Ryan Faas - page 18

One of the big fears CIOs and IT staffers have about the consumerization of IT and BYOD trends is that mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone combined with personal cloud services like iCloud, Google Docs, and Dropbox make it very easy for confidential business data to leave the office and the company network.While this is a definite fear for IT staff, how do most knowledge workers view the risk and the consequences of such so-called data sprawl?

According to a recent study, four out of five workers rank removing confidential data from the office as an offense that should get a person fired and yet 90% believe that it happens on a regular basis.

LTE is one of the key features available on the new iPad. All that extra speed can be a great feature for consumers and business users alike, although the ability to burn through data that quickly means that all LTE iPad users need to be more conscious of their data use than with the previous 3G iPads (the same will no doubt be true for the next iPhone).

A new study claims that most iPad Internet access (94%) still takes place over Wi-Fi networks, however. That seems like bad news for carriers and it sounds like comforting news for CIOs and IT professionals worried about unknown iPads in their companies. After all, if only 6% of iPad connections occur over 3G/4G, then most iPads in the office are using a corporate network and can be tracked and monitored to ensure data and network security.

Unfortunately digging into the actual data from the study reveals iPad users with 3G and LTE models are actually spending a lot more than 6% of their time using their cellular connection.

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.

Earlier this week, we highlighted the growing need for companies to develop more comprehensive approaches to iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices than simply purchasing and implementing a mobile device management console. The device-only approach isn’t always a solution in itself and there’s a growing trend of focusing on managing the information and apps on an iOS device instead of (or in addition to) the device itself.

As this multi-tiered model becomes more common, businesses are typically looking at multiple solutions, which is prompting companies in this space to develop strategic partnerships or consider acquisitions as a way of offer businesses a more integrated approach. Two instances of this were the announcement of Good and Box partnering for secure data and enterprise cloud storage and Symantec’s acquisition of Nukona and Odyssey.

Another partnership was announced yesterday between MDM vendor MobileIron and enterprise wireless firm iPass.

Yesterday’s news that RIM is looking to hire iOS developers with the intention of creating iOS apps unleashed a lot of speculation about what the BlackBerry manufacturer might be planning to release for iPhones and iPads. After initially being tight-lipped and refusing to comment on the job posting, RIM’s PR team revealed that its iOS app development plans center around its BlackBerry Fusion product.

BlackBerry Fusion is RIM’s new mobile device device management solution. The product, which RIM launched earlier this year along with the first major update to its PlayBook tablet’s OS, can manage BlackBerry and PlayBook devices. RIM plans to and support for managing iOS and Android devices as well.

RIM’s statement was pretty vague beyond confirming that it’s new management solution will be the focus of this position, leaving room for speculation as to what additional features an on-device app will enable under RIM’s new management console.

RIM has making some interesting choices regarding its future over the past year. The company launched its PlayBook tablet with what was really a beta release of the OS. It expanded its device management platform to include support for managing iOS and Android devices (though many saw that move as too little openness too late in the game). And it introduced support for Android apps in last month’s PlayBook OS update.

In another move that will leave observes scratching their heads, RIM is looking to hire iOS developers. Unlike RIM’s recruitment of Android developers, this doesn’t appear to be in any way aimed at porting existing apps to the PlayBook. The job posting, which lists RIM’s Bellevue, WA location, is for an internal Senior iOS developer that would be creating enterprise-focused iOS apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Apple uses digital certificates and code signing in various ways to help keep Macs secure. One common example is that apps sold through the Mac App Store are digitally signed, which allows an individual Mac to know that it’s getting the genuine article when a user launches the App Store app. It also allows a Mac to ensure that an application hasn’t been tampered with by a malicious user or a piece of malware each time that app is launched (Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper feature will be based on the same technology).

The same process is used with Apple’s Software Update servers. Each update from Apple is digitally signed using a certificate that let’s each Mac know that they’re getting genuine updates from Apple.

Digital certificates are designed to expire periodically and tomorrow, March 23, 2012, the certificate associated with Apple’s Software Update functionality will be expiring. Apple already has a new certificate ready that won’t expire for seven more years (2019). The transition to the certificate will be transparent for almost all Mac users, but it may create problems with some OS X Server installations.

It’s rare to see government agencies at the front of the technology curve, but it’s becoming more common with U.S. federal agencies after U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel declared at CES that 2012 the year of mobile for the federal government. While most agencies have pushed to reevaluate their mobile technology option during the past few months, the Environmental Protection Agency seems to leading the government charge to mobile.

The EPA announced earlier this week that the agency has adopted a new “mobile first” policy. Under the policy, it is a setting forward-thinking IT mandate than even the most tech-savvy companies have yet to consider or embrace: develop solutions for mobile devices first and then re-work those solutions to function on the desktop.

Lately, RIM has been losing major enterprise customers to Apple on a regular basis. U.S. federal agencies (including NOAA and ATF) have been some of the biggest enterprise switchers from BlackBerry devices to iPhones.

