new m modern mobility - bitpipedocs.media.bitpipe.com/io_13x/io_130394/item_1305331/mm... · 2016....

MARCH 2016 VOLUME 2, NO. 3

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESKEMM Sings Its

Swan Song

TRENDINGApple’s Latest

Language

THE UX FACTORMake Sure You’re

Connected

UNDER THE HOODMobile Security Hype vs. Reality

ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCEPut Mobility in Context

DEEP DIVEAndroid for Work

DEVICE SPOTLIGHTSamsung Galaxy

TabPro S

FACE TIMEEMM: A Means to an End

SAY WHAT?What’s Happening

in the Market

Modern MobilityEnabling a mobile workforceMM

COVER STORY

Mail, Calendar, Contacts: Is That All There Is?

Not quite. Companies are moving beyond

basic apps to mobilize complex

processes.

MODERN MOBILITY MARCH 2016 2

HOME

EMM SINGS ITS SWAN SONG

THREE APP SUCCESS STORIES

APPLE’S LATEST LANGUAGE

MAKE SURE YOU’RE CONNECTED

SECURITY HYPE VS. REALITY

PUT MOBILITY IN CONTEXT

ANDROID FOR WORK

SAMSUNG GALAXY TABPRO S

EMM: A MEANS TO AN END

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE MARKET

THE HEYDAY OF enterprise mobility management is coming to an end.

The value of EMM vendors has fallen off a cliff, and the technology is no longer the focal point of most end-user computing products.

The EMM market peaked in January 2014, when VMware acquired then-market-leading AirWatch for $1.2 billion. In March 2015, with expectations of a similar haul, Good Technol-ogy rejected an $825 million offer from sys-tems management vendor CA Technologies, according to a December report by The New York Times.

Shortly thereafter, the downturn began. Within six months, Good found itself accept-ing a much smaller buyout offer—$425

million—from rival BlackBerry. The stock of MobileIron, the largest remaining standalone EMM vendor, has been in the tank over much of the past year, and the company just named a new CEO: Barry Mainz, the subject of this issue’s Face Time interview.

Meanwhile, all the large vendors who got into the EMM game over the past half-decade now have grander visions for enterprise mobil-ity. VMware and Citrix are all about work-spaces, which give mobile workers access to desktops, applications and data on any device. IBM and SAP hang their hats on mobile appli-cation development and backend services. Microsoft has Windows 10, which can run on almost any device, and versions of its stal-wart Office software are available for all major mobile operating systems.

All these strategies rely on integration with EMM to some extent, but it’s not the center-piece. Even Mainz didn’t give an unequivocal “yes” when I asked him if EMM has a future as a standalone product.

EMM Sings Its Swan Song

From The Editor’s Desk | COLIN STEELE


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“We’re going to get a rejuvenation,” he said. “EMM’s a part of it, but there’s also a security and business process integration piece.”

This trend isn’t necessarily a bad thing. EMM was never supposed to be the end game for end-user computing. It’s required technol-ogy for securing data in the mobile era. But if

mobile workers don’t have access to their data and next-generation apps, EMM by itself has limited value.

The market has clearly realized this fact. l

COLIN STEELE is editor in chief of Modern Mobility. Follow him on Twitter: @colinsteele.

http://twitter.com/colinsteele


CREDIT: 31MOONLIGHT31/ISTOCK

MOBILITY NOW

Three Mobile App Success StoriesWhat do a vineyard manager, a college student and a truck driver have in common? Each uses task-specific mobile apps to make their job more efficient. ALYSSA WOOD

WHEN YOU BITE into an apple or sip a glass of wine, you probably don’t think about the fruit-growing activity behind that mouthful. But it’s an arduous process that involves a ton of data. Allan Bros. Inc., a fruit growing, pack-ing and shipping company based in Naches, Wash., streamlined its business with several unique mobile apps.


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In the last few years, Allan Bros.’ manage-ment team realized just how much data the company collects and how beneficial it would be to make its field and warehouse processes more efficient—so they decided to go mobile, CIO Autumn Bernier said.

IT developed a mobile app that helps vine-yard employees track the quality of grapevine buds, which informs how they should prune the vines and what the quality and volume of the upcoming crop of grapes will be. It can even calculate an estimate of how many tons will grow per acre—important data for produc-tion planning and determining how many wineries the vineyard can serve with one harvest.

“We have to be mobile because only a por-tion of our employees work here at the corpo-rate headquarters,” Bernier said. “We start out by taking a system that they’re already doing and make it more modern.”

