Business - page 20

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.

If there’s a buzzword for here at the first CITE Conference, it would have to be trust. Virtually every discussion I’ve had over the past two days has boiled down to the level of trust between IT and users.

Trust may be the foundation of all healthy human relationships, but it isn’t something that comes easily to IT professionals in the workplace. That’s the underlying tension that IT staffers have when it comes to the consumerization of IT. It isn’t about devices or public cloud services. It’s about trusting the users that you support.

What do IT staffers and execs want to see in the iPad 3? Pretty much the same things as everyone else.

Apple is the pink elephant in the room at the CITE Conference in San Francisco. The company isn’t participating but the company’s products, particularly the iPad, are constantly being discussed. In talking to attendees about tomorrow’s iPad 3 launch event, there isn’t a specific IT-oriented feature that they want to see.

The consumerization of IT is about more than just a handful of users bringing their own devices into the office. That’s the big take away from the first morning here the CITE Conference in San Francisco. The real story is that movement may have started out with people taking their iPads to work and and checking Twitter throughout the workday, but it has become something much much greater.

At heart, this movement isn’t so much about devices, social networks, or cloud services – it’s about how these technologies have changed the relationship that people have with technology. Apple and other companies have made most people comfortable with technology and shown them an experience of solutions that just work.

The release of OS X Mountain Lion is still months away, but it’s never too early to save some money.

OS X Mountain Lion is going to be the first major OS X update sold and distributed exclusively through the App Store. This means that if you want to upgrade you must purchase and download it from the App Store. For savvy buyers out there, this might be a good opportunity to get a discount on your upgrade by taking advantage of special deals on iTunes Gift Cards.

The iPhone and iPad have been core players in the so-called consumerization of IT. This trend that is transforming whole industries is both a challenge and an opportunity for IT professionals, managers, and individuals in just about every field out there.

The first ever Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise (CITE) conference and expo as it kicks off this weekend in San Francisco. The conference is a unique opportunity to hear from IT and business leaders from every industry was well as vendors, experts, and end users that have jumped in and seized the reins of this new workplace phenomenon. On tap will be stories about innovation, case studies in successful mobile initiatives, and much more.

Many pundits have made the argument that the iPad’s days in the business and corporate world will be numbered once Microsoft releases Windows 8 and Windows on ARM (WOA) tablets later this year. The biggest rationale behind this argument is that corporate IT departments will feel much more comfortable deploying and managing Windows devices and that they will already have the skills, tools,  and resources needed to setup, secure, and roll out Windows-powered iPad competitors.

That argument lost a lot of credibility this week when Microsoft acknowledged that WOA tablets cannot be managed like other Windows variants including Windows 8 on PCs and x86 tablets or PCs running Windows 7, Vista, or XP. This makes the iPad much more suited for business than Windows on ARM devices.

Unlike most computers, the iPad isn’t designed to be a multi-user device. iOS doesn’t support multiple user accounts or profiles – that essentially means one set of device and application settings along with a personal collection of information like notes, email, browser bookmarks, and stored passwords for different online services. Sharing a device with that much personal data makes it easy for someone to snoop while using another person’s iPhone or iPad or on an iPad that is commonly shared between multiple users.

Passtouch is a web browser for the iPad that’s designed to offer at least some multi-user capabilities as well as to secure web-based information like bookmarks, cookies, and stored passwords. It doesn’t offer whole-device accounts or profiles but it does offer some extra security for devices that are regularly shared.

Despite RIM’s reassurances to developers at this week’s Mobile World Congress, the mass exodus of its government customers continued as another U.S. federal agency announced that it would ditch BlackBerry in favor of the iPhone. The agency in question is The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which announced that it will be abandoning the BlackBerry and RIM services beginning this month.

As the agency revealed its plans, RIM attempted to cast a softer light on the situation by playing up it’s overall standing with the U.S. government.

RIM, which is not showing much in the way of new products or technologies at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, sought to dispel the idea that its failures over the past year had created tensions between the itself and BlackBerry developers.

