ManageEngine announced patch management support for Apple Mac systems in the latest release of Desktop Central, the company’s desktop and mobile device management (MDM) software.

From a central location, IT organizations running Desktop Central can now manage desktops, laptops and servers running Mac OS X 10.6 or later.

The Apple Mac is enjoying steady, growing adoption in the enterprise. For fiscal year 2012, Apple reported 18.1 million Macs were sold, a 6.5 percent growth compared to the previous fiscal year. Despite the Mac’s growing popularity, many enterprises continue to manage Macs using haphazard, manual procedures that create real-time problems when performing patch updates and system maintenance for Macs.

"We are observing a steady growth of Mac computers across all verticals," said Mathivanan Venkatachalam, director of product management at ManageEngine. "But it only takes a few Macs on a network to create a complicated, time-consuming management chore for IT admins to manage manually. To help enterprises manage the Mac desktops and laptops, we're rolling out patch management support for Macs. Going forward, we will add more features for Mac management including software deployment, remote control and more."

The patch management support for Macs in Desktop Central helps IT staff overcome the vulnerabilities that create security weakness, corrupt critical system data or cause system unavailability.

Highlights of the new Mac patch management capabilities include:

- Mac OS and app support includes Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) as well as third-party applications such as Adobe, Java and others.

- On-demand patch scanning performs scans of all systems running a supported version of Mac OS X and apps and then reports on the vulnerability status of the network.

- Bulk and scheduled patch deployment lets administrators execute deployments based on patch priority and on time, e.g., weekends and other off-peak hours.

- Severity-based patch management allows administrators to create and configure severity levels for missing patches, which are then deployed based on severity.

- Patch approval mechanism tests and approves patches in a controlled environment to ensure that they are error-free and stable, before they are rolled out to the entire network.

- System health status reports provide granular-level details about system vulnerability level, missing and applicable patches, task status and more.

Desktop Central 8 support for Mac patch management is available immediately. The Free Edition of Desktop Central manages up to 25 computers and two mobile devices.

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