Plenty of organizations deliver basic pro-ductivity apps such as email and file sharing to employees on mobile devices, but more, like Allan Bros., are starting to mobilize complex applications that really fuel business.

Mobile devices can support more than just mail, calendar and contacts. Display and

processing technologies are reaching new heights: Apple’s iPad Pro boasts 5.6 million pixels, and Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 830 processor for Android devices is set to arrive next year with a whopping 8 GB of RAM. Device features like multi-touch and even bio-metric authentication are becoming the norm.

For those reasons and many more, it’s easier than ever to interact with mobile apps. And as mobile app development tools mature as well, it’s becoming more viable to mobilize complex business apps.

ALLAN BROS. WAREHOUSE

EMPLOYEES BENEFIT FROM

AN APP ON THE APPLE

PACKING LINE


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BEYOND THE BASICSMobile apps are most successful when they’re lightweight and purpose-built for a specific use case, said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst of ZK Research. That’s why apps for specific verticals are ripe for mobilization, he said. Industries such as healthcare, for instance, need complex mobile apps that

are role-based—for example, a nurse requir-ing a certain app that feeds information to a doctor.

But when organizations identify which apps or processes are good candidates for mobili-zation, they shouldn’t simply take the existing system and tweak it for mobile, Kerravala said. The user interface isn’t uniquely tailored to mobile, and the user experience suffers.

“Just because you have an app on a mobile device doesn’t make it a mobile application,”

Kerravala said. “This is where organizations need to open their minds and start thinking about what’s possible: If you could create the app from the ground up to make it uniquely mobile, what would that be?”

What makes a mobile app unique is its abil-ity to take advantage of native device features, such as the camera or GPS, and provide the user with contextual, predictive data based on their location, time of day and more, he said.

More organizations are starting to get that memo, with some exciting results.

APPS IN THE FIELD (LITERALLY) Allan Bros. works with third-party growers to produce fruit including apples, cherries and wine grapes, then packs them into bins at its warehouse and ships them across the globe. Field and warehouse employees need to collect data, such as the fruits’ weight, firm-ness and acidity, along the way to determine whether Allan Bros. can ship them to certain areas of the world to meet produce safety re-quirements. Historically, employees did most of that work with pen and paper, and then en-tered data manually into huge spreadsheets and a traditional data management system.

“ Just because you have an app on a mobile device doesn’t make it a mobile application.”

—ZEUS KERRAVALA, PRINCIPAL, ZK RESEARCH

PHOTOGRAPH: KERRAVALA


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Another app Allan Bros. developed called Grape Data, which is internal and customer facing, aggregates grape pH and other attri-butes. Wineries can follow the progress of cer-tain grapes and let Allan Bros. know the exact moment in the growing process when they want its employees to pick them.

IT also developed an app that gathers data about fruit weight, quality, temperature and more on production lines. Workers track that information using the app on corporate-pro-vided tablets or personal smartphones, and employees can even use it to start and stop fruit-sorting and -dumping machines.

That app has greatly improved the produc-tivity of the more than 80 employees on the apple-packing line, cutting packing times by between 50% and 83%—which in turn means that team can do more work with fewer people, saving the company on staff costs overall, Ber-nier said.

To build those apps, Allan Bros. adopted the Rapid Application Delivery platform from Atlanta-based software company OutSystems. The platform requires minimal coding and development experience, allowing IT to focus on the user experience rather than back-end technical nuances, Bernier said.

“We can make it look like whatever we want to make it look like,” she said. “We give [inter-nal apps] the same look and feel as other sys-tems that employees are using, so they don’t feel like they’re opening different applications. It’s very seamless.”

Using the platform proved so easy that three of the people who develop Allan Bros. mobile apps are actually warehouse employees, including a shipping clerk and a fruit sizing manager.

“We’d much rather take someone who knows the business and has aptitude for develop-ment and technology and teach them how to develop, than try to take a developer and teach them the business,” Bernier said. “Plus, people who have been out on the production line or out in the field have such a better understand-ing of what the users go through on a day-to-day basis and what the needs are.”

“ We take someone who knows the business and teach them how to develop.”

—AUTUMN BERNIER, CIO, ALLAN BROS.

PHOTOGRAPH: BERNIER


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MOBILE GOES BACK TO SCHOOLOne of the biggest verticals adopting more complex mobile apps is education.

The University of Massachusetts Lowell recently developed an application called Now that gives students real-time information about everything from class schedules and grades to the daily cafeteria menu and cam-pus events. Students can even add and drop classes using the app.

Before, they had to go to several different websites and use Oracle’s “clunky” PeopleSoft application to access much of that informa-tion, said Gerry Nelson, executive director of Web at the university.

