Consumer Tech is Coming to the Workplace
Consumer Tech is Coming to the Workplace
Consumer Tech is Coming to the Workplace
A lot has been written about the"consumerization" of IT and the flood of mobile and social networking products into the workplace. There are many reasons that the deluge frightens IT. Some of those reasons are pretty good: Security is a very valid worry, of course, and there are some knotty cost and control issues to sort out. But I have a lot less sympathy for the IT exec who simply says no to technology that he or she can't control or simply doesn't understand.
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In any case, it's a war that IT can't win. If you're as old as I am, you'll remember the angst and struggle about bringing the PC into the workplace. It'shappening again with smartphones and so forth, but these days technologies move much, much faster, and the battle is very compressed. Fortunately, developers are sensing the opportunity to play peacemaker and make money with solutions that could satisfy the concerns of IT and the desires of a youthful user base.
I'm just back from Demo Spring 2011, where 50 or so startups and young companies showed off their technologies to an audience of investors and tech journalists.
An outfit with the unlikely name of Enterproid stands out because it offers software for the Android platform (iOS and others will follow) that promises to satisfy both IT and users. Simply put,Enterproid's Divide imbues an Android device with a split personality that lets users create and keep personal and professional profiles on one Android smartphone or tablet.
Android is arguably the least secure of the leading smartphone operating system, so it needs the help. By contrast, both iOS 4 and Blackberry OS 6 already perform some of the functions found in Divide.iOS 4 separates some personal data and apps from ones provisioned by the server, though users don't see that separation in everyday usage. Thesame is true for BlackBerry OS 6 when used with the most recent version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server. But Divide's additional capabilities may be useful on those mobile OSes as well.
On the social networking front, another Demo entrant, WebSense, launched software called Defensio is says will help companies -- which are increasingly using Facebook as a marketing tool -- defend themselves from malicious attacks.
Android's split personality
Enterproid's Divide essentially partitions the Android environment and establishes separate online control panels for the owner of the device and for IT. The panel for IT consolidates the information of all users in a company or department; individual users can only see and control their own features.
For example, a user may not want a complex password, whereas IT may demand one. Divide resolves the contradiction by allowing different levels of security for each profile. Likewise, because apps can be dangerous, Divide walls off personal apps and does not allow them to access anything in the work partition. Many users allow their own applications to access their physical location via GPS, but do not want to share that information with their employer, so Divide will only give permission to access GPS to applications in the personal partition. And when users leave a company or a device is lost, IT may demand that their smartphone be wiped for security reasons. That, of course, also deletes personal data unless IT only wipes Exchange-provisioned (corporate) data, a capability few Android devices support. Divide solves that by allowing IT to wipe the business partitions while leaving data on the private partition intact.
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