It can be really difficult to describe how important strong wireless networking is.  This is a great video showing off the auto-enrollment and threat detection capabilities of a solid network front-line.  Your network is just as important as a third-party EMM platform, and Xirrus is one of the industry leaders.  Take  a look!

On the consumer side, while this may sound like your typical “business crushing the consumer,” it’s actually what is happening naturally.  It is a trend that has until now been resisted by companies and been driven by consumers, and is one that actually hands considerably more flexibility to employees than what they have enjoyed in the past.  On the business side, fewer resources are having to be devoted to the administration of voice and data plans, internal customer care; with more resources able to be devoted to development of services and infrastructure to support BYOD.

All that said, many companies are forging ahead into this brave new BYOD world with absolutely no plan or knowledge of how to allow employees to use their devices for work while maintaining flexible platforms that allow for secure collaboration and technological evolution. It is critical that organizations of all sizes take time to examine their plans for mobile IT, and build meaningful mobile strategies that will stand strong against the unpredictable waves of consumer technology.

Which MDM Platform Should my company use? Straight from the Techorchard Experts on Vimeo.

Every so often we’ll take a little bit out of our day to answer great questions from clients and compatriots alike.  This week I get to chat with you about a few things you should consider when evaluating the various MDM Platforms for your organization.  Enjoy!

Kansas City, based MobileIT company TechOrchard on Thursday, September 28th at the Boulevard Brewery hosted the first of this year’s series of mobileBLEND events. Thursday’s event focused on bringing together business leaders and subject experts on the most popular tools businesses are using for enterprise mobile deployments and management platforms.

Attendees to the invite-only February 28th MobileBLEND event had the opportunity to directly engage with representatives of the market-leading platforms and services currently being used to make mobility in business safe and secure in an increasingly BYOD World. “The mobileBLEND event was a great opportunity for local businesses to learn from industry-leading pioneers about mobility, BYOD strategy, policies, and the tools available to ensure successful deployment and management of mobile devices.” said Dustin Burns of McCownGordon Construction.

Business leaders and IT executives alike were able to gain a solid understanding of the tools available to them through a facilitated panel discussion and open Q & A.

In addition to vendors and representatives on the panel, were several representatives from local businesses who shared their real-world applications of the tools used by their organizations to embrace mobile-first and BYOD mobility strategies. Jonathan Wooley, of BRR Architects, and a panelist for the event said: “I greatly enjoyed being a part of the mobility discussion at TechOrchard’s mobileBLEND event. The mobility landscape in the workplace is evolving rapidly. Different hardware manufacturers, operating systems, user owned devices verses company owned devices, and management and control of company data add complexity. TechOrchard did a great job facilitating discussion around the hot topics in mobility.”

The event was organized and hosted by TechOrchard at Boulevard Brewing, Co. in Kansas City, MO; and sponsored by MobileIron, Box, and CrashPlan Pro.

A mobile first organization is one that, while enabling resources for all types of devices, focuses primarily on making sure that the corporate environment is one in which mobile resources take precedence.  Employees, contractors, and consultants in organizations are no longer tied to a desktop device, and no longer beholden to any one operating system, collaborative suite, or security standard.  This paradigm shift in the way business is conducted requires an organization’s IT departments to make a near complete shift in their resourcing disciplines.

What does a mobile-first organization look like?

While a mobile-first organization doesn’t have any specific form or structure; the common thread among businesses that take a mobile-first approach is three-fold.

First, a mobile-first business looks to be as agnostic as possible to the devices that employees use to accomplish their work.  The more an IT department says “no” to a class of device, the less secure your data is going to be.  Why you ask?  It is because in this day and age, people expect to have access to the tools they need, and if you don’t allow them access, they find a way to get it, and a business’ security is rarely the employee’s first concern.

Second, the tools that a mobile-first organization uses will be designed with the mobile user in mind.  What does that mean exactly?  It means that the employee should not have to buy new equipment, software, or licenses to start doing their job.  It means that an employee can use an android tablet, a windows laptop, an iPad, or a Blackberry device to start doing their job on day one without having jump through any hoops.  Sounds like weak security?  You’re wrong!

The Third, and (kind-of sort-of) last common thread that you will see in a mobile-first organization is that of security.  A mobile-first company takes it’s security very seriously.  This focus on security can take a number of forms, but it always includes some form of mobile device management, mobile application management, and document digital rights management.  A mobile-first organization that builds it’s mobile strategy properly is infinitely more secure than a legacy-built business with mobile “add-ons.”

The tools a business can use to achieve these common threads are numerous — each becoming better at what it does and more secure.

Deploy me!

So your company is going to hand out a bunch of tablets to it’s workers?  You’re the one that responsible, and you have no idea how you’re going to get 500 tablets out the door looking like they’re supposed to, with the right apps, configurations, and controls; AND you need to be able to provide security and logistical support after giving these things out.  You aren’t being allowed to hire any additional staff to do this. It’s all you. Oh, and one more thing: the conference these are being launched at is being held next month.  Good luck!

Does any of that sound familiar?  It does to me, I hear it often; and while 1 month to prepare for anything over 500 devices is pretty tight (your bottleneck is often just getting the hardware), it isn’t unheard of.  I’ve done many of these deployments and not often in optimal conditions.  I won’t share all my tips and tricks with you (that’s what you pay us for!), but here’s a few items to think about before you get in touch with specialized resources.