The words, meant to be reassuring to developers and users, had a rather hollow ring to them considering that the company has seen major mobile developers retreating from its existing OS and its new platforms based around QNX. The move comes as RIM is seeking to court developers for its PlayBook tablet and future BlackBerry 10 devices. It also comes following the loss of several high profile enterprise BlackBerry customers, something that is sure to be on the minds of mobile developers when choosing platforms to support.

Dell attempted today to rebrand itself as an end-to-end enterprise IT vendor amid slowing consumer PC sales. The company appears to be following in the footsteps of IBM, which sold its PC business to Lenovo, and HP, which came close to selling off its personal systems division last summer.

Dell won’t be getting out of the PC business completely, at least not yet. The company will continue to produce its XPS line of computers, which it cites as a success. It will, however, move away from less profitable markets including PC peripherals.

If you’ve read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, you may remember that Apple’s board was initially very hesitant to give Jobs a green light about creating Apple’s retail stores. A decade later, the stores have been an amazing success with hundreds of outlets around the world. They have also become the most profitable retail outlets in America.

Research company RetailSails ranked the country’s top retailers using the common retail metric of annual sales per square foot. Apple nabbed the top spot with sales averaging $5,647 per foot – nearly double high-end jeweler Tiffany and Co., which came in a distant second.

There have been a lot of ideas suggested for what Apple could do with its nearly $100 billion in cash. Some have been serious suggestions like companies that Apple could buy while others are a little more absurd but illustrate just how much money Apple’s got.

Today, Warren Buffett revealed to viewers of CNBC’s Squawk Box that Steve Jobs wasn’t sure what to do with all the money Apple began raking in over recent years and asked for advice. He ultimately ignored that advice in his typical fashion while telling others that Buffett agreed with his decision for Apple to just sit on its money.

A recent study of finance chiefs at over 200 companies revealed that one in six expect the job of CIO to be gone within five years. More than twice that many (40%) expected that IT will eventually be folded into the finance department. This highlights the impact of trends like BYOD, the consumerization of IT, and the growing importance of cloud services.

As IT departments struggle to deal with an ever-increasing influx of iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and other “consumer” technologies, this raises big questions. Would handing management of IT over to a CFO with limited technical experience help or hinder Apple’s position as a business vendor? Would that drive BYOD programs or inhibit them? Would this ultimately be beneficial to most employees at a company?

Although Android has an overall lead over iOS in smartphone marketshare, there are IT departments that remain hesitant on the platform. Unlike the iPad and iPhone, which are beginning to be seen to be as business tools rather than consumer-oriented entertainment devices, most Android phones have yet to prove that they offer a business feature that can’t be found on other platforms. Samsung’s newly announced Galaxy Beam smartphone may be the first Android phone to solidly offer something powerful and unique for business users.

The Galaxy Beam is Samsung’s new handset that includes a 15-lumen pico projector. Although Samsung’s press release for the phone offering a lot of personal entertainment uses, this is a device that has clear business potential.

Let’s face it, RIM has been suffering from a serious personality conflict. The company is trying to cling to its enterprise business while also making its brand more attractive as a consumer alternative to iOS and Android.

Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the company’s PlayBook tablet. RIM initially pitched the PlayBook as being all about consuming content like movies and other media. At the same time, RIM was also trying to sell it as a business device when paired with a BlackBerry even though it lacked core enterprise apps (including email) that could run on the device when it wasn’t tethered to a BlackBerry – a fact that led to RIM hyping the PlayBook’s email app (introduced this week in PlayBook OS 2) as an exciting new feature.

RIM may be caught in this consumer/business identity struggle, but Netflix made it clear today that it doesn’t see RIM as a consumer company – or at least not as a viable one.

Last month, OnLive launched its free cloud-based Windows desktop app for the iPad. OnLive Desktop provides iPad users with a cloud-based Windows 7 desktop that comes complete with the standard Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and 2GB of storage. This week, the cloud-gaming company expanded the features and storage available to OnLive Desktop users via new subscription plans – one of the most notable being that OnLive Desktop can now play Flash videos and content.

