Cortado Corporate Server 7.2 review

Mobile Device Management on your own server, focused on Apple and Samsung hardware

IT Pro Verdict

Cortado is best suited to medium-to-large enterprises with a respectable budget and either outsourced configuration or a full-time sysadmin with experience in MDM.

Pros

  • +

    Easy installation and excellent admin interface

Cons

  • -

    Limited support for standard Android and Windows Phone; User portal lacks internal documentation

Cortado Corporate Server 7.2 runs on your own Microsoft Server.While this requires a greater investment in hardware and operating system licenses than the more common Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, it also means you have full control over the data that you store and the files you distribute using Cortado.

Knowing exactly where your servers are located can be essential for businesses dealing with sensitive financial or personal records.

Cortado Corporate Server's key feature is device management, but the software also provides document sharing, file and folder syncing, and easy printing to any printer linked to your Corporate Server account. The intention is to provide staff with secure, reliable means of access to the files and services, no matter where they are.

It also allows administrators to ensure user devices are secure and corporate files and documents are kept within an easily accessible management infrastructure. Cortado is well known for its ThinPrint network printing software, and those remote printing features are also found in Cortado Corporate Server.

The installation process on Windows Server 2012 proved to be among the easiest we've encountered, and configuration was straightforward, thanks to perfect integration with our Exchange server. The manuals are hefty but clear and correct. Once Cortado is installed, further configuration can be carried out via a web interface.

Device support

Cortado Corporate Server provides control over a wide range of devices, but the service is primarily designed to control Samsung handsets running Android and Apple devices running iOS. Phones and tablets of this kind get a wide range of highly granulated policy and automatic configuration options.

Other phones and tablets, including Windows Phone and standard Android devices, are managed via Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync's built-in capabilities, which are more limited; Cortado does not currently use Google's Android MDM API. You can also link Cortado to a Blackberry Enterprise Server, allowing you to keep tabs on your Blackberry users, although administration of those users still has to be carried out using BES.

Cortado's file-management and sharing app is available for Android and iOS - there's also an HTML5 version that other devices, including desktop computers, can use to access their user's storage on your server.