enterprise

• Android
• Business
• enterprise
• corporate
• company

Using your own smartphone at work? Watch that it doesn’t get wiped when you leave …

Employees who use their own electronic devices at work under a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) arrangement may have unwittingly authorised their employer to remotely wipe their device when they leave the company, reports the WSJ.

In early October, Michael Irvin stood up to leave a New York City restaurant when he glanced at his iPhone and noticed it was powering off. When he turned it back on again, all of his information—email programs, contacts, family photos, apps and music he had downloaded—had vanished […]

It wasn’t a malfunction. The device had been wiped clean by AlphaCare of New York, the client he had been working for full-time since April. Mr. Irvin received an email from his AlphaCare address that day confirming the phone had been remotely erased.

A survey found that 21 percent of companies perform a remote wipe of employee-owned devices registered on the company network, with employees ostensibly agreeing to this when they connect to the company network.

Many employers have a pro forma user agreement that pops up when employees connect to an email or network server via a personal device, he added. But even if these documents explicitly state that the company may perform remote wipes, workers often don’t take the time to read it before clicking the “I agree” button.

The legality of the practice has reportedly not yet been tested in court.

In principle, backup should allow wiped Android devices to be restored, but you may want to pay a little more attention to the small-print next time one of those corporate messages pops up on your screen, to find out what it is you’ve been agreeing to …

• Google
• enterprise
• support
• remote desktop
• management

How Google manages over 40,000 Macs…without much help from Apple

During a talk at the LISA ’13 conference in Washington D.C earlier this month, a couple members from Google’s Macintosh Operations team explained how the company has been forced to develop its own set of tools to manage its fleet of roughly 43,000 Macs. The reason, according to Google engineers Clay Caviness and Edward Eigerman, is that Apple isn’t doing a great job at supporting its enterprise management tools. As the first slide of the presentation (pictured above) puts it, “While Apple won’t do much for you, there are tools out there you can use to keep your machines secure, up to date and useful.”

“We don’t use any of Apple’s tools to manage the Macs. Apple arguably produces two tools, Mac OS X server… and Apple Remote Desktop. It kinda breaks down when you get it over 50, 100, 200 machines that you’re managing… we’ve sort of lost their attention as far as enterprise management tools.”

During one slide (pictured above, right), Google uses the red line to represent the release of the iPhone while noting Apple’s remote desktop “hasn’t had a major revision to it since 2006.” To avoid using Apple’s management tools, Google has either developed its own tools or is using open source tools for everything from configuration, to package management, monitoring system levels and more. Google announced during the talk that one of the imaging tools it developed, CanHazImage, will soon be hitting open source. 

While Google mentioned during the presentation that it supports four desktop OS platforms (OS X, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS) internally, it also said these days employees that want to use a platform other than Mac OS X “have to make a business case” to do so. Compare that roughly 40k monthly actives from Macs reported during the presentation to the 42,162 full-time employees at the company (not including Motorola). The Googlers also noted that the company managed to update from 10.7 to 10.8 for 99.5% of its fleet in 8 weeks and it’s currently trying to accomplish the same for 10.9 Mavericks.

You can watch or download the full presentation here.

(via TheRegister)

• Samsung
• Apple
• BlackBerry
• enterprise
• corporate

Blackberry bows to the inevitable, seeking ‘strategic alternatives’ (buyout)

Trading in Blackberry shares was briefly suspended in the lead-up to the company’s announcement that it is exploring ‘strategic alternatives’.

The Company’s Board of Directors has formed a Special Committee to explore strategic alternatives to enhance value and increase scale in order to accelerate BlackBerry 10 deployment. These alternatives could include, among others, possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships or alliances, a sale of the Company or other possible transactions.

The company, which once dominated the enterprise market, was extremely late moving into touchscreen phones and found itself increasingly isolated by both Bring Your Own Device policies and aggressive pitching to the corporate market by both Apple and Samsung.

This tweet by Techmeme editor Mahendra Palsule perhaps says it best:

The time for Blackberry to explore strategic alternatives was two years ago.

— Mahendra Palsule (@ScepticGeek) August 12, 2013

In an interesting development,  the press release notes Prem Watsa CEO Fairfax Financial has resigned from the board:

With the announcement of the Special Committee, Prem Watsa, Chairman and CEO of Fairfax Financial informed the Company that he felt it was appropriate to resign due to potential conflicts that may arise during the process. Fairfax Financial is the largest BlackBerry shareholder. Mr. Watsa said, “I continue to be a strong supporter of the Company, the Board and Management as they move forward during this process, and Fairfax Financial has no current intention of selling its shares.”

Perhaps this indicates that the Blackberry’s largest shareholder is at least considering a buyout.