Nelson’s team built Now as a responsive Web app so users could access it from any browser on any device. That meant that devel-opers wouldn’t have to build separate versions for every mobile operating system and get approval to distribute them from multiple pub-lic app stores, he said.

The Web app approach allowed developers to aggregate all the data they wanted to pro-vide students in one place, Nelson said. The Now dashboard even pulls in data from two native iOS and Android apps that IT has also built—one that tracks campus bus schedules

and another that tells students where there are available parking spaces on campus.

UMass Lowell’s software development team used Xamarin’s platform to build the native apps, and its Web developers created the Now app from the ground up.

“We did some testing in house with some of the students,” Nelson said. “Our design is based on a redesign of the entire [university] website, so we wanted a seamless experi-ence from our current website to the student dashboard.”

THE ROAD TO FUEL EFFICIENCY In 2014, the trucking industry was short 38,000 drivers, and if that trend continues, it is expected to be down 175,000 by 2024, accord-ing to an October 2015 report by the American Trucking Associations (ATA). Trucking and logistics companies are doing everything they can to keep existing drivers happy—and sup-porting mobility is one way to do so.

“Making their life as easy as possible and as connected as possible is one of multiple things that helps recruit and retain drivers,” said Bob Costello, chief economist and senior vice pres-ident at ATA.


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There are plenty of things a truck driver needs to keep track of before, during and after a trip: fuel usage and gas station locations, accidents and maintenance issues, road hours, directions, load information and more. And they need to report much of that data back to their fleet managers or dispatchers.

“To be able to have the data they need at their fingertips is huge right now in the trans-portation industry,” said Bo Heinemeyer, the former director of technology and project management at Veriha Trucking in Marinette, Wisc.

After decades of doing all those tasks on paper, trucking companies can adopt mobile fleet management hardware and software inside trucks from numerous vendors such as PeopleNet, Rand McNally and Omni-tracs. For its drivers, Veriha uses PeopleNet devices, which are essentially rugged, dash-board-mounted 7-inch tablets that include tools for vehicle inspections, accident report-ing, hours tracking and more. “It’s like a Fitbit for a truck,” Heinemeyer said.

Another major task for drivers is maintain-ing fuel efficiency. To keep track of usage, trucking companies can use PedalCoach, a fuel tracking application from Boston-based

startup LinkeDrive. Veriha deployed physical PedalCoach devices last year and is looking to adopt the company’s new PedalCoach mobile app on its existing PeopleNet devices or on employees’ personal mobile devices.

PedalCoach prevents drivers from burning more fuel than is necessary by displaying a basic red-yellow-green gauge throughout the trip. If the driver presses the gas hard or slams

on the brakes, the dial goes into the red zone, indicating poor fuel usage. Keeping the gauge in the green zone means the vehicle will see savings on fuel.

In the six weeks after implementing Pedal-Coach with 10 test users, Veriha saw an 8% reduction in fuel usage; for a year’s worth of driving, that would generate about $35,000 in savings, Heinemeyer said. The fuel tracking also leads to safer driving because drivers are more likely to handle the truck more smoothly, he said.

Learn how HTML5 development can make mobilizing complex apps easier.

http://searchcloudapplications.techtarget.com/tip/Use-HTML5-to-make-developing-mobile-applications-less-costly-complex


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Another aspect of the app is gamification. Drivers gain points for remaining in the green for certain amounts of time, and there’s a leader board that displays the highest-scoring drivers.

“Nobody wants to see themselves on the bottom of the leader board, so obviously there’s some incentive there,” Heinemeyer said.

On the back end, PedalCoach provides fuel data to managers so they can test and plan more efficient driving routes. Veriha has exper-imented with sending drivers on toll roads and non-toll roads to determine which has more stop-and-go driving, which means less fuel efficiency.

As trucking technology matures, Heine- meyer said he hopes more drivers will be open to using their personal mobile devices for work. Right now, most don’t because it requires

a lot of cellular data out on the road, and they would have to pay for that, he said.

“A huge thing for drivers would be to see … all their stuff at home, away from the truck,” he added. “Because that’s such a powerful tool, they’ll want to use their own devices regard-less of their data plans. So that’s kind of what we’re waiting for.”

As mobile device technology advances even further, more companies will start mobi-lizing these kinds of apps and processes. From fruit growing to education to trucking, the key is focusing on the user experience. With role-based tasks that take advantage of contextual data, mobile apps can help meet business goals and improve employee productivity. l

ALYSSA WOOD is senior managing editor of Modern Mobility. Follow her on Twitter: @AlyssaLaura22.

http://twitter.com/AlyssaLaura22


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Developers Move Swiftly with Apple’s Latest LanguageIt’s easier to write code with Swift, and its applications run faster—all resulting in a big boost for the company’s new programming language.

