Enabling a mobile workforce - Bitpipedocs.media.bitpipe.com/io_12x/io_127306/item_1225794/MM...Modern Mobility Enabling a mobile workforce cover story Analytics Get Down to Business

october 2015 volume 1, no. 7

From the editor’s deskKeeping Up

is Hard to Do

trendingGood Moves:

BlackBerry Acquires Chief Rival

the ux FactorPrivacy Makes a Comeback

under the hoodWhich Mobile OSes

Should You Support?

hashtag#AppleEvent

deep diveMBaaS

device spotlightSamsung Galaxy Note5

Face timeTo EMM and Beyond

mobile demystiFiedThree Questions

Modern MobilityEnabling a mobile workforce

cover story

Analytics Get Down

to BusinessIn-app analytics give developers the inside scoop

on how employees use their apps.

MM

moDern moBILITY october 2015 2

home

keeping up is hard to do

in-app analytics get down to business

good moves: blackberry acquires chieF rival

privacy makes a comeback

which mobile oses should you support?

#appleevent

mobile backend as a service

samsung galaxy note5

to emm and beyond

three burning questions

IT’S BEEN AN action-packed few months in the mobile world. Just a few days after returning from VMworld, I saw my Twitter feed blow up with the news of BlackBerry’s acquisition of Good Technology. The following week, Apple made headlines with the iPhone 6s, iPad Pro and more. And most importantly, at least if you’re a steadfast member of New England Patriots Nation like myself: the glorious vindi-cation of one Tom Brady. (OK, that’s not really technology news, but there’s a lesson some-where in there about what not to store on your cellphone.)

All these developments got me thinking about the rate of technological change in today’s world.

It’s been well-documented that product adoption today moves much faster than it did

even 20 years ago. Cars and electricity took nearly a century to reach 90% of U.S. house-holds, but newer technology like color TVs and dishwashers—and later, computers and the Internet—were in the hands of most consumers just a few decades after they became available. Look at mobility, for instance: It took landline phones about 45 years to penetrate half of U.S.

households, while mobile phones took only seven years to hit that mark, according to MIT Technology Review.

With vendors such as VMware, Microsoft, BlackBerry and Apple continuing to push the boundaries of what they can innovate—and how quickly they can do it—it feels like we’re on the cusp of generating even faster techno-logical change.

Keeping Up is Hard to Do

From The Editor’s Desk | ALySSA WOOD

Product adoption today moves much faster than it did even 20 years ago.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/427787/are-smart-phones-spreading-faster-than-any-technology-in-human-history/

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/427787/are-smart-phones-spreading-faster-than-any-technology-in-human-history/


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VMware’s unified hybrid cloud platform promises to connect public and private cloud and on-premises resources to help deliver more apps than ever. Microsoft appears to have struck a balance between traditional desktop computing and mobility with Win-dows 10. With Good under its belt, BlackBerry has an opportunity to strengthen its manage-ment and security capabilities for all the major mobile operating systems.

The enterprise mobility management mar-ket will likely see further consolidation, and

the technology will have to handle more than just smartphones and tablets. The Internet of Things is coming. Finally, with an updated Apple Watch OS, photos that can move and its potentially revolutionary 3D Touch technol-ogy, Apple is changing the consumer device game yet again.

All these announcements mean more devices will be entering the workplace, and to help manage them, admins will have more tools at their disposal than ever. IT will have to be ready—and fast. l


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credit: enotmaks/istock

In-App Analytics Get Down to BusinessEmerging analytics tools provide new insights about mobile app usage. The hard part is figuring out what to do with all that information. Colin Steele

MOBIlITY NOW

ANAlYTICS DRIvE BUSINESS today. They give organizations the information they need to determine whether products and campaigns are successful—and how to fix them if they’re not. They identify ineffi-ciencies in business processes and poten-tial solutions. And they even factor into some personnel decisions.


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Increasingly, analytics are also built into enterprise mobile applications, where they offer invaluable data about the user experi-ence. How many button taps does it take to perform a certain task? What specific action caused the app to crash? Which features do users ignore, and why? In-app analytics can provide the answers to all these questions and more.

