Apple will FAIL in corporate land 'because IT managers hate iPads' Apple's "very limited success" in penetrating the corporate enterprise market with the iPad reflects the lack of control IT managers feel they have over the device, as well as the dominance of Windows. That is, according to HP exec Jos Brenkel, global senior veep of sales for Printers and Personal Systems, who said no single …
Every device locked down so hard that the users can barely do their proper job let alone anything else.
In a windows desktop shop this usually means AD and Group Policies and all that shite.
iPads and Android Tablets can't (AFAIK) be controlled like that. That is why IT Managers hate them. They see these devices as threats to their control over the whole IT ecosystem. Not invented here and you are not going to connect that device to MY network.
Users on the otherhand seem to like them far better than Surface type devices.
My team suffered for a while on our new Windows 7 builds. It was next to impossible to do our job. The end result what our boss went out and bought us a bunch of laptops that allow us to do our jobs but the IT Admins are forever locking our laptops out of the corporate network.
Let battle commence?
Saying 'how' you were unable to do your job would give your post a bit of credit - who's going to make sure you have up to date antivirus, software that is patched and actually is supported with any corporate software it integrates with? When the next version of 'whatever' comes out, you're all going to know it's out, source it from 'somewhere' and install it yourselves?
That's exactly what IT drones said when people started bringing their PCs into the mainframe-dominated workplace of the late 1980s.
These Windows tablets are like the IBM PS/2s and OS/2, the dominant vendor's last-gasp attempt to seize back a market that has slipped their fingers (and where only the IT departments cared any longer).
Since we can see the same things happening - e.g. OEMs being denied the opportunity to profit from the "pushback" technology - it is very likely the result will be the same: Microsoft centric networks will continue to be core to business but the devices in workers' hands will be dominated by another vendor (almost certainly Apple this time around, because people love their iPads in the save way that PCs were loved in the late 1980s).
Don't you just love end-users who don't see how it all works!
"I have 2 computers at home and some ethernet cable. Therefore I'm an expert"
For the record, you can control iPads - as soon as you connect to email using ActiveSync, a bunch of security settings are forced upon you.
There's also software out there that allows you to control the iPad security settings. As far as I know, it just needs to integrate better with AD.
"The end result what our boss went out and bought us a bunch of laptops that allow us to do our jobs but the IT Admins are forever locking our laptops out of the corporate network."
...and when your laptops have a fault or stop working is it going to be your boss that fixes them or the evil IT Admins?
If they wouldn't have me sign a paper saying I wont modify the laptop they are assigning me, I would fix it myself. They are going to give me VPN access anyway...just give me the relevant data and I'll take care of it. Let me take full charge of the machine I'm given and it will work longer, harder, and faster than it would if anyone else did it.
Every device locked down so hard that the users can barely do their proper job let alone anything else.
There are good reasons for this.
1) IT need to stop users from breaking things. It happens all too often: A user downloads some badly written software that they think they need, or changes some settings, and BLAM! The PC is dead. It then takes IT hours to fix. Hours which stop them from doing their job. (Incidentally, these problems happen more often when the user is someone who "knows about computers", you know, the type of user who complains that they should be allowed more freedom because they know what they are doing...)
2) IT need to stop users from doing things they shouldn't be doing. I know we should be able to trust each other, but some people will do naughty things when noone is watching. If kiddie porn or pirated material is found on a system, the company could be in for a world of pain. Even things like watching a football match on your PC in your lunch break could have an effect. IT must ensure business rules are followed with their equipment.
Now obviously, sometimes an over-zealous admin will apply too strict a policy, or will make a mistake. But the entire point is to make computers business tools.
The problem with large IT environments is that they are filled with idiots. You get companies to scale up by employing a bunch of trained monkeys who follow a processes designed for trained monkeys. This leads to an office full of trained monkeys that you simply can't trust with root.
I despise what Fortune 500 IT policies do to a desktop machine. I can also kind of relate to why it's done that way.
"This leads to an office full of trained monkeys that you simply can't trust with root."
Fortunately in the Windows world you have a more advanced security model and can use features like Constrained Delegation to give the Monkeys only the rights that they actually need....
There are plenty of things that employees shouldn't do on company computers/networks. But IT does not need to install "monitoring" software. Just filter out EVERYTHING except what is required. Only allow access to certain things and nothing else. This would solve alot (if not all) of this.