APPLE’S LATEST PROGRAMMING language, Swift, is becoming more popular among developers—largely due to its ease of use.

Apple released Swift in June 2014 to replace Objective-C, which has been the company’s main development language since the early 1980s. Developers can use Swift to build apps for iOS, OS X, tvOS and Watch OS.

Swift’s biggest benefit is that it makes it simpler to write apps. It requires less text to code a given command. Plus, using the Swift

Playgrounds feature in XCode, Apple’s suite for building apps, developers can get a real-time preview of the app. To help avoid com-mon coding errors, Swift programmers can enter an evaluation command that analyzes the code and detects any mistakes—a feature Objective-C lacks.

Swift is similar to the Python and Ruby programming languages, which are both tai-lored to beginner programmers, so developers trained in those platforms can easily pick it up. The command lines in Swift, Python and Ruby are shorter and less complex than those in Objective-C.

“You don’t have to learn or memorize differ-

Trending | RAMIN EDMOND

PHOTOGRAPH: APPLE

APPLE SWIFT LOGO


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ent specific elements of the code,” said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst of research firm Moor Insights and Strategy based in Austin, Texas. “You don’t need as much training.”

Swift has rocketed in popularity among developers within the last year, according to TIOBE Software’s programming community index, which measures the frequency with which developers use different languages. In January, Swift had climbed to the 14th most popular programming language, up from 25th at the same time last year. It is no coincidence that as Swift rises in the rankings, Objective-C has fallen mightily: from third to 28th.

Apple has also made it easy for Objective-C developers to migrate to Swift. They can incor-porate Swift code into existing code and don’t have to start from scratch with an application. Another draw is that Swift applications run faster than those developed with Objective-C.

Developers have built many popular third-

party apps using Swift, including Slack, Lyft, Clear, Yahoo Weather, LinkedIn and many more. Apple itself will certainly develop more Swift-based apps in the future—especially on the Apple Watch, which will benefit from

higher performance apps—but the goal is for Swift to reach beyond the Apple ecosystem, Moorhead said.

In December, Apple made Swift open source, which could allow programmers to use the lan-guage to develop Linux, Windows or Android applications, opening up a much larger mar-ket. Just last month, Apple made continuous integration available for Swift, which allows developers to submit changes that Apple can then test and approve before adding the updates to the core language. l

RAMIN EDMOND is a news writer in TechTarget’s End-User Computing Media Group. Follow him on Twitter: @TheRealRamin.

In January, Swift had climbed to the 14th most popular pro-gramming language, up from 25th at the same time last year.

Learn about the best Apple iOS app development tools.

http://twitter.com/therealramin

http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/feature/What-are-the-best-iOS-app-development-tools

http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/feature/What-are-the-best-iOS-app-development-tools


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Make Sure You’re ConnectedEnterprise mobility has a ton of poten-tial, but workers need constant access to the right tools to fulfill its promise.

THESE DAYS, BUSINESS users are all intercon-nected. It doesn’t matter whether they are in the office, their home, car or even in another country. There’s an expectation in today’s mobile-first world that workers should be able to communicate anytime, anywhere, with any-one, on any device. The good thing is, it’s pos-sible, and it’s getting easier every day.

For business workers to communicate effec-tively on mobile devices, it requires three things: equipment, connectivity and the right collaboration tools.

LEAD THE CHARGEAsk people who rely on mobile technology what their biggest frustration is, and many will say battery life. For workers to be produc-tive on the road or away from the office, they need charging tools such as Lightning and USB cables—or better yet, portable chargers so they don’t have to fight for the last outlet at Starbucks.

But a fully charged device means nothing without network connectivity. Voice calls are still absurdly expensive when abroad, and pub-lic Wi-Fi becomes more available by the day, so it’s critical that employees are able to fire up their unified communications (UC) suite and be productive when they find a signal. IT needs to make those kinds of tools easily available to users on mobile. There are plenty of enter-prise-ready platforms and consumer offerings out there to enable mobile communications.

The UX Factor | STEVE DAMADEO

Workers communicate through text and instant

messages more so than through email these days. IT should

embrace that.


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CHOOSE MOBILE COLLABORATION TOOLSThere are numerous UC options such as Skype for Business and Cisco Unified Communica-tions Manager that have a tremendous mobile component. Once IT teams determine which tool to support, they should let employees know that many of those communications offerings have mobile apps available in pub-lic app stores. IT should then train workers on how to use them to ensure that people are always staying in contact.

