Over a billion people today carry Android smartphones – devices that are more powerful than the computers we used just a few years ago.
For many, these phones have become essential tools to help us complete important work tasks like checking email, editing documents, reviewing sales pipelines and approving deals. But for the majority of workers, smartphones and tablets are underutilized in the workplace. Their business and innovation potential remain largely untapped.
Today we’re announcing the Android for Work program to tap into that potential. With a group of partners, we’re helping businesses bring more devices to work by securing, managing and innovating on the Android platform.
The elephant in the room.
I find your elephant link both humerus and sad at the same time. Although I am using an ancient version of android, others with more recent versions still have the same problem.
I still see a lot of work PCs – the kinds that run all the time, and for many years – that still run Windows XP (yes still), or Windows Vista.
A lack of updates is not the big problem we tech heads think it is.
Windows as a platform as of XP is a lot more mature than Android is.
That said, people not updating past Windows XP is actually a huge problem, just like people still on Android 2.3 or older is a problem.
After using Maemo 5 and MeeGo Harmattan, I still find Android clunky and confusing.
But the worse part is, when trying to connect the email to the corporate email server, here’s a list of access it asks for;
Erase All data
Set Password rules
Monitor screen-unlock attempts
lock the screen
set lock-screen password expiration
set storage encryption
disable cameras
set SD card encryption (which I think is on by default with Android 5.0
anyhow)
Password recovery
Turn off Pop and IMAP emails, SD card,Wifi, Text/Multimedia messaging.,
Internet, Internet Sharing, Bluetooth, Desktop sync, IrDA, 3rd party
applications, native applications, unknown applications
prevent the installation of unknown applications.
This policy is set by your mailserver admin. It’s your company that’s forcing these restrictions on you, not google.
Yeah, I’m guessing he’s complaining that there isn’t a better way to get the protections the company is asking for.
I don’t think there is. If they need that much security, then BYOD isn’t for them.
I suggest using the Touchdown client. I know it’s not free, but it sandboxes your exchange server content, so if your admin remote wipes, it only erases the work content (you can use Android Device Manager to remote wipe the device if needed.) I don’t know of any other mobile mail client that allows you to leave an exchange server without wiping your device.
It has worked great for my last couple employers, and while the UI is a little dated, it has been gradually improving over the past couple years.
As far as I know Android is the first to do this. In WP and IOS your device get wiped and all personal data is gone as well (hope you made backups)
Wrong. First was BlackBerry 10
In practice, if I was a business, I would demand to be able to wipe off all data if you want to connect a personal device to the business network, including receiving business email on it.
mkone,
I’ve only had one client (a government contractor) provide me a laptop, they remotely controlled my ability to do anything on it and could remotely wipe everything on it. I was fine with that because they paid for it. However if I was using my personal computer (and most of my work these days is done remotely using my personal equipment), giving them access to wipe my files would certainly not go down well with me. If an employer wants control, then the employer should pay for it, otherwise keep your hands off! I would never agree to this (*).
* This could just be posturing, once unfair practices become the norm, we don’t really have much of a say. Take for example that employees are legally entitled to paid overtime, I would not explicitly agree to zero pay for overtime and yet I still do it because that’s what employers have come to expect. Once businesses successfully lobbied to have IT workers explicitly exempted from overtime laws (#1), unpaid overtime became the new norm.
Another example, no one would agree to work for less than minimum wage set by law (in NY it’s $9/hr #2), yet many waiters/busboys do because the employer wants to subtract customer tips from their pay and the law accepts this practice. Just this year NY raised minimum wage for tipped workers from $5 to $7.50 (#3) a huge improvement to be sure, but these employers are still paying $1.50 less than minimum wage.
We’re not even entitled to schedule our own time anymore. My wife’s employer declined to give a coworker time off for her wedding on friday as well as the honeymoon the following week, which she had been planning since last year. Time off is granted by seniority, which she doesn’t have. Personally I’d say “f–k off” and take my wedding day + honeymoon anyways. But maybe I’m just posturing here as well since I don’t actually have to worry about the consequences of an at-fault employment termination.
The point is, more and more of our lives are in the hands of employers because somewhere along the line we established terrible precedents for them to do these things. So please, let’s not establish a precedent where employers control our personal devices.
#1 http://www.businessknowhow.com/manage/salaryit.htm
#2 http://www.labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/mi…
#3 http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/02/minimum-wage-new-york-hike.html
Edited 2015-02-26 16:48 UTC
Nothing like a BlackBerry 10 OS to get work done (specially with BlackBerry Passport).
Android is an aficionado system in this realm, IMHO
Edited 2015-02-26 13:45 UTC
Thom,
Can you explain to me what is the elephant in the room on this case ? I could not figure out.
Back to the subject, on general lines, I think the idea is good, as part of the duties of any administrator these days is to segregate personal from corporate resources while trying to give as much access as possible on a BYOD environment. I ever saw some companies ban personal devices (except for isolated Internet access) and lay down rigid norms forbidding cable connection.