With this insight, developers and operations staff can streamline app workflows, improve back-end performance and identify bugs and poor design components. But the abundance of data to collect and analyze can overwhelm some organizations and limit the benefits of this emerging technology.

A MORE COMPlETE PICTUREApplication performance monitoring (APM)—a mainstream technology that mea-sures an application’s resource utilization, network latency and other factors to ensure an acceptable user experience—is nothing new.

It’s also standard practice for developers to test the performance and user experience of their applications. Traditionally, however, this testing takes place before IT deploys an app,

and in a controlled environment with a sub-set of users. But in the mobile era, it would be nearly impossible to test an app on every pos-sible device and operating system combina-tion a user could have. Consequently, the data gathered during mobile app testing doesn’t always reflect what will happen when an app goes into production.

“you can only test so much,” said Jason Wong, principal research analyst at Gartner.

That’s where in-app analytics come in. Real-time data from workers who are using the app to perform real business tasks offers a more complete picture—and more actionable intelli-gence—than APM and app testing alone.

“In-app analytics are critical to application lifecycle management,” said Philippe Win-throp, global mobility evangelist at CSC, an IT services provider. “There is no such thing as version one-and-done of an enterprise mobile

“ In-app analytics are critical to application lifecycle management. You’re always going to be iterating.”

—Philippe Winthrop, CSC


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app. you’re always going to be iterating.”Consider this hypothetical example: Basic

app analytics report that a certain app crashes 10% of the time, typically about 15 seconds after it’s opened. In this scenario, the devel-oper would have to go into the app’s code, try to figure out where in its workflow a user would be after 15 seconds and identify a bug that could be causing the crash. In-app ana-lytics, on the other hand, would report that the crashes occur when users press the Add New Customer button on one of the app’s sub-menus. And the developer would know exactly which part of the code to fix.

Some analytics tools can even record users’ sessions in an app to identify problems that aren’t related to code. Wong shared one example in which users weren’t completing a workflow, and they were all abandoning the app at the exact same point. Recordings showed that users pinched and zoomed on their touchscreens at that point to more clearly see numbers they needed to enter. But there was a button they needed to press to confirm their entries on that screen, and it disappeared when they zoomed in, making it look like the app had frozen.

That’s what caused users to give up on the

app, but traditional analytics wouldn’t have picked up on it.

“From an APM perspective, it all looked fine,” Wong said.

ANAlYzING THE ANAlYTICS MARKETThere is no shortage of vendors who offer in-app analytics capabilities. Emerging ven-dors such as Localytics, Crittercism, Appsee and Twitter’s Crashlytics focus primarily on this area; Adobe, IBM and others make in-app analytics part of their broader enterprise mobility offerings.

Kony, a mobile application development vendor based in Austin, Texas, got into the game last year when it released its mobile backend as a service platform, Mobile Fabric. In-app event tracking capabilities are baked into Mobile Fabric’s software development kit, so developers can access analytics for any of their apps that tie into the service, regardless of what development platform they use.

“Customers are increasingly wanting to choose their own front-end tools,” said Bur-ley Kawasaki, Kony’s senior vice president of platforms.

Despite the plethora of vendors in the


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market and the promise of in-app analytics, the technology isn’t always an easy sell. CSC encourages its customers to implement its partners’ analytics tools, but those who do are in the minority, Winthrop said.

“Part of that is cost,” he said. “Part of that is understanding the real benefits.”

Indeed, developers may not realize the importance of in-app analytics until after they’ve built and deployed an app.

“There is this maturity process that custom-ers go through,” Kawasaki said. “Often times they’re just trying to get the first app out. So they’re not always asking for [analytics].”

The inflection point usually comes when organizations find themselves with a dozen or more apps, and monitoring them individually becomes a hardship, Wong said. Mobile app updates should ideally come every one to two months, and in-app analytics can help priori-tize which apps to fix, fine-tune and upgrade within that timeframe, he said.