Plus, many workers communicate through text and instant messages more so than through email these days. IT should embrace that and build on it. From most of these suites, users can read an email and, instead of con-tinuing a longer email chain, immediately launch a chat or call with someone from there.

IT admins should also look for opportuni-ties to bring social to mobile. Large, public social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have mobile apps and responsive websites. An organization’s enterprise-grade tools should be no different. Organizations providing a customized social networking or messaging platform need to offer the same experience and capabilities on mobile devices as on desktops. If users are on their phones,

they still want to be able to flip through their social feeds to see if there is any information they’re missing, or if someone has a time-sen-sitive question they can answer.

There are also plenty of third-party enter-prise-grade social platforms companies can adopt, such as SharePoint, Yammer, Jive and Slack, that have mobile apps.

If IT can’t mobilize existing enterprise communications platforms, then companies need to take a hard look at their tools and consider more mobile-friendly options. Users have the expectation that the organization is going to make this available to them. Address battery life, connectivity and tools, and IT will find success in improving mobile communica-tion. l

STEVE DAMADEO is IT operations manager at industrial automation supplier Festo. Follow him on Twitter: @sdamadeo.

Consider these four factors when choosing mobile UC apps.

http://twitter.com/sdamadeo

http://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/tip/UC-mobile-applications-Four-deployment-factors-to-consider


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Mobile Security Hype vs. RealitySecurity might keep some mobility admins up at night, but there are a few things IT can rest easy about.

ONCE DEVICES CAN access corporate applica-tions and data, they become an immediate threat to security. Employees can easily lose mobile devices. Passcodes aren’t foolproof, and many users don’t even bother with one.

Mobile vendors continue to increase the security of both hardware (by improving microprocessors, sensors and biometrics)

and software (by adding security capabilities to operating systems, browsers and email clients). Still, there are plenty of security chal-lenges to deal with when valuable corporate

data crosses the network to the Web or the cloud. So, what are the most salient threats, and which can IT admins worry about less?

There are a few areas where the hype around mobile security is very real. For instance, there are many potential attack surfaces that IT needs to protect—Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi, GPS, to name a few. Organizations are especially vulnerable to data leakage when employees use unauthorized personal file sharing ser-vices such as Google Drive or Dropbox for work purposes.

Other threats, such as device loss, use of unapproved mobile applications and lack of password protection, continue to grow as well. They are some of the key contributors to data loss. The portable nature of mobile devices makes them vulnerable to theft, making it critical for IT to be able to remotely lock down and wipe them.

Under the Hood | ERIC KLEINThere are plenty of security

challenges to deal with when valuable corporate data

crosses the network to the Web or the cloud.

(Continued on page 17)


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Top Mobility ConcernsWhat technology challenges has your organization encountered in the

evaluation or implementation of an enterprise mobility tool?

SOURCE: ENTERPRISE MOBILITY ESTATE SURVEY 2015, VDC RESEARCH; RESPONDENTS: 692

Security Wireless connectivity

and coverage

Incom- patibility

with existing systems

Limited functionality

of mobile devices

Complexity of back-end integration

Lack of standard

third-party software

Mobile OS fragmentation

55%

45%39%

34%31% 30%

59%


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BYOD in particular can make it difficult for IT admins to perform a data wipe or restrict employees’ access to certain corporate data; users own the device, so organizations need to determine what admins can legally do. With-out thorough policies in place, IT may not be able to take the necessary steps to secure cor-porate data on employee-owned devices.

But other security measures are less crucial. Mobile devices are certainly vulnerable to malware and viruses, but with each successive OS release, device manufacturers expand their exploit mitigation features. Handset OEMs have also added capabilities that can prevent exploited software from doing further dam-age to a device, such as the ability to prevent modified OSes from booting, kernel integrity monitoring and more robust sandboxing and containerization mechanisms.

There is inevitable hype around security with each high-profile breach that occurs, but

virtually none of those breaches are related to mobile devices. Still, neither an ideal hard-ware configuration nor one type of network protection can catch all threats. Investing in IT staff with mobile-first security expertise is important, as is implementing the appropriate infrastructure to enable secure remote access to pre-existing data stores and application platforms. l

ERIC KLEIN is director of mobile software at VDC Research in Natick, Mass. Follow him on Twitter: @eakleiner.

z

Security Best Practices

l Pre-determine the device types and OSes IT will allow, based on IT staff expertise.

l Scrutinize the data that devices can access. Create a protocol to protect that data that includes authenticating the user, encrypting the data and banning backups.

l Enforce stringent security practices such as passcode requirements and antivirus applications.

l Create data protection policies such as prohibiting apps that read data from the device or apps that transmit data to cloud.

