small business - page 3

The East Alton school district in southwest Illinois announced earlier this week that it will be launching a one-ton-one iPad deployment for all students in grades three through eight (plus shared iPads for kindergarten through second grade). The announcement is far from unique. Many schools across the U.S. and throughout the world have already launched similar programs – some of them on a much larger scale.

One of the interesting points about East Alton’s decision, however, is that the school district isn’t buying the iPads for its students – a least not initially. Instead, the district has signed a four-year leasing agreement for the iPads. The decision highlights Apple’s often overlooked leasing programs for both business education customers.

OS X Server has always been something of a bargain compared to the various flavors of Windows Server. Unlike Microsoft, Apple never focused on a client access licensing model in which organizations must pay for the server software itself plus additional licenses for users or devices that connect to it. Apple also doesn’t break OS X Server down into multiple variations each with its own features, licensing needs, and upgrade limitations.

When you buy OS X Server, Apple gives you everything from file sharing to Internet and collaborative services like wikis and internal messaging through Mac and iOS device management. If you start as a small business with a single basic server and eventually grow to the point where you need to support and manage dozens or hundreds of Macs, PCs, and mobile devices, there are no limits imposed on licensing or data migration.

Mac and iOS business app developer Marketcircle announced the latest of version of Daylite, the company’s business and productivity management app. The new version, released today, is a major upgrade from previous versions. Daylite is an excellent business management tool for OS X and iOS. It focuses on aggregating all manner of company data, monitoring processes, and helping ensure that business users follow up on leads and opportunities. The new release focuses on increasing performance, workflow, and integration with iOS devices.

After the insanely fast sellout of tickets for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off in a couple of weeks, we profiled a range of other events for Mac and iOS developers and for IT professionals who support and/or manage Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.

While these events are great for developers and IT pros, they focus on the underlying technologies of OS X and iOS more than on how companies and other organizations can implement and leverage Macs, iPhones, and iPads in various businesses and industries. For that, there’s the i.Business Expo, a series of events focused on using Apple technologies to both improve business workflows and for customer/client engagement.

Over the course of May, we’ve highlighted a number of different mobile management companies in our Mobile Management Month series. Profiling these companies made me realize how much the mobile management market has expanded to include cloud or SaaS options in addition to on-premise servers installed inside a company’s network.

That’s hardly surprising really – after all cloud models are being applied to almost every type of business computing need.

There are several significant and  attractive advantages to using a cloud service as your approach to mobile management, particularly for small businesses.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

This post is brought to you by SolarWinds, an IT software management company with more than 93,000 customers worldwide – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses. Click here to download a free 30-Day Trial of Mobile Admin from SolarWinds. Author: Denny LeCompte Coauthor: Stephanie Mitchell.

Which smartphone or tablet are you bringing to work?

With the constant stream of news emerging in the Apple versus Android battle, we think it’s time to look at which devices the IT pros are choosing, and how recent trends are affecting what devices are brought into work.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

Tarmac is a fairly focused device management option from Mac and iOS developer equinux (makers of the Mac utility VPN Tracker). Tarmac focuses on delivering the core iOS management needs with low overhead. equinux’s narrow focus on just iOS allows the company to provide a wide range of enterprise systems integration options. Tarmac specifically targets the small business market with separate small/medium business and larger enterprise versions.

Often discussion around BYOD and mobile management focus on larger companies like IBM and VMWare (both of which have made big bets on BYOD). For larger enterprises, BYOD is a big change for IT professionals and users alike. Testing and transitioning to a BYOD model is filled with culture shock, challenges, and deeply held concerns about data and device security.

For small and mid-size businesses, however, the experience can be very different. That’s to be expected since smaller IT departments are often more tightly integrated with staff taking on multiple roles and less delineation of duties and job functions. Often this leads small business IT to be more agile and more engaged with the rest of the organization.

According to Nasstar, small businesses are employing BYOD in large numbers and with positive results.

If you’re a freelance or independent developer, designer, content jockey or two-person startup, you may not even consider yourself a small business.

