JOINS
Often times IT needs to correlate data coming from multiple sources. For example, device data from Workspace ONE UEM, access and user data from Workspace ONE Access and so on. With our recent JOINS enhancement, Workspace ONE Intelligence enables you to report on multiple data sources, such as apps, users, devices and sensors in a single report.

10. Report sharing
Until now, when you created a new dashboard or report in Workspace ONE Intelligence, it was available only to you. Now with report sharing, you can share your dashboards and reports with other users. This is a great new feature that reduces overhead and promotes consistency across the organization.

Onwards to 2021

As organizations transition to the new world of work in times of uncertainty, they constantly look for ways to increase efficiency, simplify their environment and reduce costs. 2020 has definitely been a year of change, and as our customers transition to enable these changes, they recognize that Workspace ONE Intelligence is an integral part of their journey. We can’t wait to see what 2021 will bring!