Workforce of the future

2 comments on this article Posted by admin in Corporate, iOS, iPad, iPhone on October 19th, 2011 .

Cartoon representation of my iPad demo

Yesterday I demonstrated my mobile working solution at the Capgemini Futures Forum (#fow2011). The theme of the session was very much about embracing what the user wants and finding ways for corporate IT to reach out to them at their level rather than forcing the traditional IT approach upon them. I do this with iPads. To me it seems logical to use iPads at work – a natural fit that will transform the way our employees work in a truly revolutionary way. The key message I was trying to convey during my talk was that there was nothing that special with the solution itself and that what I have achieved at work is to simply extend the corporate desktop experience that they are already well acquainted with to the new form factor of a corporate iPad. The desktop is now truly mobile – take the cloud to your users so that it can be accessed anywhere and at any time and from any device.

Simplicity provides the answer to complex problems

Before my presentation it took me some time to work out what it was about my iPad solution that is actually different. Most people have seen or used an iPad and know very well what they do, so there’s nothing new to show off there. On my work iPad I have my pictures, my music, my films and a whole range of apps ranging from games to social media. I’ve personalised the wallpaper with pictures from my honeymoon and there is little to differentiate it from a personal device.

So how is it different? The difference is that I have more than just my work email, calendar and contacts pushed to my device. Alongside the Angry Birds and Facebook apps, I also have apps including Oracle, the intranet and SharePoint 2010 collaboration tools all connected to the corporate sphere. The lines between corporate and personal are blurred. As a user I’m not fussed about how this is done. It just works. Whether I click on an icon for Angry Birds or Oracle they just have to open and work. I don’t want to spend time working out why I can’t get my emails or why SharePoint isn’t connecting. A user doesn’t care about MDMs and VPNs and probably doesn’t even know what those acronyms mean. But why should they?

How does it work?

When a user collects one of our iPads or iPhones they are guided through the enrolment process with the Mobile Device Manager (MDM). It doesn’t matter which MDM tool we’ve chosen – there are many products on the market which use the same Apple APIs so all offer pretty much the same thing. Once enrolled, the user’s Exchange details are pulled down to the device to securely deliver email, contacts and calendar within the native iOS apps.  Native is key here – Apple has done a brilliant job with their apps so why wouldn’t you want to use them? At the same time, a user certificate and VPN settings are also downloaded to the device. The beauty of this certificate-based authentication method is that it allows for VPN on demand. With this configuration the VPN tunnel is opened whenever a user opens a corporate app or browses to an internal website. The user doesn’t even need to know it’s happening. They never need to know what a VPN is. They can carry on working within their own circle, using the apps in the way that’s familiar to them and the iPad does the rest for them. I believe it’s the responsibility of corporate IT to provide users with this experience. They don’t want to have to login in three different places just to read their email, or open an app that delivers a clunky Windows remote desktop on a device as elegant as an iPad. Stop trying to over-engineer the problem – sit at the user’s level and understand what it is that they really want and what they have the patience for.

The demo I gave yesterday was a real world example of how iPads are changing the way people work. Members of one of the most critical teams in our business approached me a few months ago looking for a solution to their problems. This team is responsible for rapidly responding to emergency incidents. In the old world, they had to print about 300 pages of safety critical documentation for every one of their 15 vehicles every single day. They wanted to go green and get rid of their dependence on paper. They wanted to have reliable access to all their safety information in electronic format and they wanted a way of collaborating between teams and being assured that they were referencing the latest available information. The solution was SharePoint 2010 and an iPad for each of their vehicles. Using SharePoint they could have a central repository for their documents updated and managed on PCs by office-based teams. They could access this anywhere from an iPad, complete their vehicle check sheets online and upload any photos related to incidents back into SharePoint so that this information could be shared instantly with all their colleagues. And all for less than £500 per iPad and a SharePoint team site that took 2 hours to build.

What’s of greatest significance for me is that most of this team will admit that they’re not the most IT-literate. Yet they want to find better ways of working and to do this they want something simple. An iPad is perfect – it’s form factor is inviting and it’s user experience is intuitive and fun. They get it, they love it and they want to embrace it. By providing the connectivity to the corporate cloud (SharePoint) they can interact better with their colleagues and free up their time to do the things that really matter, rather than struggling with a mouse or keyboard and being tied to a desk.