But the client data on your laptop and the banking you do with your iPhone leaves you wide open as a target for hackers — and lawyers.

For Neal O’Farrell, executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit Identity Theft Council, thinking you’re too small to get serious about security is about as dumb as you can get.

Apple followed up yesterday’s Mountain Lion Developer Preview update with a new seed of Mountain Lion Server. Unlike some Mount Lion preview updates, which showed up in Software Update on Macs running the previous developer previews, Apple made this update visible in the Apple Developer Center website.

The iPad’s status in larger enterprise businesses is nothing sort of spectacular – it pretty much is the entire enterprise tablet market. As great as that is for Apple, the company has put a lot of effort into courting small and mid-size companies – Lion Server being one example.

According to a new study, that effort is paying off as more than half of small businesses have begun integrating the iPad or some form of tablet.

There are a number of fields and professions in which mobile professionals share a pool of mobile devices. For companies with field agents, sales people, and marketing professionals, the need for each user to have a dedicated device may not be the most economical option and a better approach can be to simply configure a number of iPads with similar specs that users or teams can check out when they go on the road.

This shared iPad model can be  a way to implement the iPad while reducing overall expense. One challenge, however, is that a business typically needs to provide mobile Internet access for individuals or small teams – something that can be a pricey proposition.

A new Forrester report on Apple in the enterprise shows that nearly half of all companies (46%) issue Macs to at least some of their employees. The report also notes that Macs make up a thin slice of the overall computing population in most of those companies – an average of just 7%.

While the report notes that Apple’s overall sales of Macs to businesses increased by more than a third (34.9%), it seems that Macs remain a distinct minority in most businesses. Given the business and enterprise dominance of the iPad and iPhone, the much slower growth of Macs in business can seem surprising by comparison. This issue has been debated time and again over the years and the more common reasons offered tend to be IT professionals having a preferences for Windows, corporate cultures favoring uniformity, and Apple’s refusal to act like most enterprise vendors.

All those are valid points, but one issue that rarely gets raised is that supporting a handful of Macs is a very different experiencing than deploying and managing a larger number of them. It takes a different set of skills on the part of IT professionals and, in most cases, it requires investing in a different set of tools.

Like many technology companies, Apple offers training and certification programs. The company’s certification options have typically been aimed at three different core competencies: hardware troubleshooting/repair, IT support and systems administration, and creative professionals using Apple’s “Pro” applications.

As Apple has moved out of the data center over the past year and a half, it has been making major changes to its training and certification options for IT professionals. Some of these changes could have been anticipated and some have been big surprises with major consequences to individuals and to organizations that have long employed Apple enterprise solutions.

Along with announcing the new iPad and Apple TV (and related iOS and app updates), Apple released a new tool for managing iOS devices in business and education. The new Apple Configurator app is a free download in the Mac App Store for Macs running Lion. Although it takes the sting out of managing iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches for smaller organizations, it won’t replace more full feature mobile management solutions for mid-size or larger companies.

Apple has added another profile to its iPad in Business site. This one covers a company called Theatre Consultants Collaborative. Like all the iPad in Business videos and profiles, it illustrates the flexibility that the iPad offers and how it can be used as a professional tool across a wide range of industries.

Psychotherapist Marcos Quinones has got streamlining a one-man office down to a science.

Quinones, a former software developer, is a New York City-based cognitive behavioral therapist and licensed clinical social worker who runs his entire office on Apple gear.

He credits the iPad with making a big impact in the smooth running of his sole practice.

As part of our continuing series about businesses using the iPad, he shares a few key apps that help him process payments and help with patient records, saving time and money.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — Mophie’s newest case, launched yesterday, incorporates a credit-card reader and allows business owners to process physical credit card transactions through the iPhone. To interface with the case’s reader, Mophie recruited Intuit’s free GoPayment app, which is compatible with Inuit’s flagship QuickBooks small business accounting package.

Even considering Mophie’s reputation for cutting-edge iPhone cases, this one is pretty remarkable — and a challenge to products like Square’s credit card reader for iPhone. The case is available now, and sells for $180.