Learn about the top three mobile security threats.

(Continued from page 15)

http://twitter.com/eakleiner

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Put Mobility in ContextTo really serve mobile users, IT needs to provide apps that take advantage of contextual data—and then analyze that data in the cloud.

CONTEXTUAL DATA, MOBILE app analytics and cloud services can transform business pro-cesses by creating new experiences that deliver the right information to the right per-son at the right time. I call these right-time experiences because they deliver this informa-tion when and where the user needs it.

Context. The best mobile applications take advantage of contextual data, such as location, time of day, previous transaction information

and device type. Sensors in the latest devices also furnish physical context such as temperature, humidity and motion data. By under-standing an individual’s current situation and prior transactions, a business can anticipate his or her immediate needs and offer experi-ences appropriate for the situation.

For example, an oil refinery technician could view pressure and temperature information on smartglasses or a tablet to understand if it’s safe to touch a piece of equipment for repairs. A mobile customer relationship management app could check a sales rep’s calendar, pull data from multiple applications and surface information based on the day’s appointments, including customer records, news related to the customer, driving directions, inventory from the ERP system and support call records.

Analytics. If an organization doesn’t do any-

Actionable Intelligence | MARIBEL LOPEZ

If an organization doesn’t do anything with the contextual

information that mobile devices and Internet of Things sensors

provide, that data is useless.


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thing with the contextual information that mobile devices and Internet of Things sensors provide, that data is useless. Successful mobile strategies also focus on analytics to improve business processes by understanding the device, what the user is doing and much more. For example, a retailer could use this informa-tion to route a user through a store, suggest relevant products and improve the in-store experience with the right data delivered at the right time.

IT should also use analytics to glean new insights about the business. This information differs from what IT might receive through business intelligence tools that tell them what happened last month or last week. These are near-real-time insights. A company could combine and analyze data to understand how elements such as a manufacturing part short-age, price change, new competitive entrant or severe weather are affecting the week’s prod-uct sales, for example.

Cloud. Organizations should use cloud com-puting to store and analyze data from vari-ous connected devices. Companies such as GE monitor and analyze thousands of data points from industrial equipment, such as gas

turbines and jet engines, in the cloud. It can then send actionable information to its cus-tomer’s mobile apps, such as how many hours a piece of equipment can run safely, how to optimize the equipment’s use and when it’s time to repair it.

Businesses can also take advantage of cloud data analytics services to gain insights from third-party data such as social networking feeds, weather and pricing information. A retailer could integrate weather, transportation and social data together to decide what prod-ucts to source in specific stores and what pro-motions to run.

Eventually the combination of context, ana-lytics and the cloud will allow companies to build mobile processes that are learning and predictive. But first, mobile leaders must build a strategy that uses funding and technology refreshes across the company to enhance mobile applications. This includes finding your peers in cloud computing and analytics to help build a coordinated strategy across the three technical domains. l

MARIBEL LOPEZ is principal and founder of Lopez Research in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter: @MaribelLopez.

http://twitter.com/MaribelLopez


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Android for WorkAndroid hasn’t had a great history when it comes to enterprise security and management capabilities, but this new platform changes all that.

ANDROID FOR WORK is a revolutionary step toward easing Android enterprise manage-ment and curtailing fragmentation.

A mobile device management and data sep-aration framework, Android for Work debuted in Android 5.0 Lollipop. As with Android in general, there are still challenges and excep-tions to its many benefits.

Android had virtually no enterprise man-agement features until Android 2.2 introduced the Device Administrator API in 2010. Using the API, enterprise mobility management (EMM) vendors could build agent applications

to enforce basic policies, perform remote wipe and, in later versions of Android, require encryption. More advanced enterprise features were left up to individual device manufactur-ers, who could add their own Android man-agement APIs. Samsung took the lead with its SAFE and Knox devices.

The resulting variety of management options created a fragmented marketplace. In some cases, such as with corporate-issued devices, companies can standardize on one particular device. But for companies that allow BYOD and have heterogeneous environ-ments, fragmentation can cause management headaches.

HIGH-PROFILE SECURITYGoogle announced Android for Work in 2014, and it arrived in stages with Android 5.0, 5.1,

Deep Dive | JACK MADDEN

There are many vendors that provide at least some form of

management for both PCs and mobile devices, but often they’re

stronger in one or the other.