“But we’re different”

Typically what happens when I show what I’ve been doing on iPads to others in the industry is that questions always turn to security. Frequently I get reactions such as “that’s very impressive but it wouldn’t work for us. We couldn’t possibly use iPads in the same way that you do.” It’s like there is an ingrained fear within many IT managers who refuse to accept that whether we like it or not, the era of the smartphone and tablet is here and there is nothing we can do about it other than embrace it. Instead of welcoming the technology revolution they want to put up walls and lock it down to an extent where it stops being useful. Even if we refuse to accept this technology and won’t bring it into the corporate sphere, our users are going to carry on doing what they want to do without us, using their own tablets and smartphones to do the things they want to do in a quicker, smarter way.

Brian Madden sums this up brilliantly here

My challenge to these IT managers is always to ask whether they have blocked the use of USB memory sticks and CD drives at work? Or whether their corporate proxy servers block access to www.dropbox.com? I am yet to be told yes to any of those questions. If someone really wants to get data out of the ‘safe’ corporate IT world, they will find a way. So why are we getting so worried about losing data on an iPad? Clearly we need to be cautious but not to be so cautious that we shut the doors on fantastic opportunities. Data can be secured on an iPad, security measures can be put in place and risks can be mitigated. If your data gets compromised, just wipe it remotely.

Users first

The success of this project has relied on a user-first approach. We got rid of the old thinking and started thinking about what we’d want as a user. Gone are the days of telling our users what IT looks like – our customers drive this change. They tell us what they want and we need to find ways to accommodate them.

I’m not a technical expert; I’m an enthusiast with passion! I’ve tried at every turn to put the user first and have had awesome support from a technical team that like to think different to help steer me to this goal. But what do you think? How do you embrace the demands of an increasingly IT-savvy customer and what are the challenges facing you? I’m keen to learn and exchange ideas in the pursuit of the ultimate goal of putting the user first. Feel free to comment below.

Reality – the iPhone 4S

0 comments on this article Posted by admin in iOS, iPhone on October 18th, 2011 .

Just before the 4S was announced I made predictions that alongside it we would also see an all new iPhone 5. Obviously that proved not to be the case. (But if you believe the rumour sites this is why.)

I have to admit that I was initially very disappointed. But then I reflected on this thought – had the iPhone 4S been in a different case and called an iPhone 5 would opinion have been more favourable? I think so. Faster processor, better graphics, better camera, better battery, better camera, better OS (including Siri)…

Do I need to get an iPhone 4S? No, probably not. But you can bet I will be getting one nonetheless!

Predictions

0 comments on this article Posted by admin in iOS, iPhone on October 3rd, 2011 , tagged with .

In a few hours time Apple will finally unveil their newest iPhone. Speculation on tech blogs has been running wild for months and there is still nothing concrete to go on. Gizmodo famously got hold of an iPhone 4 prototype last year a few months before its release but there have been no such leaks this year.

Based on the information available to date these are my predictions for today’s announcement:

iPhone 5 or 4S?

Perhaps the most speculation to date has been whether Apple will release an incremental update to the iPhone 4 (the 4S) or a more radical redesign (the iPhone 5).

Personally I think (or want to believe) that there will be both. Why do I think this?

  1. Apple has broken from their traditional 12 month product cycle and given themselves an additional 3-4 months to get whatever they have got ready
  2. The iPhone 4 still has lingering reputational issues with the ‘death grip’ and signal loss so a more radical redesign would be a good idea, although sales data no doubt proves that the customer base is unphased.
  3. An iPhone 5 would be an awesome ‘one more thing’ feature for what’s likely to be a packed keynote
  4. Call me cynical but iPhone 4S leaks (code in iTunes betas being the strongest) seem controlled to me. Perhaps a bit of smoke and mirrors to divert attention from the real focus of today.