Today’s bad news must have a particularly nasty sting for the BlackBerry manufacturer. For the first time, iPhone sales in RIM’s native Canada have surpassed sales of BlackBerry devices – and by a pretty wide margin. Given the sense of loyalty that many Canadian businesses and consumers have shown to RIM, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, the new numbers highlight the extent of RIM’s challenges and shortcomings.

One of the immediate associations that most people have when they think about the iPad in business is the iPad as a sales tool. Not surprising given its form factor and the ease with which it can display presentations, offer up a portfolio, and generate quotes on the fly.

Do those abilities really add up to increased sales over binders of information, colorful brochures, and canned presentations on DVD? For home security giant ADT, the answer is an emphatic yes.

For many IT shops, the iPad and/or the iPhone can be a conundrum. While iOS has built-in enterprise capabilities, they may not be immediately apparent. There’s also the fact that Apple doesn’t act the same way as most enterprise vendors. Apple does offer enterprise sales and support teams, training and certification programs, and a solid selection of enterprise-related resources, but rarely promotes them. This can be disorienting and frustrating to most IT professionals.

Often there’s a sense of urgency around getting iOS devices integrated securely that adds to this stress – it can be because executives want them, users are bringing them in and doing work on them already with no regard for IT or policies, or because there’s been a decision to offer iPads to specific users or groups.

The ideal beginning when faced with this prospect is to take a deep breath and then to begin breaking down the issues that need to be addressed and prioritizing and handling them. As with other major IT projects, you’ll probably need to develop stop-gap measures to keep things running until your final solution is ready to be rolled out.

There are multiple ways that companies can approach mobile management. The most common approach is device management where IT pre-configure a device and locks it down by not allowing users access to certain features and/or prevents the installation of apps. There’s also the approach of locking down data in which enterprise apps allow IT to create and manage an encrypted sandbox for business data on the device. There’s also the option of taking a lighter hand and issuing policies about acceptable use where IT can use device management tools to ensure that users are complying with those policies.

There are pros and cons to each approach but the truth is that there’s no need to pick one approach over the others. An effective management strategy can actually employ multiple styles of management. It’s also important to remember that mobile management doesn’t need to be one size fits all – it’s perfectly fine to use different levels of management and security based on the job functions of users, on the ownership of devices, or on the devices themselves (and their OS version).

The idea of mixing mobile management options as a best practices got a boost this week in a pari of announcements my some of the major players in the enterprise mobility space.

Earlier this week, NetZero launched a new freemium mobile broadband service using Clearwire’s WiMax 4G network. Although NetZero is the first U.S. company to launch a “free” 4G service, it isn’t going to be the last. Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom has begun work on a similar service called FreedomPop that will launch this summer.

FreedomPop plans to offer more monthly data for free than NetZero’s paltry 200MB. It will also target iPhone owners as a major part of its user base.

A year or two ago, IT departments were focused on mobile device management (MDM) as a way to secure smartphones and other mobile devices. It was a natural extension of how IT had always handled technology in the workplace. While there are times that strict device management is the best approach (such as K-12 schools), IT departments are beginning to realize that MDM isn’t always the course of action.

In fact, the rush to lock down every device feature was little more than stale and rather old thinking on the parts of IT leaders who are now looking for better options.

According to a new report, Microsoft will launch Windows 8 this October. That tracks with the company’s announced plan to launch the latest version of Windows before the end of the. The launch will include traditional PCs like desktops and notebook as well as tablets. How successful Microsoft and its partners will be in taking business and consumer tablet marketshare away from the iPad remains an open question, however.

Over the past two years, the Internet has been flooded with stories about the next iPad-killer. The iPad-killing hype has been applied to the Cisco Cius, Motorola Xoom, BlackBerry PlayBook, HP Touch Pad, and Galaxy Tab just to name a few. Several of these products were specifically hyped at being business tablets – alternatives to the iPad in the workplace.

At the end of the day, however, the iPad still rules the tablet space in general and the business tablet in particular. Despite being a “consumer” device, the business tablet market is really the business iPad market. The latest statistic to drive this point home is that, during the new iPad launch, Apple sold more iPads in one weekend during than one quarter of Android tablets ever sold.

Sales figures like that pose a question for IT departments – Is there a point to developing support models for Android tablets?

Carriers are constantly talking about the limited spectrum available for mobile devices. That’s the reason that give for instituting data caps and throttling heavy users. It’s reasonable to assume that carriers exaggerate the real issues somewhat when the trot this argument out as a case for data caps and tiered data pricing (they make a lot of money that way), but it is true that radio spectrum is a finite resource. With Cisco predicting an 39-fold increase mobile traffic use will over the next four years, carriers will need to find creative ways to manage the slices of spectrum that they have.