THE HARD PARTStill, organizations that adopt in-app analyt-ics often struggle to make the best use of the technology. For example, analytics may show than an app’s response time for a certain action is a fraction of a second longer than it should be—a traditional metric. Meanwhile, the ana-lytics may also show that it takes twice as long as it should for a user to process an order in a customer relationship management app. That’s a more business-critical problem, but it’s also more challenging to fix because it requires a rethinking of processes and workflows.

“It’s the continuous improving of the app that’s the hard part,” Kawasaki said.

To step up to this challenge, in-app analytics customers should take a big-picture view: Rec-ognize that the data is important, but under-stand what it means, Winthrop said. That requires a new mindset, and it takes a lot of work—but so does developing an application in the first place.

“If you’re going to build an app,” Winthrop said, “don’t you want to know how it’s perform-ing?” l

colin steele is editor in chief of modern mobility. Follow him on twitter: @colinsteele.

in-app analytics are an important component of mobile devops.

http://twitter.com/colinsteele

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Meeting-the-demands-of-mobility-with-DevOps-best-practices


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Good Moves: BlackBerry Acquires Chief RivalBlackBerry claws its way to the top with a well-timed EMM buy.

AS BlACKBERRY’S SMARTPHONE business plum-meted over the years, the company tried to reinvent itself in the cross-platform EMM market. Things didn’t go so well.

Despite the strong security technology built into BlackBerry Enterprise Service, businesses never really bought into it as a tool for managing Apple iOS and Google Android devices. To get over that hump, BlackBerry went out and bought Good Technology—an established cross-platform enterprise mobility management (EMM)

vendor—for $425 million last month. The acquisition gives BlackBerry a major boost in market share, but it may not help the company expand beyond its security-conscious cus-tomer base.

With Good in the fold, BlackBerry will have significantly more EMM market share than any other vendor, according to a June report by IDC: 19.2%, compared to second-place Air-Watch by VMware’s 11.4%. If BlackBerry can maintain or grow this lead post-acquisition, it will have gotten a steal of a deal. VMware bought AirWatch in 2014 for $1.54 billion—over $1 billion more than what BlackBerry paid for Good.

Trending | COLIN STEELE

photograph: johncatral/Flickr

BlaCkBerry Bold

https://www.flickr.com/photos/johncatral/


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A ONCE-BITTER RIvAlRYBlackBerry and Good have an interesting his-tory. They had a fairly heated marketing war last year, in which BlackBerry accused Good of misleadingly comparing its new products to older, outdated versions of BlackBerry’s products.

The vendors also regularly competed for customers in highly regulated industries, such as finance and law, as well as federal agencies. BlackBerry’s encrypted network and devices made it the default choice in those sectors for years. Good’s secure containers provided an application-level alternative—especially for email, which had long been BlackBerry’s bread and butter. Good also had more success with the iOS and Android crowd, which provided a boost as the ByOD trend took hold.

Now the former rivals have buried the hatchet. BlackBerry CEO John Chen compli-mented Good’s container technology during a conference call announcing the acquisition, and Good CEO Christy Wyatt had only posi-tive things to say about BlackBerry’s security expertise in a blog post she wrote.

With this acquisition, the era of standalone vendors leading the EMM market appears to

be winding down. Good, AirWatch, Zenprise, Fiberlink and Sybase are all part of larger com-panies that do more than just manage mobile devices and applications. MobileIron remains the lone holdout among the traditional market heavyweights. l

COlIN STEElE is editor in chief of Modern Mobility. Follow him on twitter: @colinsteele.

EMM Market Share

source: idc, “worldwide enterprise mobility management soFtware market shares, 2014,” june 2015.

BlackBerry/Good

AirWatch

MobileIron

Citrix

SAP

IBM

Microsoft

SOTI

Other

19.2%11.4%

9.2%8.1%8%

4.9%3.1%3.1%

33%

http://www.twitter.com/colinsteele


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Privacy Makes a ComebackNext-generation mobile workers won’t let IT invade their personal lives—even if it’s in the name of security.

PRIvACY IS DEAD. Think about how often you’ve heard that phrase in the last 12 months. Even I, a representative of the millennial generation that scoffs at privacy in favor of convenience and access to information, have said it. So what if a store I frequent spams my phone with offers and reminders the moment I walk in? I don’t care, because it makes my life easier.