Okay, it took me a minute, but did you notice the “update” search time — lower left? “Phrase not found.” The elephant in the room, I presume, is this: So, that’s all well and fine, but where’s the update? — let alone the upgrade to Android 5? There’s no coherent update or upgrade path among varying vendors (let alone update). How are these features supposed to reach the broader Android user-base? Something Thom’s been talking about, off and on.
Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong. 🙂
Edited 2015-02-26 14:45 UTC
LOL
Anyway, now seriously, for what I have seen, the so called update/upgrade problem to Android devices is not as a huge problem as it was with regular computers.
First and foremost, most users are doing it regularly anyway (they change their devices much more frequently than they used to do with computers).
The data/apps migration is also much more straightforward (even though there is still a large room for improvement).
Yes, we would like to just upgrade that two year device to a new Android version but, realistically, all the incentives are there to change the device, even on Apple case (granted, on Apple case the thing is a lot less an issue).
My first PC was a 100MHz (actually 50MHz, but with the “Turbo” mode) 486DX4, with 16MB of edo-ram, a 4mb trident video card in a VESA slot, a soundblaster 16 in a ISA slot, and a 56k US Robotics modem. I got a 4x creative CD-ROM drive for it too, also a 5¼ and a 3½ inch floppy drives. It had a pathetic 500mb hard disk too. Connected to it i got a color monitor that maxed up at 800×600 resolution and a Epson dot matrix printer. It got a Windows 3.11 pre-installed, but it was on it that i tried my first Linux setup.
On this thing i did: learned to develop software, learned networking, played some games, earned some money, checked my mail, edited lots of texts and spreadsheets (school work and that), created databases for all kinds of things, played some server software experimentally, played a lot with some CAS software to help me in algebra classes, internet chat…
I my pocket right now i have a Razr HD, with a dual-core 1.5GHz ARM processor, 1GB DDR2 ram, 16Gb of internal memory (and i can insert a 64GB sdcard or even use a external 1tb HD with a USB adapter), it got a LTE internal radio that i connect to my operator up to 14Mbps at my city center, two cameras, a 1280×720 resolution Super AMOLED display, a micro-HDMI socket that i can connect to a monitor or TV up to 1980×1080.
On that thing i do: check my mail, do some browse on internet, waste time on chat, see some videos on YouTube/Vimeo, play some games on the go, and occasionally use it as a phone.
Current word processors and spreadsheets apps for it are all too crap to be useful, i can’t realistically develop software directly on it, no full SAP applications from a heavyweight player, network administration is a total waste on it, and out of box it is useless for anything that i used my PC 15 year ago for.
So, how they want to push smartphones and tablets to workspace if they still treat it only as communication device, a terminal, instead of a full system that can be used as a PC? Where is my IDE and development tools to be used directly on it? Where is my decent full featured word processors and spreadsheet software? Where is my database software? Where is my official Android network administration tools (that runs on Android itself)?
If Google wants to move Android to workspace, they would be better served by funding the development of gadgets that allows me to easily connect my phone to a monitor, mouse and keyboard, and connect it to a wired network, and move the entire software development tool chain to it.
Began treating Android a real OS instead of a toy, and the developers will do the rest to make it really useful in a work environment.
Edited 2015-02-26 13:55 UTC
You are not the target audience. People using Blackberries are.
Actually, any Android device where your company has policies to BYOD be a really active part of the business environment resources is a target.
That is the role I supposed Microsoft would pursue.
Edited 2015-02-26 15:18 UTC
Uh? No? I think my computer from 10 years ago (AMD barton 2500) is still a lot more powerful than any very high end smartphone. I mean like 100 times more powerful, although it drains about 1000 times more power. I don’t think my current smartphone could even run doom 1 from the CPU alone.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=android+doom+game
You’ve been able to play the original Doom on your Android devices for over a year now.
Edited 2015-02-27 21:31 UTC
I know, I’ve been playing that too. It uses the GPU. I was talking about CPU power. The GPU is for very specific tasks. The CPU is still not as powerful as my desktop CPU from 10 years ago, that is what I meant to say when I wrote “from the CPU alone”. My Barton 2500 is even able to run Doom 2 in full screen without any help from the GPU. If you compare the mips, my Barton 2500 from morethan 10 years ago is about 1000 times more powerful than any smartphone.
Edited 2015-02-28 09:42 UTC
The thing is, Doom is 22 years old, not ten and not “a few.”
Games from 2005, ten years ago, include Star Wars: Empire at War, Hitman Blood Money, and Battlefield 2. The standard office suite was Office 2003. Photoshop was on version CS2. And of course there was Autocad 2005.
Unless today’s smartphones can run programs of this caliber, then it’s grossly inaccurate to say cell phones, “are more powerful than the computers we used just a few years ago.” Obviously they are not, and I agree with Spiderman.