Your laptops are locked out of the network because you can't be trusted, as proven by bringing computers that are not using corporate anti-virus software, aren't configured to use corporate proxy servers for internet access and have been setup with illegal software - because whatever you have installed is violating its end user license agreement the second you started using it in a business environment.
You know all those free tools you like to download and install, but IT admins refuse to install? All illegal to use if installed on a business machine. But of course you don't care about the person struggling to make his mortgage payment because everyone is downloading the free version of his application and ignoring the version that actually makes him money.
iPads on the other hand are hated not because they can't be controlled, they can. They're hated because IT has no control over the use of software that once again is illegal to use in a business environment (go ahead and try to convince a corporation to pay for business license of your favourite app, interesting challange that). Mostly that's fine because beyond email, you can count on one hand the number of apps that have BOTH a true business purpose AND enough functionality that they can replace their desktop equivalents. Mostly business apps have been thrown together in around 90 seconds of shitty coding and half of what should work, doesn't. Then guess whose job it is to fix that. Not the person that wrote the shitty app apparently, but rather the person that has no control over it.
So yes, IT locks things down, and it's for two reasons. First, most of what you want to do is illegal (because you haven't paid for a business license), thus IT is protecting their company from lawsuits. Secondly, it's to protect their multi-million pound systems from the crap you'd do if you were free to run on your own. Handing an unlocked computer to a user is like organising a "run down the stairs with scissors" event for toddlers.
It does make me laugh, how angry some users get when control is taken away from them. We have just migrated to Windows 7 and as part of the migration, I removed many of the permissions our staff had. With XP, they had local admin rights and strict instructions to not install software unless agreed by us. They ignored it, and caused massive problems network wide. Removing the rights and changing the culture would have been impossible without a major reason to do so.
So, I used the migration to Windows 7 as that reason. I introduced SCCM, locked things down and now? We have had a 90% drop in user created problems. Sure, our "we need X package" requests have increased, but packaging up and putting into SCCM for self-service installation is a very quick process usually.
Staff have complained about not being able to install all the dodgy software they used to, but overall they can do their jobs more reliably than before.
That is why we lock things down. Not to be controlling and annoying, but to further the purpose of the IT equipment beyond being a toy for staff and into being productive, and ultimately the purpose of the business.
"You know all those free tools you like to download and install, but IT admins refuse to install? All illegal to use if installed on a business machine."
Really? How can you possibly know that the software is illegal to install. Are all the sysinternals tools illegal? What about gnu stuff? How on earth have you managed to come to that determination?
As an aside, we're in the process of moving from XP to W7, due, of course, to the dropping of support from MS. I'm perplexed that the first thing that our IT crew have done is disable all the updates and have never installed any updates themselves. Previously XP SP2 unpatched, now W7 unpatched (not even the SP). I can only presume that all of these machines are remotely exploitable, and vulnerable to driveby pwning from lunchtime surfing. I can't help drawing a link from that to the regular malware problems we have. Is this normal in med-large (several 1000 people in this business unit alone) organizations?
What are these tools that are illegal to download for business? I smell lots of FUD.
Anything under a GPL, Apache or MIT licence can be used freely for business (I don't know about licenses, I'm British and YMMV, but I do seem to recall all those licencing schemes are of US origin).
I know that corporate lawyers have in the past tried to argue that, for instance, any software developed using IDEs licensed under the GPL, of whichever version, was itself GPL, but I've never been told of a case where that stuck.
And then there are the Express versions of SQL Server, which most definitely can be used for business purposes and are sometimes needed because someone needs to do some database work which requires a version of SQL Server that IT doesn't support, for instance where IT is still stuck on 2005, and this analytical database uses Dates. Or where a researcher or analyst needs to be able to vary a database schema frequently and IT won't let them do that.
"Handing an unlocked computer to a user is like organising a "run down the stairs with scissors" event for toddlers."
Only if it has sufficient access to the corporate network. Are you saying that you can't provide that? You don't have a sandbox that can only connect to the main network via a suitably controlled VPN? You don't, say, have a farm of VMs in Azure that you can let users have access to?
Of course, if you're saying your IT department is under-resourced and so cannot provide the optimum level of service, that is one thing. But trying to argue that unless your company has bought a licence, all downloaded software is illegal for business use - that's FUD, pure and simple.
When you've been in a job where it's your neck on the line if you don't comply with:
a) The Data Protection Act
b) PCI DSS.