Bottom line: don’t stress!  A large deployment with minimal snags is possible if you plan it right.  Get in touch with someone who has done these before and use the expertise they’ve gained from screwing up other deployments!

Get help

It’s really, really unlikely that you’ve got the time, staff, or experience to cover all the bases you need to cover – especially in this economy of down-sizing and out-sourcing.  If you do, its still a good idea to contact an external resource that has carried out large-scale deployments of hardware.  This isn’t to say that you or your company doesn’t have the skill to get the job done, but a specialized company (like TechOrchard) does it all the time, has already made the mistakes a first-timer would make, and we don’t have to think about generating TPS reports while sorting the details on the deployment.

Confirm the requirements as early as you can

All of these tips are important, but this one is particularly important.  It isn’t that you have to hard-code these requirements in simulated stone, but having as clear a picture as possible when it comes to what will be on the tablets will help the planning stage, and will dictate which steps take place when in the process.  Some things to think about:

• Will I be managing these tablets after I hand them out?
• What apps will be on these tablets?  Size?  Commercial or private? How will I be pushing/paying for them?
• Does the company require any specific aesthetics (think: background images, engraving, on-screen personalization, etc)
• What corporate collateral will be placed on the devices pre-handout?
• Will the data on the devices be subject to any regulation? (are you a lawyer, doctor, financier, work with/for the gov’t?)
• What HR policies need to be enforceable on device-content
• Do you have a usage policy written and prepared for the users to sign and accept?

And on and on…  There’s more, but that should get you started.   Also, have a drop-dead date on changes to the requirements.  Once you (or the company doing it for you) has started a provisioning process, it can be very difficult to go back and make mass changes.   The more elements at work (and especially if there are management layers on the devices), the more costly (in time and money) changes are when you start the provisioning and management-enrollment processes.

Have a plan

This one is a no-brainer.  Plans help you scale your execution, prepare for curveballs, and just generally make things go more smoothly than without one.  However, building plans for something you might not have done before can be rather daunting/frustrating or just downright annoying.  Here again is where having someone who has done this 30 times before help you is a real bonus.

Test

Again, sort of a no-brainer, but I’ve personally seen two really great on-paper deployment plans that weren’t put through a couple simple test runs melt down in spectacularly embarrassing ways.  Test out your plan, work out the kinks, don’t leave cheap real-estate for Mr. Murphy to crap all over your shiny new toys.

Train

Training the users of the tablets is a step that nearly every client I’ve worked with overlooks.  If you are deploying to a bunch of 15-24 year-olds then by all means, skip the training; but if you are like most of the clients I work with the users will need at least some form of basic training.

Without training (and especially in the case of teachers and sales-people), tablets will likely become very costly paperweights or toys for the employee’s grand-kids.  For the clients that do forego the training, all but one ended up coming back to the company I currently work at for some sort of training; both basic training and on specific business-process training. Training is a relatively low-cost insurer of more rapid device and process uptake.  Do it.

Hopefully this gives a few things to think about when considering your deployment.  Don’t do it alone, there are too many moving pieces in today’s increasingly non-standard, increasingly-mobile biztech universe.

Great new product video describing the MobileIron product.  One of the things I really appreciate about MobileIron is their “Mobile First” ethos.  Businesses are in a crazy time of change.

Yesterday we brought BOX in, and they did a fantastic job presenting their awesome tool for collaboration to the attendees of the Apple store event. Can’t wait to do more, and can’t wait to work more with BOX!

Overland Park, KS (PRWEB) December 19, 2012 — Mobility has enabled businesses and their employees to increase productivity. As mobile devices become the workplace norm, an increasing number of employees’ personal devices are receiving company data right next to the pictures of their kids and their Gmail accounts. It is this growing “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend in companies that has businesses concerned about the security of their data, the administration and support of devices across many mobile operating systems, and management of the massive influx of mobile devices into the workplace.

TechOrchard helps companies develop their mobile strategy including mobile device procurement, training, management, and security. TechOrchard has experienced significant growth in 2012, bringing over 6,000 devices in the Kansas City area under management, providing over 300 hours of mobile device and workflow productivity training to local businesses and schools, and TechOrchard expects this trend to rapid increase in 2013.

To continue to serve the growing mobility needs of businesses and organizations throughout the Midwest, TechOrchard is pleased to announce the hire of Virginia Franzese as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Virginia has been a part of Kansas City’s business community for the past 10+ years, providing growth strategies, process planning, and business infrastructure design to multiple segments. Virginia serves as the President of KC Roundtable and is Co-Founder of The coderCAPITAL Project. She and her family live in
Prairie Village and she is proud to call Kansas City home!

To accommodate its growing team, TechOrchard has recently completed transition to new offices in the Southcreek business park at: 12980 Metcalf Avenue, Suite 320, Overland Park, KS 66213.

TechOrchard is a global mobility management company with Midwestern roots. Whether mobile device management, hardware procurement, private mobile application development, mobile device fleet provisioning, or managing enterprise security in an increasingly consumerized environment, TechOrchard is your trusted
mobility partner.

One could argue that Norton is not necessarily competing on the commercial scale here, but is instead targeting the small-end consumer.  Tests here on multiple devices did not reveal anything that would be useful at the corporate level.