The company will also be adding a more full featured “Pro” plan that will let users install additional Windows applications and an enterprise service that would allow companies to configure and manage virtual Windows desktops on the iPad’s of employees.

Healthcare was one of the first fields to adopt the iPad after it launched two years ago. As with other fields, the initial use of the iPad in healthcare came from doctors and other professionals buying their own iPads and bringing them into their practices or along with them on rounds – a move that predated most of today’s BYOD planning.

A recent study of mobile technology in healthcare clearly shows that the iPad is the number one device used by doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers with significantly greater use than Android or BlackBerry devices or even the iPhone.

Along with iTunes (ten minutes to transfer a TV show to my iPad?), the iTunes Apps Store is possibly the worst experience one can have while using Apple products. You can never find anything good; all the listings are clogged with scam software and other crap; and it is slow, slow, slow. The good news is that Apple looks set to fix it, with the purchase of Chomp.

A new report from Forrester makes it clear that IT departments and the users that they support are not on the same page when it comes to employees using their own devices in the workplace. In fact, according to Forrester’s survey of both IT staffers and knowledge workers illustrates that IT may be largely out of touch with how many users are bringing their own iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices and how many devices each employee is bringing to the workplace.

This adds an interesting counterpoint to the study that we profiled early today that indicated that by and large IT departments are beginning to embrace BYOD and other parts of the consumerization of IT trend.

When it comes to the consumerization of IT, there general perception is that IT professionals are very resistant to allowing the use of so-called consumer technology like the iPhone and iPad along with various personal cloud services. While it is true that many IT departments are hesitant about some aspects of this movement, they aren’t as fully resistant to consumer technology in the workplace as media reports would make you believe.

In fact, the results of a recent study looking at the use of personal computing technologies in the enterprise indicate that many IT departments are actively embracing the iPhone and iPad and the entire consumerization trend. The study, being reported by Business Computing World in the UK, included more than 600 senior executives around the world and turned up some surprising results – including how much money goes into managing employee-owned devices.

Apple hasn’t made the Mac App Store the only source for Mac software, but the company is nudging both developers and users in the store’s direction. That’s fine for consumers, but it may create problems for businesses that need to buy software in bulk and distribute it to a large number of Macs.

Securing business data on employee-owned devices like the iPhone and iPad is one of the biggest challenges for IT departments when it comes to operating bring your own device (BYOD) programs. The mobile device management (MDM) approach taken by most companies is an excellent starting point because it aims to make devices themselves more secure. Unfortunately, it also tends to impose limits on what workers can do with an iPhone or iPad that they bought and paid for out of their own pockets.

Another approach to the challenge is to carve out a specific niche of secure storage on each employee-owned devices. Good Technology has always offered this mechanism for securing business emails and related technologies like shared contacts and calendars. This week, Good took that concept and made it available to iOS developers in a product called Good Dynamics.

Mobile devices are now so common in the workplace that we’ve reached a tipping point where providing mobile options for many desktop apps has become a requirement for businesses. That’s the findings of a new survey from Symantec on mobile device use in business.

The survey, initially reported by InfoWorld, identified that not only are the numbers of mobile devices increasing, but also that the tasks they perform are increasing. A dramatic number of companies are now seeing core business tasks being completed on mobile devices. That’s driving the need for companies to develop comprehensive mobile apps for access to corporate information systems.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s (NCCN) annual conference on clinical practice guidelines and quality cancer care. The topic of the discussion is Cancer and Corporate America: Business As Usual. At the moment it isn’t clear if Cook will attend (NCCN lists both speakers that have confirmed their attendance as well as those that have not).

The invitation raises some questions about why the organization chose to invite Cook. One obvious answer centers around the role that Cook played in managing Apple while Steve Jobs was fighting the pancreatic cancer that eventually led to his death last year. While that is certainly plausible, there could be other reasons behind NCCN’s invitation.