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and version 6.0.Android for Work can create what’s known

as a work profile on a device—a segregated, managed environment. A work profile still allows EMM agent apps to have some basic control over the entire device—usually limited to lock screen and encryption policies. EMM agents also have complete control over enter-prise data within the work profile. They can install apps, user accounts and credentials, configure VPNs and change settings inside some apps.

To prevent data leakage, apps in the work profile can’t communicate with users’ personal apps, and corporate accounts and credentials that the EMM agent installs are only available in the work profile. Even though work apps and data are separated from personal apps, Google has done a lot to ensure a smooth user experience when going back and forth between the two. Personal and work app icons appear alongside each other on the device’s home screen. Notifications all show up in one stream. And all recent apps appear in the task switcher view. Work applications and notifica-tions feature a small badge icon that differenti-ates them.

Android for Work also offers device owner

mode, which locks down devices that multiple users share or that function as kiosks, informa-tion displays or embedded devices.

For older devices that don’t have Android for Work capabilities built into the operating sys-tem, Google offers the Android for Work App. It’s similar to other specialized enterprise-ori-ented container apps: All the security and

management features are built directly into the apps themselves, since they’re not avail-able in the operating system. Google offers an array of basic productivity apps that have sim-ilar built-in security and management and can securely communicate with the Android for Work App to prevent data leakage. Third-party apps must be specially modified to have these features.

To complement Android for Work and pro-vide additional support for enterprise mobility needs, Google also launched Play for Work. Play for Work is an offshoot of Google’s main

Learn how Android for Work makes the OS more enterprise friendly.

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/photostory/4500255358/How-Android-for-Work-positions-Googles-OS-for-the-enterprise/1/Prepare-for-Android-in-the-enterprise


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app store that organizations can use to pur-chase Android apps in bulk. It can also host and distribute in-house enterprise apps.

THERE’S STILL WORK TO DOBecause Android for Work is part of Android itself, it should help reduce fragmentation by eliminating the need for device manufacturers to create their own proprietary management APIs.

Some Android devices don’t receive regu-lar operating system updates, however, and supporting Android for Work isn’t mandatory. As a result, the hardware compatibility list for Android for Work is still limited. Most high-level devices from top manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, Motorola and others sup-port Android for Work, but many cheaper or less-popular devices don’t.

Android for Work also requires EMM

vendors to build their own agent apps, so features can vary between vendors. Some don’t support the Android for Work App, for example.

Most importantly, Android for Work is just a software framework, and there are many vari-ances in hardware configuration. Government certifications for regulated industries are often based on specific hardware requirements and devices, so those types of companies will still need to rely on specialized products, such as the Samsung Knox line.

Despite these caveats, Android for Work will bring better and more consistent capabilities where they were previously lacking. It’s the biggest enterprise advancement Android has made. l

JACK MADDEN is the author of Enterprise Mobility Management: Everything You Need to Know about MDM, MAM and BYOD and a blogger at BrianMadden.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jackmadden.

http://twitter.com/jackmadden

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DEVICE SPOTLIGHT

JAMISON CUSH is executive editor of TechTarget’s Technology Guide. Follow him on Twitter: @TGJamison.

PHOTOGRAPH: SAMSUNG

Samsung Galaxy TabPro SSamsung’s latest tablet goes head to head with Microsoft’s Surface Pro.

ENTERPRISE PROS AND CONS: The Galaxy TabPro S redefines thin and light, yet it sports a proces-sor capable of handling most business tasks and applications. Its stunning display is arguably the

best on the market, thanks to its AMOLED technology. The TabPro S

also supports quick-charging technology,

giving it a full charge in 150

minutes. Perhaps most importantly,

it ships with a full QWERTY keyboard

cover, while Microsoft’s starts at an additional $130 for Surface users.

The lone USB Type C port that has to handle both charging and data

is a sacrifice, however. Even though its 5,2000 mAH battery

promises 10.5 hours of juice, the TabPro S requires that users swap inputs or

invest in a USB adapter. The 12-inch size also lim-its the keyboard, which feels cramped at times. l

WHY BUY: The Samsung Galaxy TabPro S is the lat-est absurdly thin Windows 10 device. Measuring just 0.24 inches thick sans keyboard cover, it’s thinner than an Apple iPad Air 2 but more powerful thanks to its sixth-generation Intel Core M processor. Make no mistake; Samsung is not gunning for the mobile tablet market here. The Galaxy TabPro S is aimed at the 2-in-1 crowd and Microsoft’s Sur-face Pro.