Hardware specs

I don’t think there’s much really to be said here, because all the tech blogs have covered this in depth already and based on the fact that the iPad 2 has been around with improved hardware for several months yet, I’d say the iPhone is inevitably going to get a boost in similar areas:

  1. Apple A5 dual core system on a chip
  2. 1GB RAM (remember when iPad 1 came out it had 256MB RAM and the iPhone 4 had double when that debuted a few months later.) I think some of the new features to be announced today will need that extra boost.
  3. Larger screen? Perhaps, but I don’t think it’s that necessary. There can certainly be no improvenment on pixel resolution but perhaps a small amount of additional screen real estate would be good. After using an iPad for a while, an iPhone does seem a little small for browsing etc.
  4. 8 megapixel camera. Par for the course really. After all, Apple needs to keep up with competitors. But as they will tell you, it’s not about the pixels but the photons and therefore much more reliant on quality software.

New features

I don’t think this is where the biggest surprises will be because we already had the iOS5 preview at WWDC in June and developers have had access to this since then. I have been using iOS5 and iCloud for some time in beta format and both of them are game changers in my opinion. Not least because usability for consumers is dramatically improved but also from the corporate perspective there are some dramatic shifts. Finally, the iPhone/iPad is maturing to a level where it becomes far easier to support from a corporate perspective and makes these devices a genuinely exciting possibility within the corporate environment (expect more on this in future posts).

Most of the iCloud/iOS5 features are already in the public domain and it seems logical that there will be a few others such as deep voice integration. Rumours are abound about a new voice-powered ‘Assistant’ feature. I will be intrigued to see how this fits in. Personally, I am not sure whether I need to talk to my iPhone to complete tasks. But perhaps in the next few months we are going to see large parts of the population shouting commands into their personal devices. I guess we shall see…

What will happen next?

It has been some time since an iOS5 beta update. In my opinion the latest version is still a little rough around the edges. I expect Apple has been working very hard on this and included a few surprises. I am expecting to be able to install the GM by the time I go to sleep tonight. I doubt whether the iPhone 4S/5 will be as rapid, despite some rumours to the contrary. I would expect developers to be able to play for a week or two first. There is a 14 October date being floated round the blogosphere at the moment and that feels about right.

There are many rumours flying around to date but to me what seems clearest is that nobody is particularly sure. It seems logical that Apple wants this year’s surprise to be exactly that. Apple’s secrecy around product launches is unparalleled. Last year, Apple was caught with their pants down by Gizmodo’s leaks. I’d be willing to bet that extra effort has been put into secrecy this year. That’s why I believe the iPhone 4S leaks but no iPhone 5 leaks are contrived and designed to through us off the scent – Apple knows developers dig through their code and SDKs looking for references to future devices. Couldn’t they have left the 4S lines out until final release?

And what would be better than one final ‘one more thing’ by Steve Jobs to mark his departure from Apple? I’m certainly hoping so…

Poacher turned gamekeeper…

0 comments on this article Posted by admin in Corporate, iOS, Jailbreak on June 16th, 2011 .

All my private iOS devices are jailbroken. My wife bought me an Apple TV 2 for Christmas last year and as she will tell you, the first thing I said (embarrassingly before I even said thank you!) was ‘can I jailbreak it?’ I have a typical ‘early adopter’ mentality and like being able to install functional tweaks and apps that aren’t approved by Apple. For instance, I enabled multitasking on my iPhone 3GS running iOS 3.1 (Apple didn’t enable it until iOS4) and I have been wirelessly synchronising my iPhone 4 to iTunes for about a year now (Apple will be enabling this feature with the forthcoming release of iOS5.)

Whilst I am a big advocate of jailbreaking at home, I am not such a fan in the corporate world and am currently taking great steps to make sure I can prevent it amongst our users. So why is this? In February, researchers in Germany demonstrated how it was possible to steal iPhone passwords in six minutes using one of the main jailbreak tools – redsn0w. In a world where consumer demand has an increasing influence on the decisions we make within corporate IT, this presents a serious issue. Our customers don’t care about the security and just want a flashy device that keeps up with the technology they are used to at home. However, we as IT professionals have a duty to ensure that our data is secure and our systems are not compromised. The majority of users will probably never even hear about jailbreaking but as in the case of the German researchers’ findings, they don’t need to – their devices are still vulnerable to the malicious acts of others.

