Apple is the No. 1 Client Device

A report out by Canalys on the final quarter of 2011 puts Apple ahead of HP as the preferred client device amongst corporates and consumers. Who would have ever thought that? Apple as the domain of geeks and marketing agencies is officially a thing of the past. Ty, you were right all along.

Some will say that this is wrong accounting as it includes iPads and iPhones in the total - but this is the entire point about the rapidly shifting client device market in corporations, the device is fast becoming the choice of the user not the company.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a real phenomenon and it is helping Apple become a corporate standard in a world traditionally dominated by PCs and Microsoft. 

Learn a lesson, everyone. There is not a penny of discount given for Apple products whether it be an iPod, iPad, iPhone or a Mac and they are top of the range end user prices. The PC market has been long rated as a commodity market and wags will tell you that Apple would never become a corporate standard as resellers and Apple itself never negotiate. That's another myth busted as Macs continue to grow and take market share off all the main players like HP, Dell, Lenovo and the rest. The PC market is no longer a price sensitive, high competition market - Apple have redefined the way to sell.

How did Apple do it? By winning the hearts, minds and wallets of real users through innovation, ease of use and entire new ways to buy products and applications. Incredibly, real users have gone back into corporations and not asked but demanded that their tablets, smartphones and, now, Macs be attached to the network even if they foot the bill themselves.

Microsoft, HP, Dell, everyone, never saw this coming that not just Apple but their operating system would take a massive chunk of the world dominated by the PC. Recent figures released by Microsoft show that they can no longer rely on consumers for their profit - now they are being squeezed in corporations.

The pace of change is incredible and none of the mighty companies saw it coming. Apple is the No. 1 client in corporations.

Pinch yourself, it's real.

Mobile Device Management - The HOT application for 2012

Are you an IT VAR looking for a new technology area in 2012 in a explosive growth market with great opportunities for value added services? Would you also like to get a piece of the action in the high growth market of tablets and smartphones and wrestle it free of the mobile operators and their mobility partners? Are you looking to exploit your knowledge of Cisco networking, HP wireless devices and Microsoft applications to leverage this market?

Come on down, the time is perfect.

Bradford Networks are the leading provider in Mobile Device Management solutions specifically for the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) market and they have a specialised offering for Managed Service Providers too.

This is one of the hottest technologies in one of the hottest markets in 2012 and it bridges the technologies and market opportunities of networking and mobility.

For more information, call +44 (0)207 193 2356.

Merry Christmas! You're A Security Threat

If you are the proud recipient of a shiny tablet or state of the art smartphone this Christmas and you plan to use it at work, attaching to the corporate network to download emails and some data, then you are a security threat.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is fast becoming the biggest threat to corporate security as people synchronise files over all their devices, regardless of whether they are company owned or not, using technology like Box.net, Dropbox, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote and Google Docs. It's the biggest advantage of the new age of such devices and the emergence of Cloud applications to enable such working. But that massive advantage to productivity comes at a cost.

To date, CIOs reamin somewhat laissez faire to the whole issue, but all you need is an executive's iPad or smartphone to get stolen and, suddenly, a non-company owned and controlled asset could be in the hands of a nosy stranger or, worse still, a thief. Although some devices can require the input of a 4 digit pin, that could be fairly easy to get around. Then you have all the applications on the device that have accessed the corporate data, like email and office productivity tools and any files that may be shared on common storage areas.

While there are ways to protect the machines and the data more rigorously, few fall under the remit of the central security policy of big companies - and that has to be a Governance issue at minimum. In the world of the US SOX regulations, that could be corporate negligence which Directors sign up to personally.

It isn't actually the users' problem, you might argue. But as many of the users of BYOD devices are company directors or senior management then I would argue there is a responsibility in many cases.

This year, BYOD will raise its head on the agenda of many big companies but it will be hugely important to SMBs too. As more technology moves into the Cloud, it may become less easy to know exactly what assets are accessing your network and where. 

Companies like Bradford Networks have a strong solution tuned to the BYOD threat to turn it from threat to a major productivity opportunity. 

You just have to make sure you control of the access to data on your network. It's been the core requirement of IT departments and remains so.

Cal +44 207 193 2356 for more information.

BYOD Threat to Enterprise Security

BYOD or BYOT (bring Your Own Device or Technology) is a huge trend in corporations. As yet CEO/CIOs don't really understand the full implications or don't care that much, according to some research, but the growth in smartphones and tablets being brought into the enterprise network set up promises to be one of the biggest threats to security in the coming years.