As it turns out, privacy isn’t dead. I just for-got how much I enjoyed mine.

I recently attended Nemertes Research’s Navigator 360 conference, and one of the pan-els talked about how millennials are no longer

the up-and-coming generation. Now it is the centennials—current high school students, born after the turn of the century, who will be entering college and the workforce soon. And one of the biggest differences with centennials is they actually care about privacy. So what does this mean for mobile technology going forward?

Like millennials, centennials are a mobile-first generation that largely grew up with ubiq-uitous connectivity. But they also grew up with Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, and they have seen firsthand what happens when privacy is an afterthought, including the damage it can do personally, economically and politically. For centennials, nothing trumps privacy, not even convenience.

IT needs to care about privacy because our users do. There is a heightened sensitivity sur-rounding surveillance and how information

The UX Factor | STEVE DAMADEO

Identity access management essentially gives people the feeling

that business is business and personal is personal.


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is used. But corporate IT usually immedi-ately leads its policies with “people should have no expectation of privacy.” Companies should respect the privacy of their employees in the same way they are required to of their customers.

So what can enterprise mobility practi-tioners do about this? Luckily, we’re starting to see more discussions and even new products around how to ensure privacy. A hot topic in mobility now is identity access management (IAM), and organizations that aren’t yet look-ing at it really need to start.

IAM essentially gives people the feeling that business is business and personal is personal. It authenticates users’ identities and autho-rizes access to specific applications and data stores, ensuring that only the people permitted to access certain systems are able to do so.

IAM can also help keep IT out. When employees agree to the organization’s rules of use, then IT must agree to not touch their personal information or data. For example, the organization’s policy might say that IT can wipe the corporate information off an

employee’s phone at any time; however, it may also say that IT can’t wipe the entire device without that person’s express permission.

Enterprise IT needs to have an understand-ing of what it’s like to be on the other side. The almighty security trump card doesn’t mean IT has the right to control users’ personal data. It’s important to separate work and personal so the organization can only have control over corporate information. That could mean employees having separate devices, or better yet, IT implementing containerization or dual persona technology.

With the rise of the centennial generation, many of whom will be replacing baby boomers in all our organizations, we need to address mobile privacy now. Centennials won’t work for organizations that don’t respect their pri-vacy, so in the ongoing battle for talent, a lack of a clear privacy policy could be a deathblow for some companies. l

STEvE DAMADEO is it operations manager at industrial automation supplier Festo. Follow him on twitter: @sdamadeo.

http://twitter.com/sdamadeo


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Which Mobile OSes Should You Support?When choosing which mobile platforms to approve for work, user-friendliness isn’t everything.

AS ENTERPRISES BEGIN building and buying mobile applications, one of their first major decisions is: which mobile operating systems to support? Apple iOS and Google Android are dominating; combined these platforms account for roughly 90% of the mobile OS market. End users are familiar with these plat-forms and have made sizeable investments in their apps, leaving BlackBerry and Windows to lag behind. Still, churn is inevitable, and Mic-rosoft’s strategy to converge the desktop and

mobile user experience will affect the dynam-ics of the mobile OS market.

When it comes to enterprise mobility, securing mobile devices and applications has become a top priority. The prominent handset manufacturers targeting the enterprise con-tinue to add key security features that give IT the peace of mind to include certain smart-phones and tablets on the list of approved devices for work. As more companies go mobile, the onus lies on IT to effectively man-age those devices and implement the appro-priate security policies.

The progress Apple and Google have made in augmenting their security posture has made supporting these platforms an easy choice for CIOs and CISOs. But while Apple’s walled garden approach to controlling iOS allows the vendor to dictate the cadence of OS updates, this is still a sore spot for Android,

Under the Hood | ERIC KLEINThe progress Apple and Google

have made in augmenting their security posture has made supporting these platforms an

easy choice for CIOs and CISOs.


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which is at the mercy of carriers for timely updates.