So faced with the demand for an iPhone or iPad what are the options for corporate IT? In my team, we have opted to provide a largely unrestricted experience to our users and to opt for a model where we encourage them to do the right thing. We have policies our users sign up to where they agree to not jailbreak their devices but seriously who reads the small print? How many of us have actually read all 16,712 words of the iTunes store Terms and Conditions before clicking ‘Accept’ and downloading the next app? I certainly haven’t. We need a way to ensure that we can provide the experience demanded of us whilst maintaining control of our data in the background.

My method for doing this is through mobile device management (MDM). There are a large number of MDM solutions available but they generally all do exactly the same thing, being based on a standard set of APIs from Apple. These MDM tools allow you to do all sorts of wonderful things but the one key feature for me is jailbreak detection. When a device is compromised, it is instantly flagged up and quarantined so that corporate data can no longer be accessed. If a hacker were to attempt their tricks on one of my corporate devices, they would get access to nothing because the instant they had run their tool and compromised the device, a security policy would automatically kick in and remotely wipe it.

As I compare notes with IT teams in other organisations it becomes clear that we are all in the same boat and face the same challenges – our users want iPhones and iPads and what are we planning to do about it? My answer is to give them what they want for it is they who will actually be using the technology to generate the real benefits, savings and efficiencies. We want our users to use their devices appropriately, and largely they will. But on the rare occasions where curiosity will get the better of someone like me or when a device is lost or stolen we will have the controls in place to ensure that our data and systems are not compromised.

The cost of an iPad

1 comment on this article Posted by admin in Corporate, iOS, iPad on June 13th, 2011 .

I have been trialling iPads in my organisation for a year now and they have been exceptionally well received. Since I owned my first iPhone (3GS) I immediately began to see the possibilities of these devices and their capacity to drive the ‘consumerisation of IT.’ After a long period of constant persuasion, I was finally permitted to purchase an iPad as a proof of concept and to prove its place within our corporate environment. Put into context, my company has strong ties to Microsoft and to bring an Apple device into our corporate portfolio was a huge concession. Reflecting back on that decision there was probably an element of bringing an end to my constant iPad evangelism! Nevertheless it very quickly became clear how there is a very definite role for the iPad within our organisation with very real benefits to our business.

Today I read this article in The Evening Standard discussing the piloting of iPads in Havering Borough Council. Over the last few months I have read a number of articles similar to this one, condemning iPads as “very expensive toys” and citing one opponent who says ‘it seems too extravagant in the light of all the cuts”. The aesthetics of an iPad undoubtedly suggest quality and with quality often follows cost, however, I don’t think the iPad necessarily deserves the ‘extravagant’ tag. In fact, my own findings are perfectly in line with those of Havering Council. The cost of one of our standard corporate laptops is slightly over £700 and to have the full portable experience you then need to add the cost of software, a USB 3G dongle and secure token key fob and all associated licenses. In the case of the iPad, the cost is less than £500 all in for a device which can be connected to our corporate network anywhere, at any time and in next to no time.

I recently wandered through our office after most people had left for the day and was amazed at how many corporate laptops were left behind by their owners, safely tucked into their docking stations, where I suspect they have largely remained since the day they were issued. Surely this defeats the purpose of providing an expensive laptop as a mobile working solution in the first place? I wonder how many of my iPad pilot users left their devices behind that night?

Now I can think of a hundred ways how I am personally more productive by using my iPad at work but it is my pilot group who will give you a true and unbiased perspective on how their lives have been improved. One of the company Directors who is on my pilot recently gave me the following feedback:

“The iPad has transformed the way I manage my business commitments and allowed me to spend more time out on site [we have a large number of remote site offices around London] without the pressure to be back at my desk to do things such as sign off Oracle requisitions etc. This is exactly the way we need to go to free up time for Managers to move towards more strategic rather than tactical management and to free time to be out with the frontline staff. I am also sure we will see immense gains once we deploy this technology to a wider range of staff and I eagerly await the developments.”

Not only have we saved hard cash by not providing a heavier, less convenient, less used and significantly more expensive laptop but we have provided an innovative solution that is providing a real and tangible benefit to our users, which in itself is generating huge savings in time and associate overheads. The future is an exciting one!