Behind The Firewall – BYOD

Mar 30, 2012 | blog, featured

bring-your-own-device-its-worst-nightmare

'Toshiba Libretto 50CT' by Jon Callow

Some call it the latest ‘fad’, others point to a long history of people bringing their own technology solutions to the workplace, it’s currently referred to as BYOD.

It’s all the rage right?  After all, the ability to set your own course, control your own computing destiny, and pick the phone of your choice is our right as modern humans.  Besides, IT departments are too overbearing and controlling – they don’t understand our need to get our work done in a timely fashion.

At least, that’s what it may seem like to those hip ‘movers & shakers’ types, and may be those Millennials too. Ok, maybe I’m stereotyping with the Millennials… but experience tells me otherwise.

Costs Of Technology

Therein lies the point of the BYOD movement, too many people think it’s a great cost-saving idea.  The problem with that is the costs are simply shifted from client-side hardware procurement, to the data center.  Actually, it’s likely to increase IT costs rather than cut them.

Like most great ideas, BYOD cuts both ways.  It’s a triumph of corporate workers to have choice!  Bringing flexibility to the main tool most productivity workers use every day.

Why can’t we pick a Mac over a PC? Why wouldn’t IT let me provide my own – I’m willing to pay for the privilege! Many more would start talking about the flexibility of different solutions, like tablets and even their phones. After all, are not all these devices computers of one type or another? I know a great number of people who argue the PC hasn’t been more personal than the devices we carry in our pockets every day!

Back to the costs question though. It’s not a simple answer once you start thinking about it.  Yes, the company isn’t buying a computer, the support contract for it, the license for the operating system, the software licenses for your apps… um, if they don’t who does?

You see, there is the beginning of the complexity of simply bringing your computer to work and trying to use it in place of a company provided one. It’s not to say it can’t or shouldn’t be done, but there’s more to it than we might think. Sure, the hardware, support and client OS licensing might be eliminated. However companies need to protect their data, which means server storage for everything, which means increased storage costs, which bring increased electrical costs for the data center, and environmental systems which add more cost.

What About Software

What about software? That too needs to be maintained in a reliable, secure, and usable form. Sure, we can move lots of apps to the cloud, but lets face it – hard core spreadsheet users over in Accounting or those documentation wizards writing all sorts of material need real tools, not a web-based version of Notepad!  So IT needs to host those applications and stream them to your personal device. This adds flexibility for us as individuals, but it also means the savings on the laptop you would have gotten now goes towards server capacity to host that application. Oh, and we need to think of floor space, and the power/environmental systems again… and more costs.

As an IT Architect, I have this kind of conversation with my peers quite often, and we continue to uncover more pros and cons. Somehow they mostly seem to balance each other out. But the real impact of BYOD, in my opinion, is the third dramatic shift in computing in my IT career. This one bringing a renaissance of choice to IT’s End Users, and expanding the idea of what the IT industry is capable of providing.

Behind The Firewall is an ongoing series where I talk about topics of interest inside corporate cultures. The experiences, ideas, movements, challenges, successes and more that we all experience in corporate environments. From an techy-geek’s point of view – behind the corporate firewall.
Photo credit: Toshiba Libretto 50CT by Jon Callow. A kind thank you to Jon for a great picture of one of the best early, highly-mobile laptops.

Why Google’s Android Simply Rocks

Dec 1, 2008 | blog

Android There are dozens hundreds user-interface or aesthetic reasons that I could list off about the T-Mobile G1 which runs Google’s Android. However, it’s the functionality that has really sealed the deal for me.

The form factor and the ability to quickly add such a wide variety of applications to the device really makes it more useful to me then previous smartphones I’ve used.  The variety of applications and new ideas is exciting and fun to watch develop. It’s no secret that mobile app marketing is very successful, below I’ve listed a number of applications that I’ve loaded and find really useful.