APPlE IOSThe iOS platform features robust, layered security elements at its core without compro-mising the user experience. Apple’s use of hardware-level AES-256 cryptography to pro-vide full-disk encryption and fast remote wipe capability is well known, but the company has also implemented other important sandboxing features. Each application is limited in where it can write data and cannot access other appli-cations’ data or code. To share information with other apps, developers need to communi-cate through APIs or other services. Plus, the core OS partition is read only, which further prevents malicious programs from attacking the device.

A lack of professional services, support options and distribution channels has hin-dered Apple’s enterprise play, but this is changing quickly. The company’s partnerships with IBM and Cisco help give Apple the enter-prise inroads it has lacked.

In addition, iOS 9 builds on Apple’s enter-prise features with hardware-based storage

encryption, remote wipe capabilities and countless device and supervision restrictions. Apple’s APIs provide Touch ID biometric security features to third-party developers, and the company has implemented passcode capa-bilities on numerous native applications.

Apple’s security enhancements will keep iOS on the top of most lists when IT chooses which mobile OSes it will support.

BlACKBERRYBlackBerry has brand strength among certain business users, and its value play continues to revolve around its best-in-class security capabilities and enterprise-grade email and messaging. The company’s slow move to touchscreens and lack of developer engage-ment have significantly harmed its market share and threatened its longevity, but it has demonstrated progress by releasing a smart-phone lineup with innovative features.

Plus, BlackBerry continues to excel in industries with rigorous security and compli-ance mandates such as financial services and healthcare. The vendor’s recent acqui-sition of enterprise mobility management (EMM) provider Good Technology will also


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help, as will its plan to produce Android devices, starting with the Priv.

ANDROIDThis year, Google made several important enterprise mobility announcements. For one, Google Play for Work, the enterprise ver-sion of the Google Play app store, will allow companies to provide access to enterprise applications from secure work containers on employees’ devices.

The Android for Work initiative provides those containers that separate personal and corporate data—ensuring secure access to mail, contacts, calendar, browsing and docu-ments. That should help combat the idea that Android lacks security and is therefore an inadequate mobile computing platform for the enterprise. Still, Android for Work requires using a Google-approved third party EMM vendor to manage the corporate profile of a device. Every tier-one EMM vendor (with the exception of Good) has partnered well with Google, but the levels of integration vary.

Android 5.0 Lollipop includes security enhanced (SE) Linux, which serves as a fire-wall for all applications on a device. SELinux

on Android, known as SE Android, creates an access control system that isolates the appli-cations users download so potential malware cannot access the OS itself.

Android 5.1 includes a device protection mechanism similar to Apple’s that keeps the device locked (even after factory reset) until the user signs on to the corresponding Goo-gle account. This feature adds a much-needed security layer for lost or stolen phones. The most pertinent security feature in the upcom-ing Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS is the ability for developers to work fingerprint authentica-tion into their applications.

Google’s acquisition of Divide in 2014 pro-vided the company with the tools to build containerization, encryption and device man-agement into Android. And with Android for Work, Google can help other Android manu-facturers make their devices suitable for enter-prise deployment—instead of relying solely on Samsung KNOX to carry that flag. Suscepti-bility to malware will continue to be an issue

compare ios and android for enterprise use.

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/tip/Comparing-iOS-8-vs-Android-50-for-enterprise-use


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for Android, but Google has provided IT with more control over device management and protection, which should increase its share of the enterprise market.

MICROSOfT WINDOWSMicrosoft has worked hard to elevate the messaging around its Enterprise Mobility Suite. EMS includes identity and access man-agement for applications through Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium, along with encryption and authorization policy enforce-ment in Azure Rights Management Services. At its core is Microsoft Intune, the cloud-based EMM platform that helps IT control access to business applications on users’ devices. With EMS, the key will be to deliver on the value proposition that Microsoft touts: one vendor, one contract, one SKU.

Windows 10 is also critical for the com-pany. In particular, the Windows Hello feature improves security by allowing users to access Windows devices via their fingerprint, iris or face. There’s also Passport, a feature that

allows users to access applications, websites and networks without additional passwords following verification. Reducing the need for passwords—which users can inadvertently or purposely share with others—lowers the prob-ability of a hacker accessing a user’s device and information. Windows 10 also adds Device Guard, a security enhancement that protects against malware by blocking unapproved applications.

