Business - page 12

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.

SOTI provides an interesting mix of mobile device and PC management solutions. On the desktop, it offers Windows PC management as well as remote access and screen sharing tools useful to many help desks. From a mobile perspective, it provides a range features including device and app management. Its on-device software and SDK support a range of useful features for iOS devices including two-way chat with users and remote access options. MobiControl SDK also includes a file sync solution for managing content and internal enterprise app data on iPhones and iPads.

Apple has added several whitepapers to its training site. All them address enterprise technologies in Lion. While many of the whitepapers have been available from Apple in the past, two of them appear to be new additions. The first of these details the use of Configuration Profiles to manage Macs running Lion as well as iOS device while the second covers 802.1X networking.

The first new whitepaper, which isn’t dated, is definitely the more interesting of the two.  It discusses Mac management as an extension of mobile device management (MDM). As we reported last week, Apple appears to be positioning Macs running Mountain Lion to be managed in the same manner as iOS devices rather than using its long-standing Managed Preferences architecture that has been built into OS X and OS X Server since their initial releases over a decade ago.

Healthcare has been a natural fit for the iPad and, to a slightly smaller extent, the iPhone. iOS devices can provide interaction with electronic records and other patient information as well as offer access to reference guides, medical images like X-rays, and even remote diagnoses via FaceTime.

A new program being tested in California’s Marin County aims to bring some of those abilities to paramedics in the field. The program, which equips paramedic teams with iPhones via a specialized QR reader app, is a joint venture with Silicon Valley startup Lifesquare. Its aim is to allow paramedics instant access to patient information using QR codes stickers.

We’ve profiled a range of companies and products during our Mobile Management Month event. One of the things that seems to stand out to some readers is the number of companies that offer mobile management as part of a larger set of enterprise and IT solutions. Integrated solutions are nothing new to IT. The cultural shift of mobile devices and BYOD programs, however, have many organizations wondering whether to go with an integrated  or branch out into new territory and use a range of deployment, management, and monitoring tools for desktop systems as well as mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.

One of the challenges that the BYOD and consumerization trends are creating for IT departments is employee use of public and/or personal cloud services. We’ve covered some of the big challenges this presents in terms of data security and ownership as well as the potential business continuity problems stemming from multiple versions of documents stored across different cloud services by multiple employees.

IT concerns may be more common and well-known, but there are cloud-related issues that employees need to consider as well – particularly if they use a work email address to register for a service, access a service from work, or use a service to store or transfer work-related files.

As technology and always-connected devices become more pervasive in our daily lives, companies, think-tanks, government agencies, non-profits, and other organizations have access tremendous new pools of information about virtually anything on the planet. The challenge of such a “big data” world is how to aggregate that information, analyse it, make substantive conclusions, and then package in a useful form.

Making sense of data and communicating the results in a concise and effective manner is such a big challenge that many organizations will pay research firms and think-tanks to analyse and package data form them – often as static snapshots  with pages of text and charts and accompanying PowerPoint files.

The ability to access real-time data in a useful way is one of the things that makes MeLLmo’s iPad app Roambi a great business intelligence tool. Today, however, the company announced that it’s taking Roambi a step further and allowing companies to turn the Roambi’s dynamic and interactive data dashboards into full-fledged iOS apps in their own right and market them in the App Store.

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.

FileWave is a new entrant into the mobile management space but a longtime player in many business and enterprise environments. FileWave offer multi-platform file and application deployment and licensing management for all desktop systems across an organization. The company has a very impressive track record for both IT-managed and self-service provisioning and deployment that has made it a solid enterprise solution for companies with Macs, Windows PCs, and Linux desktops. More recently, the company has begun offering iOS device management functionality. For Apple-oriented businesses, the combination of desktop and mobile device application management makes FileWave a choice well worth considering.

Microsoft is a company known for creating strict, labyrinthine, costly terms in its commercial and end-user licensing. With Windows 8 seen as a make-or-break product for Microsoft, the company has already been adding licensing terms intended to strengthen its hand in the mobile market. As we reported earlier this year, Microsoft’s enterprise licensing for Windows 8 has provisions to coerce businesses into buying ARM-based Windows RT tablets while punishing those that deploy iPads with more costly terms.

Ratcheting things up a notch, Microsoft’s general counsel Tim Fielden announced new details about the company’s end-user license agreements. Although not mentioning specific products or services, Fielden posted on a Microsoft blog that many new agreements will prohibit users from initiating a class action lawsuit against the company.

RIM has made a lot of headlines lately. Most of them have involved an ongoing exodus of executives leaving the company for greener pastures and/or reports of massive layoffs as the company tried to restructure itself under the leadership of new CEO Thorsten Heins.

There’s one bright spot of publicity for RIM this week, however. J. Crew CEO and Apple board member Millard Drexler uses a BlackBerry Bold 9900 – a fact noted after a CNBC piece about operations at J. Crew.

Is this good news for RIM? Yes and no. It shows that not every major company has abandoned the BlackBerry and not every executive has demanded an iPhone (at least not yet). Of course, if Drexler wasn’t a member of Apple’s board of directors, it’s likely that no one would really care what type of smartphone he used.

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.