Then you can whinge and moan about control over your devices.
Fact is, I make a career going into places where users had been let loose on their freedoms, and by clamping them down I fixed the problems they were having almost instantly.
If you can't do your job, go tell the IT guy or his boss, or his boss. Guarantee you that somewhere along the line your request will be / has been overruled already by those in charge (who are listening to the people whose job it is to keep you out of court when it comes to IT data). If it doesn't, you'll suddenly "lose" all those annoying IT people anyway. Guarantee you.
Walk a mile in my shoes, and you'll see what I mean. Some case law says that even giving you the POTENTIAL to access data that you shouldn't is against the law (e.g. providing you with a password that would allow you access to it in theory). Hospitals and schools have fallen foul of it A LOT and got fined heavily. Extend to laptop encryption, monitoring what software is installed, making sure you don't have a virus transmitting people's personal data outside the company, etc. and you'll quickly find out WHY we lock systems down.
How dare we build secure systems with least-privilege principles? It's almost comical you even bring it up.
> next to impossible to do our job
We had that when moving to a new enterprise-wide umbrella IT setup. Group Policy meant that me and my colleagues couldn't install *any* software, including that which we wrote ourselves. We are employed as software devs.
Doh!
-A.
We had quite a few idiots who did that too - rather than explaining what access was needed and going through the appropriate approval processes to get it they started using their own hardware.
We enabled Microsoft NAP - and diverted all internet access from non authorised hardware to the IT Policy page that states that non company hardware must not be connected to the corporate network....Lots of BOFH fun was had...
Anyone told HP that IT Managers and CIOs don't make decisions beyond "Yes sir" (To which Department tells them to do something) and How High? To any other C level that comes barking."
Wow.. glad I am not CIO wherever it is this happens.
Too bad for such a company, they will never compete with one that uses an IT department properly.
What I don't like about the iPad is that it's almost unsuportable, unless you can actually stand in front of the device. This doesn't work for most IT departments because they don't have phyiscal access to all their staff. They're designed to be aimed solely at the person using it.
You can't do the simplest things like copy a file to an iPad without jumping through hoops - using iTunes from a proper PC, and then syncing to the particular app the iPad user wants to use. We've spent years getting all these automation processes put in place, to then have a 'dumb' device that flips it all around. MDM is a start, but it's such a long way off.
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You seem not to understand the difference between the iTunes application (which is what was been moaned about) and Apple accounts. There is no need to connect an iPad/iPhone to a PC with iTunes any more, hence my comment. Apple accounts are needed to register a device, add applications and synchronise stuff via iCloud, but need not belong to a specific user.
BS. You don't need an Appleid unless you want to download apps, or music or movies and tv shows to the device from Apple. Just like microsoft, and Google, if you want to buy a paid or free app, you need an account from their store. The same is happening in the PC world. If you want to buy a new copy of MS anything, you purchase it online.
Another comment by someone who never saw let alone used an iPad.
Our IT department have been testing and securing iPads since they've been on the market.
We have 3000 of them in the field and nobody uses iTunes for anything other than their music library which users are allowed to have.
Business Apps are pushed through a MDM and documents are stored on a privately owned cloud. Devices are secured down to their IP addresses.
When I hear about the "problems" other companies seems to be having with tablets, all I can think of is that their IT department is either too incompetent or too lazy to make them work.
"all I can think of is that their IT department is either too incompetent or too lazy to make them work."
I can easily think of another reason : an understaffed and overworked IT department. If you've got a succesful rollout of 3000 of the buggers, I assume this project took some planning and resources. If you've got 5 techs on 2 continents that support and maintain everything (servers, clients, phones, telco contracts,...) for about 800 users worldwide and management suddenly decides they want 100 iPads and an app for sales, you start hating 'em. Mind you : we did it, in a month and a half (including MDM research and deploying what we thought was best, learning xcode to create the app, basic training for users).
But yes, I hate them. Not because they're iPads (I love mine and am typing this comment on it), but because they are hell to support.
And you, sir, deserve a good kicking for assuming that incompetent and lazy are the only two options. The same thing goes for all bloody commentards that assume that their machine is locked down because they think IT are "control freaks". Some might be, most are doing their jobs. Same goes for all people.
I didn't think Apple cared that much about businesses wedded to Windows systems. In fact, I don't think they have for many years now. If I'm right, I can't see how they are going to worry too much about this news - especially when they are still making money hand over fist in the more lucrative consumer market.