DON’T TAKE OS DECISIONS lIGHTlY Choosing which mobile operating systems to support involves critical decisions about how to best approach device and application management, privacy, user agreements and much more. These will be high-priority issues for years to come, and the growing number of devices on the market will require organi-zations to quickly accommodate the myriad mobile OSes coming into the enterprise. l

ERIC KlEIN is director of mobile software at vdc research in natick, mass. Follow him on twitter: @eakleiner.

http://twitter.com/eakleiner


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#AppleEventTwitter sounds off on Apple’s new tech, the iPad Pro—which looks a lot like a Surface—and the Microsoft exec who was on stage to help launch it.


HASHTAG

Jeff Cannata @jeffcannata

We made something exactly like Microsoft that will vastly outsell them. Here to get his face rubbed in it, is this guy from Microsoft.

Eric Beehler @cstechcast

Apple basically opened with a new way to push devices into enterprise. Watch OS/2. #AppleEvent#AppleWatch

Brett Belding @bbelding

I wonder what we’re going to do with the new Apple TV in the enter-prise? I’m sure there are a pile of use cases. #AppleEvent

Michael flores @Mike_Flores23

Watching yesterday’s keynote. I just got my iPhone two months ago and it already feels out of date. #AppleEvent

Marty Resnick @mobileologist

Seems the iPad Pro has clearly taken some design influences from Microsoft Surface Pro and Samsung Note Pro. #AppleEvent

Wes Miller @getwired

An actual headline in 2015: “Apple seeds first iOS 9.1 beta to developers, adds new taco, burrito & unicorn emojis.”

https://twitter.com/jeffcannata

https://twitter.com/cstechcast

https://twitter.com/hashtag/AppleEvent

https://twitter.com/hashtag/AppleWatch

https://twitter.com/hashtag/AppleWatch

https://twitter.com/bbelding


https://twitter.com/Mike_Flores23


https://twitter.com/mobileologist


https://twitter.com/getwired


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Mobile Backend as a ServiceEnterprise apps can’t function without infrastructure access. MBaaS lends a helping hand.

AS ENTERPRISE MOBIlITY strategies become more advanced, companies are building more in-house, line-of-business mobile apps—often an expensive and daunting proposition.

There are many technologies available to make this process easier, including applica-tion refactoring, mobile app development platforms and HTML5. Another relatively recent addition to the list is mobile backend as a service (MBaaS), which connects mobile apps to data center infrastructure services, such as storage and servers, via application

programming interfaces and software devel-oper kits.

By using MBaaS software, developers don’t have to reinvent the wheel when building common mobile application features such as authentication and offline synchronization or making enterprise data available to mobile applications. Mobile backend as a service pro-vides the infrastructure needed to solve both of these problems.

Plus, once IT deploys MBaaS, developers can use it again and again for subsequent apps. (Incidentally, more than one MBaaS company was founded when a group of developers spent a long time building infrastructure to support a mobile app, and then they realized they could reuse it and sell it to other companies.) Some companies also use mobile backend as a ser-vice to support Web-based applications for desktop PCs.

Deep Dive | JACK MADDEN

MBaaS is middleware. It leaves the front-end client develop-

ment to other tools and relies on existing enterprise databases

and apps to con nect to.


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HOW MBaaS WORKSTo give apps access to enterprise data, MBaaS connects to existing data sources—with-out having to move or modify them. These data sources may include databases, such as those that live in a company’s enterprise resource planning or customer relationship management system, or RSS feeds and even user directories that manage accounts and authentication.

The MBaaS platform then makes this data available to mobile apps as a set of modern APIs or SDKs, and it can also provide the appropriate security and management con-trols for using these APIs.

MBaaS vendors often make their platforms available as cloud-hosted services, which include connectors so the platform can securely connect to corporate networks and access various types of on-premises data sources. Some MBaaS platforms are also available in entirely on-premises versions,

though some features such as Apple iOS or Google Android push notifications will require cloud connectivity no matter what.

