Google (News - Alert) revealed today that it has dramatically enhanced its mobile device management functionality for Google Apps administrators, which will now enable them to much more easily operate and maintain enterprise Apps users' Android (News - Alert), iOS, and Windows mobile devices.

Dave Girouard, vice president of product management at Google, unveiled the new enhancements at Atmosphere 2011, which just happens to be a once a year collaborative forum where business IT managers come to share ideas.

“It's increasingly difficult for any employer to tell any employee what devices to use," Girouard stated, revealing that organizations can see multiple advantages through implementing BYOD (bring your own device) programs which allows employees to select the technological device they will be using, according to an InformationWeek piece.

Currently, some companies are still hesitant in allowing employees to choose their own personal device which will utilize a corporate network due to security issues. However, Girouard commented that the cloud is more secure than traditional on-premises software because the cloud has been created to strictly adhere to policies from the individual organization. "These diverse environments actually can be more secure than what we're accustomed to seeing," he said.

Initially introducing these solutions back in 2010, Google’s newly enhanced functions let mobile policies including password requirements and roaming sync preferences to be defined by user group, according to the article. In addition, these capabilities support mobile analytics which assist companies in gaining better visibility into how mobile device usage can affect employee productivity levels.

Furthermore, Google has totally revamped its Google Apps Device Policy app for Android to highlight to users what usage information exists that administrators can leverage for increased support for Android 4.0, named Ice Cream Sandwich.

Besides widening its mobile device management capabilities, Google has been hard at work to push out BigQuery, the company's data analytics service. The service offers a Web-based user interface for exploring data, REST API support for various background jobs, as well as innovative table and permission management functions.