Plus, the days of buying a home computer based on what you had at work are long gone. Otherwise we'd all be rushing out to pick up XP based systems with IE6 - rather than iPads, iPhones and Android based devices.
They do seem to be doing a lot of business as a way of reducing the amount of paperwork that needs to be hauled about. Aviation being one example (and I suspect the reason that the iPad 2 lives on - getting devices for aviation use certified can be a right pain), insurance underwriting being another that I'm aware of.
Providing you don't try to think about them as replacements for a laptop (excepting for jobs that laptops were bad at anyway), but as another class of business device then they work quite nicely.
Agree about the irony, particularly as Apple then largely throw all this security away by making it an out-and-out consumer device, thereby making Android more appealing to business in part because it wasn't so well locked down and hence was more amenable to the adaptations business demands...
> 'IT Managers hate iPads'? Only those in the stone age.
So far they are mostly BYOD which brings conflict between the owner of the network and the device owner.
I recently had a client who had a policy of not providing kit to contractors (fair enough), but then they wanted to install their own management software on BYOD kit.
er... no thanks.
"The irony is the iPad is more of an Enterprise device than Android ever will be because of its superior security."
Whilst Android is worse - being built on Java and Linux - which both lead their fields in numbers of vulnerabilities, to claim IOS is enterprise secure is laughable. Over 400 vulnerabilities in IOS to date according to Secunia...
End users seem to love the idea of having an IPAD, but are limited in capability within our workplace.
Everyone who requests an IPAD has to sign an "Unsupported" waiver, acknowledging they will not receive support for that device from ITS.
We recevied two of the first gen Surface Pro's a couple of months ago and we installed SQL Server Management Tools, Oracle Client and Toad on them. We have the same capabilities we have on our desktops and laptops, but with the additional functionality of a tablet when we want.
Carries one device that functions as a tablet or Ultrabook IS a better solution IMO.
I understand Apple is fashion, but when you really need to get work done...you need a PC. A Tablet PC does the trick. The new Surface Pro II has upgrades to 8 gigs of ram and 256 or 512 gig SSDs.
Anyone comparing an Ipad with the Surface Pro...is comparing Apples to Oranges. Pun intended.
~Best wishes keeping what you earned.
Because it's a status symbol, "look at me, look how important I am".
These people (and their iPads) are always the first of the deadwood to get the chop in downsizing... Their iPads also come with a big "knob end" sign permenently attached to them.
Guess surface pro is pretty similar in that respect too.
"These people (and their iPads) are always the first of the deadwood to get the chop in downsizing... "
Actually, I think you'll find that IT staff who spend their entire lives telling the people who actually make money for the business that they can't have what they want are the first to get the chop during downsizing. Make enough enemies...
Used a surface Pro the other day at the Gadget Show Live, was happy to download DOTA2, fast as hell, small and slick compared to a laptop, has HDMI for docking and various other nifty things. The flat keyboard was okay for a non-typist like me, not for coding etc. but a definite improvement over the on-screen keyboard and at no appreciable cost to carry.
I actually bought an RT tablet for half the price (also thinner and lighter etc.) because the person I bought it for has no real need for a fully fledged PC to have with them always.
A smartphone covers 99% of my needs so I still don't have a tablet.
The Apple ][ really took off when business types started taking their own machines into run the spreadsheets that they needed to run but couldn't on the computers used in the business world in those far-off pre-IBM PC times. It's amusing that after all of Microsoft's efforts to sell table PCs for the pat decade or so it was an Apple device once more that the business types landed on as the thing that they wanted to use.
"a lot of companies have had a lot of success rolling out iPads."
Rolling out.....yes
The end result is a situation where a laptop is needed and an ipad is given. This slows things down and causes more people to go through alot of unnecessary grief while waiting for a series of new apps (that end up barely working) just to bypass what was already there and could be much easier to handle if a laptop where used.
The ipad I have.....I don't want. It makes a nice toy but a pitiful excuse for a computer. A ten year old laptop is more of a computing device than a brand new ipad.
... Is what I diagnose.
I've experienced this from both sides. I train professionals who have no wish or capacity to understand the brutal realities of professionally administered IT systems. I also struggle to enable them to be creative and productive in the face of those constraints. I understand why they exist, but that doesn't make them easier to cope with.