One option is to offload service to Wi-Fi networks. All iPhone (or other smartphone) users do this already to some extent when we connect our iPhones to our home networks. They deliver better performance and let use as much data as we want without having to worry about it impacting our next bill. Two mobile trade groups are looking to turn this same offloading model into a large scale option for carriers to deliver better mobile broadband while taking the load off their 3G or 4G networks.

One of the feature on the new iPad is its dictation capabilities, a feature also available on the iPhone 4S (which also boasts Apple’s Siri virtual assistant feature). There are quite a few ways that high quality dictation and other speech to text capabilities could useful to professionals in many fields.

The problem is that in order to get that high quality dictation functionality, the new iPad and the iPhone 4S rely on Apple’s servers to do much of the work in turning your speech into text. More importantly, it isn’t just snippets of voice recordings that get sent to Apple. Personal data from your iPad or iPhone 4S gets uploaded as well and much of it remains associated with you and your device. That’s a general concern for most of us, but for professionals in regulated industries like healthcare or fields that require confidentiality like finance and legal professions, it becomes a critical privacy concern and may even break the law.

Even though the iPad has been around for two years at this point and has proven itself in a vast array of business settings, there are companies that haven’t yet needed to consider how to support or even officially allow iPads on their networks.

If you’re a IT professional at one of those companies, it’s pretty likely that you’ll eventually need to formulate a strategy – and after last week’s record breaking launch of the newest iPad, you’ll most likely need to come up with a plan sooner rather than later. You may already have new iPad owners lining up outside your office wanting to use their new latest and greatest iPad at work.

It can be a daunting prospect to figure out to integrate the new iPad (or even the original iPad or iPad 2) into your environment, especially if you’re under the gun to get the iPad into service as quickly as possible. Breaking that integration down into immediate needs and eventual goals is the best way to get started and it often starts with these five questions.

NetZero made a name for itself in the late nineties by offering free ad-supported dialup Internet access before turning to a low-cost model (still available for dialup and and basic DSL). NetZero is returning to its free/freemium roots with today’s announcement of a contract-free 4G service. The service offers several tiers of data use with the first one being free beyond purchasing a 4G device.

While intriguing, the free service tier definitely illustrates the “you get what you pay for” addage. Some of the other tiers are attractive, but there are some downsides and, quite frankly, a Verizon 4G iPad may be a much smarter investment in the long run.

Anyone who’s ever flown is familiar with the “please turn off all electronic devices” speech that flight attendants give after closing the airplane door and again shortly before landing. The ban on electronic devices of all kinds exists out of fear that devices might interfere with the planes navigation and other systems, even if the device doesn’t include any sort of radio antenna.

The ban on electronic devices has come under fire recently as the F.A.A. has been certifying the use of iPads in the cockpit during all phases of flight (including takeoff and landing) by various commercial airlines as a replacement for hefty “flight bags” of paper manuals and charts.

In a move that will music to the ears of Words With Friends addict Alec Baldwin, the agency is looking at allowing the use of electronic devices by passengers during takeoff and landing

Just a few short weeks ago, Michael Dell announced that his company should no longer be considered a consumer PC and device maker. Dell should now be considered an IT vendor with a focus on enterprise data center products, went the message. The company was going to get out of the device and peripheral business.

What a difference a few weeks can make when it comes to a company’s message. While the tech world focused on today’s launch of Apple’s new iPad, Dell’s chief commercial officer Steve Felice was talking up the company’s ability to challenge the iPad in business environments. Or put more accurately, the ability that Dell will have to challenge the iPad when Windows 8 ships later this year.

If you bought a new iPad with LTE today, you may already be using it at the office or planning to do so on Monday morning. The iPad is a great business device and it’s becoming more commonplace for workers to provide their own smartphones and other mobile devices. The addition of LTE really bumps up what you can do on the road or after hours.

But that LTE service, which expands how productive you can be away from your desk comes with a price tag that you’re probably paying out of your own pocket. If you regularly use LTE (or even 3G) service on your new iPad or other device for work, should your employer be footing part of the bill?

When Apple introduced FaceTime on the iPhone 4 nearly two years ago, many users were disappointed to find out that they could only place video calls while connected to Wi-Fi. That was a disappointing fact, but not entirely surprising given the bandwidth that it takes to pull off a high quality video call and Apple’s penchant for making the user experience perfect at all costs.

Guaranteeing a solid experience might have made a good deal of sense when it comes to the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and iPhone 4S – all of them are 3G devices and 3G data performance often falls short of terrestrial broadband and Wi-Fi. But the Wi-Fi only restriction remains in place on the new iPad models with LTE even though LTE performance can approach that of many home broadband options – begging the question: Why is Apple limiting FaceTime on its new LTE devices?

People may love the new iPad, but it seems that not everyone loves the name “new iPad.” A recent poll found that more half of consumers don’t like it and would rather see Apple go back to specific model names like the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S.

According the poll, run by opinion and survey site SodaHead.com, 54% of users liked the old naming format better with 46% approving of the simpler designation of the device as simply “the new iPad.”