The biggest challenge for many business when dealing with the consumerization of IT and BYOD trends is often cultural. IT needs to cede control of devices, app choices, and where/when employees and executives actually interact with corporate data. That’s a cultural shift for IT. There’s an equal cultural shift that needs to happen when it comes to users and executives who must take at least partial responsibility for keeping their iPhones, iPads, or other devices secure along with the business data on them.

This requires user education and solid communication between users and IT. To be truly effective, security policies need to be endorsed by senior management and adoption and understanding of them needs to follow from the top down through the organization.

Unfortunately, that isn’t what’s happening in many businesses. In fact, the people most likely to ignore or violate such policies are C-level executives, members of the board of directors, and even IT.

One of the hallmarks of Google Docs (and now Google Drive) is that you can use it anywhere. Within reason, any device with a modern web browser can deliver some level of viewing, editing, and collaboration. On iOS devices, however, native Office-style apps like Quickoffice tend to deliver a somewhat better user experience and are capable of opening, editing, and syncing documents with your Google.

There’s a clear value for such capability on an iOS device in that most apps deliver a better experience than Google Docs running in mobile Safari. Is there a similar need on the desktop? Would a native app a better solution than using Chrome or Safari on your Mac? According to Mac/iOS developer Tricky Duck, the answer is yes.

There are a handful of intrinsic beliefs that Apple has as company – most of which came from Steve Jobs. The constant focus on building experiences rather than just products is one of them. Another is that Apple looks forward and not backward when it comes to technology. The company simply acknowledges that to offer its users truly great new experiences (and products), it cannot hold onto (and be held back by) outdated technology.

Apple often gets criticized for pushing its technologies and its users forward, particularly in business and enterprise IT circles. Despite that criticism, Apple may be doing companies (and users) a big favor by not supporting older Macs and OS X releases indefinitely as Microsoft does with Windows XP – and that advantage isn’t just about better products.

An IDC study commissioned by Microsoft discovered that supporting XP now costs companies and schools five times what it would cost them to support Windows 7 – making Apple’s forward-looking policy not only technically advantageous but also significantly less expense in the long run.

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.

Over the past several months, Box has reinvented itself. The company went from being a pretty basic cloud storage solution to true enterprise solution and a hub for storing, viewing, and editing all manner of documents on an iPad or other mobile device. Box’s journey continued this week as the company launched a series of new features for business and enterprise customers.

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.

Absolute Manage MDM provides all the major mobile management capabilities. In addition device and app management, Absolute Manage MDM offers a secure on-device file store option called AbsoluteSafe that can be used to deliver files directly to user devices. AbsoluteSafe includes the ability to automate access to files by policies or schedule in addition to on-demand file deployment, removal, or access rights adjustments. The suite integrates with the company’s Absolute desktop client management (Mac and Windows) and deployment suite, together they can provide complete IT and lifecycle management features mobile devices, Macs, PCs, and software.

Lead by the iPad, tablets, and other non-phone devices accounted for 20% of mobile ads during the first quarter of 2012. That number is up 5% from the first quarter of last year. The increase reflects a change in the mix of mobile devices that people use to consume content and may have implications for the entire ad industry – mobile and otherwise.

Sprint took a gamble on the iPhone last fall. In exchange for getting the iPhone 4 and 4S on its network, the company agreed to pay $15 billion in subsidies over the next four years. The company acknowledged that it pays 40% more to subsidize the iPhone than it does for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone handsets. To get shareholders on board, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse actually gave up $3.25 million in compensation.

It looks like Sprint’s investment may be paying off in unexpected. A new study by the Yankee Group revealed this week that the iPhone has a halo effect for carriers as well as it does for other Apple products – an effect that dramatically changed public perception of Sprint once it began carried the iPhone.

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.

One interesting moment during last year’s WWDC keynote was when Steve Jobs said that Apple was moving beyond the digital hub strategy it had embraced for years. He talked about how our computers are no longer the hub of our digital life and said that Apple was demoting the Macs and PCs and making them just another device like an iPhone or iPad.

That message set the stage for iCloud and for cord-free iOS devices that don’t need a Mac or PC for activation, backup, or sync.

There was also a much subtler message, however, that no one really picked up on at that time. In making the Mac just another device, Apple was likely laying the groundwork to change how companies and schools manage Macs – essentially treating them as just another device and bringing the mobile device management (MDM) paradigm introduced in iOS 4 to OS X and Mac management.

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.

Apple has gotten a fair amount of flack over Siri – most of it relating to Siri not recognizing words or phrases, misinterpreting requests, or providing incomplete or inaccurate answers. Apple is even facing a class action lawsuit over Siri not working as promised by iPhone 4S ads.

For IBM, however, the concern isn’t that Siri won’t work as advertised. Big blue is worried that Siri will work exactly as advertised and that confidential and sensitive information will leak outside IBM’s network as a result. For those reasons, the company disables Siri on the iPhones of its employees.

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.

Zenprise focuses on the complete lifecycle management of mobile devices in enterprise environments. The company provides the core set of device and app management needs and offers integration with enterprise systems. Zenprise puts a particular emphasis mobile device inventory for both company-owned and BYOD devices.