The comment "The ipad I have.....I don't want. It makes a nice toy but a pitiful excuse for a computer. A ten year old laptop is more of a computing device than a brand new iPad." caught my eye as getting to the nub of the issue here...
I doubt anyone is asking you to give up your precious 10 year old laptop (are they?). If they are, I can see that might be upsetting. However, why is it so hard to imagine the possibility that an iPad is some professionals' ideal tool? It's almost as if it makes some people cross that productivity and profit are substituted for personal preference (pause to wipe screen). I'll admit I have been amazed at how much I enjoy being a consumer of the iPaddy stuff. However, I have also been amazed at the boost in business related stuff too. Not top 500, but it's still a business, and my iPad has paid for itself many, many times over.
What I look for in an IT professional is someone with an open mind, as well as expertise. A facilitator of what needs to be done. Of course I want to hear about how I might get in a pickle with the ICO and whatnot, but I also want to hear how we can get round the problem, in a way that doesn't involve a 10 year old laptop, or XP, or switching to Surface unless that will also pay for itself many times over.
I couldn't care less that other businesses take a different view. I have no interest in persuading anyone angrily, dismissively or with a reference packed post that businesses should support the use of iPads. In fact, if I am right, the more they don't, the better for me.
So, feel free to completely dismiss the above.
What I'm suggesting is...the right tool for the right job.
I know that the ipad is ideal for many people. If it works for you then great. There just simply is a kind of thinking thats moving through companies and their leadership that these devices are needed when they're not. It's a way of being trendy, cool, and fashionable. Things like this caries with it a certain "look" to other people. My interest is in getting the job done and doing it correctly, efficiently, and with enjoyment. It's difficult to enjoy being a professional when all you have to work with are things that are counter productive.
Our man at the Top was a CFO before he became CEO and he was and is a business-driven guy who needs a light, easy device to use when travelling, which is always. He likes his Apple because it weighs nothing, doesn't make him have to think geek to use, and has the power to support anything he and we need to do. Our IT chaps wrung their hands and wanted to give him a standard laptop (2.5 pounds without bag, cables etc) and he told them to think again.
I understand, appreciate and support Systems' need to make systems secure, from threats and from idiot owners within, but the business should be led by the business, and IT should to everything in their power to make business easy to do.
Pfew, thanks, I thought I was the only one who saw this. What the user wants, the user gets, certainly when he/she is high up. IT is a tool, and if you haven't had the sense to make your backbone as open as possible you deserve the problems you get when the world turns on a hairpin.
And if you knew the different meanings of open then you might understand the point.
For example, OpenPGP is an open standard (RFC 4880), that doesn't make it insecure.
It's perfectly possible to have a secure infrastructure that you can easily add new devices or types of devices to, you just need to make sensible choices about if/how you lock down those devices and what kind of access they have to your internal systems (if any).
A lot of IT departments like a one size fits all approach and users and the business demands more flexibility. I know places where the Windows installations are locked down so much and the system is unreliable that departments have basically near enough given up and often end up having to use other systems just to get stuff done.
but that doesn't mean his observation is wrong. Three years ago we were using Blackberries for smart phones. Now were using iPhones. I can't reset a phone PIN on an iPhone if the user forgets it. I could on a BB. I can't backup an iPhone before I perform a factory reset or upgrade. I could on a BB. Yes, it is encrypted. Yes we can force it to require a PIN. No we don't have scanning software to compare a know baseline against the current phone when a user comes back from travel, even in a third party. We did for BB, even if it was a bit of a PITA. So the new policy is that when the phone/tablet comes back, it gets reset.
And yes, it is against policy to have iTunes installed on your desktop. So getting and installing Apps is a royal PITA even with Apple's improve deployment options.
Bottom line: Apple has never been aimed at big corp/government and still isn't ready for prime time in those environments. If monkeyboy (or anybody else) really wanted to eat Apple's phone market, this is the weakness he'd target. It is how Gates won the desktop war all those years ago.
There is a thing called "back up to iCloud" which works without iTunes.
The reason you can't reset a PIn on the iPhone is that their isn't one, but you can force the use of a PIN though exchange on an iPhone.
Nobody needs iTunes to install Apps on an iPhone. This has been the case since iOS5 (three years ago).
I sincerely hope you're not working in IT, otherwise it's time for a career move.
Oh I work in IT. Just low man on the totem pole dealing with all the crap rolling downhill from the decision makers.