There are many other technologies that can provide similar functionality to MBaaS. Platform as a service offerings can be useful for building mobile apps, and many mobile app development platforms also have functions that connect mobile apps with back-end infrastructure. This range of tools means that the scope and future role of MBaaS is sometimes debated. The distinc- tion, though, is that MBaaS is middleware. It leaves the front-end client development

What Does mBaaS Support?l push notifications

l storing the app state

l storing app data that doesn’t connect to databases

l offline synchronization

l secure connectivity

l mobile app management platform integration

l app usage and performance analytics

l location

l social media integration

From whatis.com: mobile backend as a service.

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/mobile-Backend-as-a-Service-mobile-BaaS

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/definition/mobile-Backend-as-a-Service-mobile-BaaS


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to other tools, and it also relies on existing enterprise databases and applications to con-nect to.

The field of enterprise app development tools is constantly evolving, which can make it challenging for companies to know which ven-dors and services to use for a project. But the

positive side is that there are many varieties of tools available to make enterprise app projects easier. l

JACK MADDEN is the author of Enterprise Mobility Manage-ment: Everything You Need to Know about MDM, MAM and BYOD and a blogger at brianmadden.com. Follow him on twitter: @jackmadden.

http://www.brianmadden.com/

http://twitter.com/jackmadden

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DEvICE SPOTlIGHT

Why Buy? There is no smartphone better built for pro-ductivity than the Galaxy Note5, thanks to its S Pen—an active stylus that slots into the 5.7-inch Android smartphone—and true, native PDF editing capabili-ties. Samsung worked hard to incorporate the S Pen’s specialty software into Android, so working with the Pen feel more organic and natural. Not to mention, the Note5 is one of the most powerful smartphones on the market and has a stunning display.

PriCe: Productivity doesn’t come cheap. The Note5 starts at around $700 for the 32 GB version and $800 for 64 GB, depending on the carrier.

SPeCS: The Note5 has a 5.7-inch AMOLED display with 2560 x 1440 resolution, which is excellent at cut-ting through glare. It measures 6.03 x 3 x 0.3 inches, weighing just 0.37 pounds, it and features 4 GB of RAM. The phone ships with Android 5.1.1, and it sports a fingerprint scanner, USB 2.0 port and 3000 mAh battery that should keep users connected for at least a day. Samsung claims the Note5 can charge to 50% capacity after only 30 minutes plugged in.

enterPriSe ProS and ConS: The S Pen, power and display should be enough for business users, and the built-in Knox Active Protection will certainly please IT

admins. New features include expanded shared devices support, new audit log capabilities, near field com-munication support for enrolling devices and the ability to change Active Directory passwords from the device.

Enterprise users will likely lament Samsung’s decision to go with a unibody design, however. Sure, it looks slick, but that comes at the cost of a user- replaceable battery and microSD storage expansion. That design makes sense for more consumer-tar-geted devices like the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge mod-els, but business users looking at the Note5 would sacrifice some style for increased utility. l

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

Samsung Galaxy Note5The original phablet, now in its fifth generation, offers new features, plenty of power and possibly the best display to date.

photograph: samsung

http://twitter.com/tgjamison


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To EMM and BeyondAfter jumpstarting its mobile story with AirWatch, VMware turns its gaze upon app development and networking.

vMWARE’S ROAD TO the enterprise mobility market was not an easy one. The virtualization stalwart struggled to bring products to market, and those that made it often failed to gain traction.

That all changed in January 2014, when VMware acquired AirWatch, the enterprise mobility management (EMM) market leader, for $1.54 billion. Now, the company is taking AirWatch beyond EMM, exploring tie-ins with app development platform vendors and its own networking and desktop management products.

Here, Sanjay Poonen, general manager of VMware’s end-user computing group,

discusses this evolution and more.

What does modern mobility mean to you?Mobility means being on the move, and some-times mobility can represent devices: laptops, tablets, phones, machines. When you combine those two, you get our vision for the world: working at the speed of life.