Imagine the CEO's iPad going missing complete with an auto-connection to Dropbox on several applications and some local files with only so much as a 4 number PIN protecting it if anything at all. It couldn't happen? It has - the European President of a $24bn global company did just that. And not a single IT person could do a thing to prevent any data loss.

Apple now has thing's like Mobile Me and Find the iPhone with iCloud as back up which start to solve some of the issues but realistically they go nowhere near the kinds of security set up required to satisfy Corporate or Public Sector Governance on data controls and security. As the astronomic growth in smartphones and tablets continues unabated, this is going to become a major issue going forward.

Enter Bradford Networks from the US. This company has a specific solution for the BYOD craze and it's Network Sentry product addresses this issue. 

Bradford Networks' Network Sentry product manages IT assets like iPads and provisions customised security policies to control things like unauthorised network access especially in the case of a device falling into the wrong hands. Bradford Networks have specific market sector solutions for the enterprise, healthcare and education. It may mean some sacrifice in privacy for users as the product monitors activity but in reality corporations need to wrestle back control of the security of data and Bradford Networks offers a resilient way of doing this.

Bradford Networks has also joined in the SaaS market - not Software but Security as a Service with its Bradford.cloud solution for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). What Bradford.cloud does is to provide a protection layer on Private Cloud networks provided by MSPs so they can understand what devices are connected to the Private Cloud and manage their security from a single console.

Bradford Networks are at the forefront of delivering the highest level of security to enterprises both on premise and in the Cloud and have a unique answer to the growing question on security the BYOD brings for resellers and Managed Service Providers.

For further information, call +44 207 193 2356.

Single Access to Multiple Applications in the Cloud

Cloud applications are proliferating. It's likely that somewhere in your company a group or more uses one or more of Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Workday, Taleo, Evernote, Webex, LiveMeeting. It's also likely that the first implementation was some sort of unauthorised trial followed by a departmental purchase and in many cases it was followed by an enterprise wide deployment. That first point of entry probably was in defiance of company policy on IT, bought via a low flying departmental discretionary budget and avoided the clutches of the IT manager.

That's how Cloud has grown in many companies and it was the way it was originally sold by people like me. Pick off specific groups with particular needs who had budgets at their fingertips and then work your way out from there with internal reference selling.

Today, it means that Cloud applications are usually on-boarded without the usual controls and checks by IT, particularly when it comes to security. This has been exacerbated in the recent past by the growth in the phenomenon of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Who would have thought that in these tough times people like you and I would go out and buy own devices like smartphones and tablets and then bring them into work and have them put on the network? And these devices aren't cheap, particularly as most companies issue perfectly capable products like Blackberries and laptops for us all to work with.

But times have changed and work and leisure are beginning to merge thanks to the new wave of smart devices that can combine the two worlds as one. But this also presents massive security issues for the corporation as many of us start to use handy applications like Dropbox to quickly share files we are working on. What happens if the device gets lost or stolen? The data can be accessed all too easily as most iPads or similar are protected by a PIN at best and with nothing as robust as a standard VPN.

And there is the general issue of 'password-fatigue'. Hands up how many of us use the simplest of passwords like a common word, your spouses' name or a simple thing like 'qwerty' or '123456'? And how many of us use the same password for all or many of our entry points? Why? Because we simply cannot remember all the multiple points of entry into the various systems we have. I recently bought one of these password memory apps and have recorded 32 applications or websites so far that I have entry points for. I just hope I can remember the password to get into it…..

So as this whole Cloud thing and BYOD takes greater holder on companies the issues of multiple logins, security and control over deployments, data and access rights is going to get worse and worse. And more complex. How is it all going to be controlled?

Well, one solution could via a US company called Okta.com who have looked at the whole issue of multiple logins, access rights and password fatigue in conjunction with the proliferation of applications and services in companies. They go a step further in helping companies to fully understand the ROI in SaaS or Cloud based software. One of the biggest aspects of this is that with perpetual licence software you basically bought one licence for every user regardless of how many people use the software, to what extent and how many simultaneously. 

Okta, by giving a single point of access to all applications in a Cloud Services Network, can also monitor and manage the usage of all software who gets access to what. Crucially, this control can be device agnostic and so all these new exotic devices being brought onto the network can come back under a single point of control by administering the access to the applications and data.

Okta are currently focusing on growing their North American business but could be coming your way soon. Certainly take a look at downloading their whitepaper and you may even be able to take a free trial but it's well worth keeping a watchful eye on this company as the Cloud grows.