Against policy to backup to the iCloud because it doesn't meet security requirements.
Against policy to install iTunes.
For some reason it's also policy to not assign each user an Apple ID. I guess it's somehow related to accounting.
Now my ultimate employer has deemed that about one person in 100 can have an iTunes account, buy apps and gift them, at which point we jump through a different set of hoops to install it. They want one person buying and assigning the stuff, Apple wants each phone user to be the purchaser.
Couple that with Apple's disdain for dealing with the standard large company or government bill mechanisms and you have a disaster in the making. It really is a PITA from a corporate governance and support standpoint.
And on the PIN front, yeah I get The Great, All-Knowing, and Wonderful Steve Jobs deemed it problematic, but it's a basic requirement for Enterprise level IT asset management. As things stand now when a user forgets his PIN my only option is to wipe the phone and reprovision it. Which means putting in the wrong password 10 times including the extended wait periods near the end that are probably intended to prevent pranking. Not a bad idea, but not so good when enforced software policies force people to change their PIN every 30/60/90 days and they forget their PIN.
My department gets requests for various tablets including I pads all the time. We would love to make people happy. Problem is, there is simply no justification for such devices to be used in our business. They are clumsy and much slow to perform business tasks with, incompatible with critical business applications, and expensive to purchase and expensive to support.
If tablets did anything better than our existing equipment, they would absolutely be in the hands of every employee. We continue to research each proposal to try and find ways to leverage new technologies, but tablets just aren't a good fit.
One exception may be the Surface Pro. With its ability to run all the software our offices use, it is a much better candidate. We are doing a pilot program with outside sales (since they can benefit from a more portable solution unlike positions).
"You may be surprised at the ways people can utilize new technology for all sorts of purposes you haven't thought about. Why not conduct a trial with some keen users to see what they can accomplish?"
Mostly because of the money and time such a program would consume. If a dept. manager came to us and said "I would like my staff to be able to do X" and a tablet did X well, we could justify the purchase of tablets and they would absolutely get them. That just hasn't happened. Instead, we get vague requests for "tablets" with no reasons attached. As CIO I have a responsibility to gather a more precise definition of the need and help find the best solution.
When it comes to requests for tablets, there usually isn't a definable need. When there is, so far at least tablets are not the best solution. We have certainly tried. There are samples of every generation of ipad save the most recent, several android tablets, etc in our lab. They just don't stack up against more traditional solutions for any valid business need so far.
I think your explanation is much better and clearer than your previous post. If the problem is just "guys like gadgets", obviously fair enough. If it is someone with a very mobile job who needs access to relatively simple data like location of next job and fill in form when done, a tablet may be a much better business case than a laptop - lighter, less to go wrong, all day battery life, and as the amount of time spent filling in data may be relatively small, speed of input is not important.
(Currently I don't need or use a tablet, or a large screen smartphone, but I'm aware of two mobile applications where a tablet works better than anything else when all factors are taken into account. The company that developed them is having great trouble with the sell in, however, because the sort of IT departments that their potential customers have, are full of reasons why tablets cannot be integrated into the business. I am sure they would be perfectly happy with those touchscreen laptops that have swivelling screens that turn into tablets, but whether the uses would after carrying them around for a day is not yet established.)
Exactly. "We" do things this way and don't like change, you can't leave it up to "them".
Vicious circle: IT is restrictive, it is perceived as being a brake on the wheel of progress, its resources get cut so in defence it gets still more restrictive...and the vultures of the cloud providers gather, developing their tools and biding their time.
my wife works as a business development manager for a large corporate she current has to lug around a HP Laptop, a Samsung S4 and now a fecking iPad there is NOTHING she can do on the iPad that she can't do on the laptop but plenty she can't do on it (Lotus Notes, Seible, etc) waste of time and money
At first thought (not a deep one I'll admit), it should be possible to take 'open source' Android and re-roll it so that a user has to logon to your-corporate.com instead of google.com and can only install apps by downloading them from the your-corporate apps site. These apps could be copies of trusted standard Google-Play apps, with appropriate agreements regarding payments for premium apps.
I worked at a site with about 80-100 staff - creatives, musicians, programmers etc - and the IT guy had set up a Windows domain for the site. He said that he had originally tried to keep everybody on MS machines. I mentioned that I'd seen lots of Macs and he agreed - he said his life wasn't easy because about half the staff were using Macs - only the office types were sat behind their standard issue PC's.