What does the future hold for integrating mobile front ends with traditional it back ends?We are not an applications provider. We are an applications enabler. Applications can be delivered in a variety of fashions. We’ve had strong partnerships with Xamarin, Kinvey

Face Time with SANJAy POONEN

Poonen


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and Kony, and we want to make sure they are running on our cloud infrastructure and also integrated with AirWatch, which they have done. We want AirWatch to become the de facto platform for all mobile app devel-opment platforms, all mobile backends as a service.

What has been the biggest challenge of integrating airWatch into VMware?The stats say 90 percent of acquisitions fail. One [of the reasons] is that the good people leave. you really want to make sure that you allow the mojo of this company that’s doing well [to continue]. I wouldn’t say it was a chal-lenge, but we approached it with a tremendous amount of humility and caution. We knew the odds were that we would screw it up.

We’ve been fortunate to really empower [AirWatch co-founders Alan Dabbiere and John Marshall]. We’ve put a lot of focus on … the ways in which we can make their

people feel like they’ve got bigger jobs inside VMware. Then, on the product side … we began to identify integration points: identity man-agement, integration with NSX network secu-rity, creating a containerized desktop.

What’s the best dish you can cook?I can cook a reasonably good chicken curry. I don’t think it’s anywhere close to the quality and taste of what my mother can cook, or what some of my relatives from India can cook, or certainly any good Indian restaurant. But it would probably be palatable and reasonably delicious for an American who hasn’t gone to a good Indian restaurant.

What’s your favorite movie?Ben-Hur would certainly be the one that’s at the very top. It’s a long movie, but it’s got such an incredible story. With the Indian movies, since we’re talking cultural, there’s a movie called 3 Idiots. I’ll give you my four: Ben-Hur, Chariots of Fire, 3 Idiots and The Shawshank Redemption. l

COlIN STEElE is editor in chief of Modern Mobility. Follow him on twitter: @colinsteele.

listen to the full interview on the modern mobility podcast.

http://www.twitter.com/colinsteele

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Three Burning Questions

What’s driving more enterprises to support mobility?Nearly a quarter of millennials factor in a com-pany’s mobile work environment when con-sidering job offers. SearchMobileComputing news writer Ramin Edmond talked to several analysts, who explained more about what’s fueling enterprise mobility growth. They cited reasons ranging from globalization to after-hours working, which is on the rise thanks to the ease of access to mobile apps.

Can Slack break the email stranglehold?Strong communication usually translates into more productivity, which is why more enterprises are considering new collaboration applications such as Slack. Email is often the centerpiece of workplace communication,

but Slack makes it easy for teams to stay on the same page through what it calls channels. Users can discuss general work topics, split off into project-specific threads and even send private messages. With Slack’s mobile app, users can collaborate and communicate with co-workers even from their personal devices. In this TabletPCReview feature, contributor Ian Debevoise makes the case for why busi-nesses should use Slack.

Can rdSh provide mobile-friendly virtualization?VMware shops can use Horizon View 6 to deliver individual desktop applications using Remote Desktop Session Host farm applica-tion pools. That could be a boon for organi-zations whose employees have Apple iOS or Google Android devices, so they’re not looking for a full Windows desktop and Start menu. SearchVirtualDesktop contributor Alastair Cooke explains how to use View to deliver single legacy applications. l

Mobile Demystified | CARL SETTERLUND

http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/news/4500252449/Survey-reveals-whats-fueling-mobile-enterprise-growth

http://www.tabletpcreview.com/feature/slack-offers-painless-collaboration-for-people-and-companies/

http://www.tabletpcreview.com/feature/slack-offers-painless-collaboration-for-people-and-companies/

http://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/tip/Deliver-single-apps-via-Horizon-6-RDSH-application-pools

http://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/tip/Deliver-single-apps-via-Horizon-6-RDSH-application-pools


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Modern Mobility is a SearchMobileComputing.com e-publication.

Colin Steele, Editor in Chief

Alyssa Wood, Managing Editor

Joe Hebert, Managing Editor, E-Products

linda Koury, Director of Online Design

Neva Maniscalco, Graphic Designer

Sean Matthews, Director of Sales

Rebecca Kitchens, Publisher, [email protected]

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

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