Thursday, February 7th, 2013
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
The 2013 iPass/MobileIron Mobile Enterprise Report tells a story of the rise of BYOD, and with it increased frustration and loss of control by IT, and concern over rising mobile data costs. Results from our survey show that while Mobile IT brings with it a huge potential to improve workforce productivity, it also introduces significant new challenges for enterprise IT.
Our Infographic captures some of those changes and challenges:
Download the report >>
Register for the webinar >>
Rising mobile data costs with smartphones and tablets >>
Wednesday, February 6th, 2013
Chris Witeck, Director Product Marketing
We just recently announced the results of our annual Mobile Enterprise Report. Unlike our Mobile Workforce Report (which focuses on the mobile worker and is published quarterly), the Mobile Enterprise Report is an annual survey that focuses on senior level IT professionals and the trends impacting them and the Enterprises they work for. This year we teamed up with MobileIron to survey 477 IT professionals between December 2012 and January 2013.
As you can imagine this serves as a nice contrast to the Mobile Workforce Report- where we can compare trends as experienced by IT to those experienced by the workers themselves. We know from the Mobile Workforce Report just how important BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has become to the workers, but how has BYOD impacted the policies that Enterprises have in place and what devices that are supported?
Part 1 of our Mobile Enterprise Report blog will focus on just this- BYOD Policies and Trends.
This year’s Mobile Enterprise Report is the second time we’ve had a chance to survey IT professionals and this allows us to compare responses from 2011 to what we collected at the end of 2012.
One question we asked is how corporate guidelines have changed in regards to personal devices. You can definitely see the trend shifting over just one year’s time to where less organizations say they don’t allow access from personal devices (26% in 2011 to 19% in 2012) and more saying they have changed their guidelines to be more accommodating to personal devices (47% in 2011 to 56% in 2012). In fact, if you add together those who say they have historically allowed access from personal devices to those who said they recently changed their guidelines to be more accommodating, you get 81% saying they allow access from personal devices. So this definitely mirrors the BYOD trends we see from the mobile workers.
One interesting wrinkle to this, while 81% say they accommodate personal devices, we asked in a separate question if the organization had established BYOD policies in place and 54% said yes. While this is encouraging to see the majority of organizations putting a policy in place, it is clear that there are quite a few organizations that accommodate personal devices but have yet to translate this to a formal BYOD policy. While having a policy in place is not a cure-all for managing costs and security, it can go a long way to make sure employees know what is expected of them.
The last point I’ll touch on in today’s blog is that with some of the questions we can definitely see regional variances at play. Something I’ve noticed when looking at user data as well as talking to our customers is that European customers are less likely to be supporting BYOD than customers in North America. That is something we see reflected in the data with regards to BYOD policies. North American organizations were much more likely to have a BYOD policy (58%) than a European organization (46%).
This is just a small portion of the data available in the report. Download the report to go deeper on these trends and others.
We will also be hosting an informative webinar to cover the details of the report with MobileIron. Be sure to check back tomorrow when we talk more about the highlights of this year’s Mobile Enterprise Report.
Webinar:
The Impact Mobile Workers and Devices have on your Enterprise. Make sure to register even if you cannot attend. We will send you the recording link.
BYOD In the Enterprise >>
Monday, February 4th, 2013
Chris Witeck, Director Product Marketing
We just recently released to our customers and partner the Open Mobile Client v2.2 for Macintosh. One of the key features we added in this release is a “Speed Test” that helps users understand the quality of the Wi-Fi connection they are connecting to.
This is part of an ongoing trend that we started back in 2012 centered around adding usability features to the Open Mobile clients that do more than just connect users to Wi-Fi, but help them understand how to get the best connection experience possible.
We want users to see iPass as a useful tool when connecting anywhere, not just to iPass hotspots. For example, we’ve added to all of our smartphone clients the ability to track how much data you’ve used through Wi-Fi and 3G/4G connections in order to better manage and choose which type of connection to make.
The Speed Test feature fits into that mold by allowing a Macintosh user to test their current connection and see what the current latency, download and upload speeds of the connection are. This information can help the user determine if their current connection is sufficient for video conferencing or video and audio streaming for example.
This can be incredibly useful for mobile workers. Wi-Fi quality can vary based on a multitude of factors- how far the user is from the hotspot, how many users are using the hotspot, interference from other Wi-Fi enabled devices and many other factors. Providing users with tools to determine if they can do what they want to do with that current connection is just part of the overall iPass strategy to provide both usability and diagnostic tools to users for any type of connection. Look for iPass to continue in this vein of product development for all of our Open Mobile clients in the coming year.
To take advantage of this new feature, the Open Mobile client for Macintosh must be running client version 2.2 or greater as well as having this capability enabled by the Open Mobile administrator.
Like this story? Why not share it with others!
Network “Speed Test” for Mac users >>
Thursday, January 31st, 2013
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
This article How ‘bring your own cloud’ could kill BYOD on ZDNet.com argues that Bring Your Own Cloud will stop any hope of a BYOD policy.
I think the problem is that for many end users, mobile = cloud. They are not bringing in their own devices; they are bringing their best form of employee productivity. Users have brought in the devices that they use at home, and now, they are brining in the services that they use at home. A very clear policy, with additional IT security, as mentioned in several comments, can restrict that flow, or increase the awareness by end users.
As we’ve mentioned before, iPass can help users also have a Bring Your Own Network, or BYON. Having access to a secure network on your mobile device, can mitigate some of the security concerns by having anti-virus or other security process run before connection. BYON can be one tool in managing BYOC in a BYOD environment.
BYON protects BYOD from security risks of BYOC >>
Thursday, January 24th, 2013
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
Are you traveling through SFO tomorrow? Meet up with Chris!
Chris, iPass VP of Product Management & User Experience, will be at the Starbucks before security at Terminal 2 at the San Francisco Airport. Come by and ask any iPass questions, provide feedback, get started on downloading the iPass client for your mobile device and get a free 24-hour Wi-Fi pass. You can also ask her about her Wi-Fi diet and any tips for saving on 3G/4G costs.
iPass employees will soon visit some hotspots around the world, giving away passes and answering questions. We will be sure to let you know when the next one is.
And, here’s a little information about the newest SFO terminal, which reflects the region’s character:
Terminal 2: Foodie Culture Hits SFO Airport
A First Look at SFO’s New Terminal 2
Introducing: Wi-Fi Hotspot Live! This Friday, SFO >>
Rising mobile data costs with smartphones and tablets >>
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