To me the problem is MS - they should make his life easier by providing tools to enable integration of Apple products. This is only going to happen more.
Later in the month he mentioned that they's taken on fourteen new members of staff - and thirteen had turned up with Macs!
....we hate the PEOPLE who want to use them....
....because we know those people are going to get a month or two down the line and start complaining that their iPad isn't suitable for their work or their workload....
....and then they'll start asking if we can change the whole damn system just so they can use their little toy....
....and lastly we'll change enough of the system eventually, and by then the toys will all be stacked in boxes at the back of the lowest shelf of the cupboard, and people will be back to laptops or desktops and actually getting some work done.
So very true about realising they can't do what they want with them.
We rolled out about a dozen iPads here to department heads. So far, I've had 2 given back because they couldn't think of a reason to use them when they have i5 laptops as well.
I know 2 of them are used entirely for playing games.
In reality, I know of only 1 which is used well - by a musician. The head uses his quite well, but it is used in no different a way to a laptop - he plays powerpoints via it, and checks his email. I've seen him attempt to do some audio recording (trying to have 2 tracks) and editing and it took him hours, compared to using Audacity on his PC.
So, as yet, I still fail to see a use for iPads in business when a Ultrabook or normal laptop can do more and is a better investment, longevity-wise.
I'm not sure what control they need over the......there is a lot of control with MDM solutions from Apple and third parties. http://www.enterpriseios.com/wiki/Comparison_MDM_Providers
If it was just Apple controlling them then I could see, but with volume purchase of apps and MDM solutions from third parties I don't see a huge deal.
Android is a mess with every device being different and Windows 8 sucks so the iOS device is the easiest best solution. Writing documentation you only need one set, with Android with every device being different you need a set for each device and would be a huge pain. Windows 8 just sucks using, it has some nice UI features, but the overall use sucks.
"volume purchase of apps"
Nope, Apple doesn't allow this in all parts of the world.
" MDM solutions from third parties"
So another service to deploy and support.
"and Windows 8 sucks" (many times, according to your post)
My group of 20 test users (granted, power users) beg to differ. 19 of them are asking to turn in their company provided laptop and iPad for a Surface. Granted, they're all heavy travellers and don't like all te weight. YMMV, of course.
Maybe I come in different places then, because I cannot move without the damn things being around. If you travel a lot and you mainly consume figures or present information you don't need more. I know the owner of a global news service that clocks more air miles than most pilots, and this guy carries two, just in case one dies - according to him it still weighs less than his former laptop and is more useful.
Oh, and for the "Apple is not ready for prime time" stuff, that is a matter of opinion. A *lot* of private banks are switching to Macs, and I challenged my colleagues last week at the Dublin Web Summit to find a PC because I suddenly realised that *everyone* was using Macs and iPads. We found two. I'm sure we'd have found maybe 10 in total, but over several halls stuffed to the brim with tech (and no working WiFi to speak off, which was IMHO scandalous) we found 2 laptops that were not Macs.
Which tells me more than any marketing guff and rigged industry assessments...
Of course it's not impossible to support iThings, any more than it's impossible to support Macs, but it's a bloody pain. They just don't play well with others, and Apple really don't give a damn about making life easy for you. In an environment with about 400 Linux machines, 100 windows machines and maybe 20 macs, the macs are the ones that generate a good 50% of the support tickets.
I put this largely down to the "It just works" mindset - which is the most dangerous thing in IT. Press button, thing happen, think not.
That sort of attitude is just no damn good in a large managed environment. "Why can't I connect to the wifi? It Just Works at home!" "Why won't it print? It Just Works at home!" It never occurs to anyone that a workplace with hundreds of machines and thousands of users might not be the SAME as home. Apple work so hard on hiding all the technical bits away that as soon as a user runs into a senario that isn't 99% typical for a home user they freak out.
We get sick of the users not THINKING, and that very quickly leads to getting sick of their silly shiny toys.
Of course it's not impossible to support iThings, any more than it's impossible to support Macs, but it's a bloody pain. They just don't play well with others, and Apple really don't give a damn about making life easy for you
Strange. Can you be more specific? We found that especially hooking up to services based on Open Standards, Macs tend to work quite well and have the support for most protocols already built in. The only thing that does not work well is the Finder WebDav client/mount, for some reason it's significantly slower than some applications we have tested, so that's something we're looking at, but in general I'm actually quite happy with Macs. About the only thing I really dislike is that I have to add MS Office because our people are addicted to Outlook and I'm slowly starting to wonder why no replacements have emerged over so much time..