PRICE: Samsung has not released pricing. It will likely be comparable to the Core M-powered Surface Pro 4, which costs $899 and ships with a Surface Pen stylus but not a keyboard.

SPECS: The TabPro S features a 12-inch AMOLED dis-play with 2160 x 1440 resolution, 4 GB RAM and either a 128 GB or 256 GB solid-state drive. It has a single USB Type C port for charging and data, and it includes a smart connector for the keyboard. It supports the net-working standard 802.11 b/g/n/ac for multiple input multiple output Wi-Fi, near-field communications, Bluetooth 4.1, Wi-Fi Direct and Cat 6 LTE.

http://twitter.com/tgjamison


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EMM: A Means to an EndMobileIron’s new CEO says the goal of enterprise mobility is to transform business processes, but it’s hard to support so many different devices.

MOST EMM PRODUCTS are part of large enterprise mobility suites from larger software vendors. But that doesn’t mean management and secu-rity should go by the wayside.

Enterprise mobility management (EMM) gives businesses the foundation they need to empower workers and increase productivity, said Barry Mainz, the new CEO of Mobile-Iron—the largest standalone vendor left in the market.

Here, Mainz discusses the role of enterprise mobility management in today’s ever-chang-ing landscape.

What does modern mobility mean to you?Endpoints will be mobile operating systems, and it completely changes the way in which we manage applications and security. Mobile computing is really about allowing your company to get this mobilization of not only the ability to look at data but act on it quickly.

What role does MobileIron play in helping businesses achieve this goal?We can be the … backbone for modern end-user computing. We secure email and appli-cations, and we help people manage their devices.

Face Time with BARRY MAINZ

MAINZ


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What are the biggest challenges your customers face?One challenge is picking a vendor that can support your device of choice. I have a Sam-sung phone. I like it. But I also have an iPad. And I like it. Having that choice … is important. You’ve got to work with the vendor in terms of the management of the devices and securing the apps. The other thing is, how do you build an organization that can support multiple operating systems, multiple architectures, multiple versions? It’s really hard.

How much do your customers really want to embrace mobility, and how much do they just want to say they did it?If you talk to the C-level, they’re all about, “How do we transform our business pro-cesses?” There’s so many benefits. Can [users] act on and have visibility into data in a way that speeds up your business? The innovative customers are looking at that.

When you get to talk to customers about business outcomes versus ‘did you secure email?’ it’s a completely different conversation. When I’m talking to customers and partners, these are the conversations they want to have.

Maybe somebody two steps above the jani-tor doesn’t want to have those, because they’re not in their purview. But senior-level folks? Absolutely. If they’re not, they should be.

What’s the best dish you can cook?I can make a killer pasta and sauce from my grandmother’s recipe.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?I love Santorini, Greece. Did my honeymoon there. The views are epic. The food’s terrific. The people are really nice. It’s a really special place. l

COLIN STEELE is editor in chief of Modern Mobility. Follow him on Twitter: @colinsteele.

MobileIron CEO Barry Mainz responds to speculation that MobileIron will be acquired.

Listen to the full interview on the Modern Mobility Podcast.

C and A: Adding text to the first page (to move the Q to this page), caused the article to run 2 lines too long. The podcast sidebar, which you wanted to include, is smaller than the other sidebar, so i swapped it out and now everything fits again. OK? Remember that whatever changes (additions or deletions) you make to one page will effect subsequent pages. Thanks! LK

http://twitter.com/colinsteele

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/news/4500272251/New-CEO-addresses-MobileIron-acquisition-speculation

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/modern-mobility-podcast/id977183980

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What’s Happening in EMM?Experts sound off on enterprise mobility management.SAY WHAT?


On Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite:

“ Even though the EMM market has narrowed in the last few years, it’s still competitive, and now Microsoft is on the scene.”

—JACK MADDEN, analyst and blogger, BrianMadden.com

On Citrix’s unified endpoint management:

“ Everyone is moving or has moved in that direction. Companies prefer to have one solution for everything across the board.”

—JACK GOLD, principal, J. Gold Associates

On BlackBerry’s Good integration:

“ Identity management is still a hole in their portfolio. We see a lot of players investing there.”

—BOB EGAN, CEO and chief analyst, Sepharim Group

On Citrix naming Kirill Tatarinov new CEO:

“ Replacing a CEO with someone who has product focus and who can enhance their competitiveness in the virtualization space is a good move for Citrix.”

—DOUGLAS GROSFIELD, president and CEO, Five Nines IT Solutions


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Modern Mobility is a SearchMobileComputing.com e-publication.

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TechTarget, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466 www.techtarget.com

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