Cool Apps to Check Out

  • fBook – A Facebook client app, similar to the iPhone app. Makes quick work of keeping up on Facebook.
  • Locale- Basically a profile customization utility.  It can change profile settings based on location, time, system events, contacts, messages, calls, etc… Really useful
  • Maverick – An IM client that allows you to connect to more Google Talk accounts than the one tied to the phone account.
  • Meebo – A Meebo client that allows you to log into not only your Meebo account, but also into any other IM service that Meebo supports.  The nice part of this is that the Meebo client uses the data connection for send/receive rather than the text-messages that the built-in IM client does for Yahoo, Live, or AIM.
  • PF Voicemail + – Enhanced voicemail, similar to visual voicemail on the iPhone. Allows you to review your voicemails by caller so you can choose which one to listen too first.
  • Phonalyzr – Nifty little utility that will graph your call usage by date, time, length, incoming, outgoing, and other criteria.
  • ShopSavvy  – Cool tool  for use while shopping.  It uses the camera to scan a UPC code and then look up that product online.  It has the ability to generate wish lists, and alerts for favorable pricing.
  • Mileage – Allows you to keep track of mileage and costs for multiple vehicles.
  • Twidroid – Currently the best Twitter client for Android. That statement, of course, is entirely subjective.  I like it and that’s all that matters right now. 😉
  • WeatherBug – Great Android version of the desktop app. Well designed for the screen size with a smaller memory footprint than The Weather Channel app – which is also a top-notch weather client.
  • TextEasy – Allows you to send an SMS text message to more than one recipient.
  • Toggle Settings – The app to have! This great tool allows you to quickly and easily manipulate various settings and radios on the G1. Very important since we know how power-hungry the current G1 software stack is.
  • wpToGo – Have a WordPress blog? Either on WordPress.com or self-hosted, this tool is a simple but effective blogging client for Android.
  • Opera – Opera Mini 4.2 for Android. ‘Nuff said.
  • AnyCut – Allows you to create a shortcut on the desktop for nearly anything in the system.

Other Good Apps

  • Task Switcher  – While you can’t close processes with it (or others that don’t have root access) it’s still nice to see what apps you may have left running.
  • Voice Recorder – Quick voice notes. This functionality should have been built into Android.
  • Video Player – Watch videos from your SD card.
  • Solitaire – When you need to pass a few minutes.
  • Pictoral – Ties into Picasa.
  • PAC-MAN – Is there anything to say?
  • Orienteer – Makes use of the digital compass in the G1.
  • Fitness – Uses the accelerometer in the G1 as a pedometer. Kinda works, and the developer is getting closer and closer with each release.  Neat to see new app ideas like this.
  • HotSpot Locator – Locate T-Mobile WiFi hotspots close to your location, either by GPS or by Wireless.
  • inetwork test – Get a quick result on the 3G or EDGE network performance in your current location.
  • Convert That – Conversion tool for nearly anything you can think of.
  • Bubble – Mostly a demonstration app, it’s a level that uses the accelerometer in the G1.
  • aTweeter – Another Twitter tool. A bit lighter weight than Twidroid, but improving quickly.

Of course, I don’t have all these installed right now (though almost!).  I’ve been testing and experimenting with these apps and many more.  The available application options have grown significantly over the past month. A great indication of a healthy & robust development ecosystem.

If you’re thinking about an Android device – don’t hesitate.  Sure, the G1 may not be the one for you, but watch the next one or two devices that come along on your network.  I promise, even the iPhone doesn’t hold the amount of promise that Android does long term.

Android

The Final Piece?

Oct 13, 2008 | blog

T-Mobile G1 Its no secret that I’ve long been a fan of Gmail. In fact, I moved my main email domain to Google’s hosted service about  two years ago. I’ve loved the flexibility, space, search, and tagging that are tightly incorporated into the service.

The only problem was a few niggling odds & ends. Not big issues mind you, but a few things that just make it hard to switch 100% to a web-only email environment. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been about 87% of the way there already. When out & about I use the web interface daily for most email tasks. When I need to find something – use the web interface for searching. I’ve used both POP and IMAP to view mail on my Windows Mobile phone since I signed up – and much more.

The few items have been enough for me to keep an email client installed, and here they are:

  • Creating HTML emails
  • Custom HTML Signatures
  • Contact Synchronization with my phone (the real biggie)

A number of these I’ve gotten around. Early on I found that I can cut & paste an email signature from a web page to a Gmail email when composing. Simple, but not convenient. The number of specialized HTML emails that I send are small and the Gmail editor is up to 99% of the tasks. The contact thing is the hardest to get past though.

I have a Windows Mobile phone, and contacts in Outlook sync right to the phone easier than anything else that exists out there. Period. I’ve had Nokia, Samsungs, Motorolas, and BlackBerrys – and all had sync tools that worked, but none as easy as Outlook to Windows Mobile.

At any rate, the real issue with contacts is getting them synchronized between Outlook and Gmail. It’s extremely tough. With the upcoming release of the T-Mobile G1 “Google phone”, it looks like all that might actually be ending. With built-in Gmail support it also has the ability to sync your phonebook with Gmail contacts. Sweet!

So I’ve been debating whether to throw down on this device or not. It may be the one, the final piece that let’s me go web-only for email management.

Oh, the signature piece – yeah I found this great Firefox plug-in called Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures which allows you to have up to four HTML signatures for each Gmail account. Highly recommended!

So is this the final piece to my text communication puzzle? It very well may be.

And 3G to boot! 😀

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