When I worked at Blackpool Council. I worked under a Head of ICT who took the attitude that iPads would never be good enough for enterprise. I decided to make use of one (and staff were very interested), using Citrix and made some remarkable revelations. I was able to show that iPad was far more effective than anyone would have guessed, with Windows log-in on Council PCs and laptops sometime taking 20- 30 minutes and log off from services that people needed to use. iPad logged on in 30 seconds, so after 30 seconds you could work! Imagine 1000 plus PCs each delaying work by an hour a day. Everyone just put up with it. When we had a Conficker infection, which took many services out, the iPad and Mac I used (with a few others) were the only computers safe to use.
This attitude about iPads and Apple in Enterprise situations has existed for many years. Some supposedly experts simply do not, or decide that will not invest any time in understanding the alternatives for their customers.
This is the kinda thing I deal with on a regular basis.
It's exactly this kind of nonsense that I'm talking about. No real concern for actually fixing problems. Just replace it with a shiny new toy and watch in amazement as all kinds of new problems get created.....and they're going to tell me "it's not in the budget".....lol
It would be in the budget if we could do things in a logical manner is if we were professionals moving with a purpose.
The flaw in this argument of course is that IT managers won't be the ones making the decision, the top execs will be and so the decision will be lead by what they find most useful, not anyone else. At least, thats the non technical flaw in the argument, there are many technical flaws, most of them making the rather weird assumption that all parties will stand still in their development over the next few years with the exception of Microsoft.
HP would say that. In reality, Apple completely dominates the Business tablet and smartphone markets with over 90% marketshare in Business tablets and 78% in mobile in general:
- Apple's iOS mobile business market share increased from 69% to 78% in Q1 2013 while Android declined from 30% last year to only 22% (Egnyte)
- iPad captured 93.2% of Business tablet market in Q4 2012 (Good Technology)
- iPhone accounted for 73% of all non-BB business smartphones (Good Technology)
- iOS devices in total represented 77% of mobile device activations in the enterprise market in Q4 2012 (Good Technology)
Citrix reports that iOS as a whole represents 58% of all smartphone and tablet enterprise mobility management deployments (62% in the USA) with Android on 35% and Windows on 7%.
Citrix mentions the iPad represents 53% of the iOS total, but don't indicate how this compares to competing tablets. However, considering the iPhone-iPad ratio is far lower in the overall market, it follows that the iPad's Citrix tablet marketshare would be close to what Good and Egnyte report as well
"Apple completely dominates the Business tablet and smartphone markets with over 90% marketshare in Business tablets and 78% in mobile in general:"
Probably not for much longer. Microsoft and Nokia are wining loads of business from Blackberry right now...and Windows phone is approaching 12% UK market share....
That's a bit of wishful thinking. The iPhone surged to 31% marketshare in the UK last quarter- up from 23.3% YoY and this was even before the new iPhone 5s and 5c were released.
Most of Nokia's Windows Phone gains are in the cheap bottom end of the market - not where Business plays.
Vulnerabilities that rapidly get patched are nothing compared to malicious exploits that actually do vast damage and thanks to a user base that installs the latest updates astonishingly fast, iOS is an incredibly secure platform in the *real* world.
As you say, Android is worse - in fact, it is FAR worse.
32.8 million Android devices were infected with 65,227 different malware variants in 2012 (and another 20-30 million so far this year) according to NQ Mobile vs close to zero iOS devices.
An example of the viciousness of many Android malware exploits is the Eurograbber malware that swiped $47 million from the bank accounts of 30,000 hapless users last year.
Then there is the Bmaster command and control botnet malware which has been siphoning between half to 3.5 million dollars off hapless Android users per year.
And then there is the Google Messaging Service security hole being used by hackers to steal Android users’ data and forcing them to send premium SMS messages with direct financial implications to Android users. In fact
One big worry is the enormous Master Key security hole affecting 99% of all Android devices sold since 2008 that can give malware full access to all system and user data and control phone and SMS functions and turn the Android device into an always-on, always-moving, hard to detect botnet zombie.
This Master Key vulnerability can unfortunately only be patched by manufacturers releasing new firmware for their devices which is regrettable considering the dismal record manufacturers and Carriers have of releasing updates for Android devices.
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