mobile management - page 7

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.

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.

Earlier this week, Centrify launched an open beta of the company’s DirectControl for Mobile service. The service, which supports managing iPhones, iPads, and Android devices in business and enterprise settings, currently includes a subset of the features typical in other mobile device management (MDM) systems. Centrify, which is known for providing enterprise integration technologies for OS X as well as various Unix and Linux distributions, plans to maintain the current selection of controls as a free solution when the product emerges from beta while adding further management capabilities to a commercially licensed version.

Most MDM solutions are of the bolted-on variety – they run on a dedicated server or cloud offering that can pull information from enterprise systems like Microsoft’s Active Directory but use a separate management interface and data store for management profiles and other information. Centrify’s DirectControl does offer a cloud management system, but it uses Active Directory itself as the primary interface and data store, an approach that has several advantages including a very minimal learning curve for experienced systems administrators.

Some arguments about Apple never seem die despite the fact that reality has moved on. Arguments like the Mac not being compatible with Windows file sharing or disk formats and that all Apple products being inherently more expensive than any competitors. This morning, Computerworld’s Preston Gralla pulled several of these outdated arguments together to support his opinion that Apple would never unseat Microsoft in the enterprise.

Virtually every argument in this piece is easy to debunk with facts. What’s more important than responding to these outdated myths, however, is realizing that Apple doesn’t want to unseat Microsoft from its current place in the enterprise. Microsoft is actually doing a lot of enterprise heavy lifting for Apple.

One of the challenges of BYOD programs is the need secure corporate data on an employee’s personal device. That usually includes locking down the device and applying varying management profiles to it. This can be as non-intrusive as requiring a passcode meeting certain criteria or it can be very restrictive and limit core features and services like iCloud or Siri on the iPhone 4S.

While there’s a technical challenge to securing employee-owned devices, there’s also a personal challenge. It’s not a small demand to ask for someone’s brand new iPhone or iPad and impose limits on what they can do with it, even if that means something as trivial as enforcing a passcode policy. It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that employees sometimes object to that intrusion, particularly when it comes to more severe management requirements.

The question is: how does IT respond to this situation?

The consumerization of IT along with the growing trend of BYOD programs in business is requiring virtually all companies to at least look at mobile device management (MDM) solutions. There are dozens of MDM vendors out there that support iOS as well as most flavors of Android. The cost and complexity of implementing mobile management can vary widely depending on the extended feature sets of MDM products.

Until now, most MDM vendors offered enterprise-style licensing programs and there were very few low cost cost options. That changed this morning with Amtel’s announcement that it will be offering a free cloud-based MDM solution that supports a basic set or features for iPhones, iPads, and some Android devices.

This week’s Microsoft announcement of the details of Windows 8 on ARM-powered tablets raises a big question: Will Windows 8 tablets based on ARM or running on more tradition x86 hardware blunt the iPad’s surge in business and enterprise environments?

A few years ago, it would have been easy to say that Windows 8 devices would become the defacto standard in business, particularly for large companies with Microsoft-centric IT infrastructure. But conventional wisdom like that has broken down when it comes to workplace technology in the face of BYOD programs and the consumerization of IT trends. In today’s environment, there are many factors that could tilt the playing field in favor of either Microsoft or Apple.

There’s no doubt that iCloud offers some great value to Mac and iOS users. It even has some potential as a business tool. Unfortunately, like many other personal cloud services, iCloud presents some major securtiy concerns when it comes into the workplace – either on a user’s iOS device or on a business Mac or PC. Those concerns stem from the ability to sync business data to outside devices and computers as well as its capacity to archive some of that data on Apple’s iCloud servers.

Unlike most personal cloud products, which can be difficult to effectively disable in corporate or business settings, iCloud use can be restricted or blocked. That leaves IT departments with the question of whether or not iCloud access should be managed or disabled. It’s a tricky question, particularly in BYOD settings where the device belongs to a user and not the company. It’s made even trickier because the choices involved in managing iCloud are rather blunt in approach and don’t offer much in the way of fine tuning to specific needs.

Today BYOD and the consumerization of IT aren’t just buzzwords on the horizon, they’re fact of business life and have begun transforming the workplace for millions of professionals. Many solutions exist to deal with managing user-owned mobile devices and integrating them to varying degrees with corporate resources and shared data – something that the explosion of cloud products is helping to drive. Many enterprise cloud solutions (public and private) exist to meet these demands while ensuring data management and security.

Unfortauntely, cloud solutions aren’t limited to the workplace and consumer cloud products including Apple’s iCloud, Dropbox, Box.net, Google Docs and many others have become staple parts of our daily lives. That’s great news for all of as consumers. It gives us access to our files and data anywhere at anytime on almost any device. But consumer cloud technologies pose a big headache for IT professionals who are responsible with keeping business and workplace data both readily available and appropriately secured.

A big challenge for businesses and organizations is cost management, particularly in the current economic climate. Many companies are trying to maximise their budgets – one of the big factors pushing the BYOD trend. Where BYOD isn’t feasible, however, businesses may still have the need to support mobile professionals – and need to do so as cost effectively as possible.

Despite the common presumption that Apple solutions are more expensive, the iPhone offers companies unique advantages when it comes to keeping costs down – and those advantages aren’t likely to be found in Android devices.

Haliburton’s decision to choose iOS as its new mobile platform was made after “significant research” indicated that iOS “offered the best capabilities, controls and security for application development,” according to a leaked memo published by AppleInsider.  These capabilities, collectively known as mobile device management (MDM) features offer a solid framework that can be used to apply a number of security policies like complex passcode requirements and that a device’s data be encrypted.  MDM features also include the ability to IT departments to restrict access to iOS features (say installing apps or taking photos) and to monitor devices remotely.  Of course, they also include the ability to remotely wipe a device if it’s lost or stolen.

One excellent facet of MDM in iOS 4 and iOS 5 is the ability to monitor a device.  There are a wide range of states that management software, including the Profile Manager service in Lion Server, can collect about managed devices.  This includes seeing what apps have been installed, ensuring OS updates are rolled out, and being able to tell if a device has been jailbroken.

While all this may sound a bit like big brother, if you’re a major energy company with operations in dozens of countries, security can be a major issue.  Of course, I could say the same thing about a medical practice needing to maintain privacy compliance.

In what appears to be a watershed moment for Apple’s iOS, a leaked memo published at AppleInsider indicates the one of the world’s largest energy companies, Haliburton, will be transitioning to the iPhone as its exclusive smartphone of choice. That comes as a huge opportunity for Apple and iOS, and a huge blow to RIM.

According to the memo, the move will take place over the course of the next two years, but will be a complete transition from one platform to another with no plans to continues to support BlackBerry devices once the transition has been completed.