Alvin Independent School District has selected cloud-based wireless networking company Meraki's cloud controlled WLAN to serve its 16,000 students and over 2,000 staff members. Alvin ISD has selected 771 Meraki MR14 access points.
Alvin ISD is based in Alvin, Texas, with 21 campuses, including two high schools, five junior high schools and thirteen elementary schools. Using Meraki's Enterprise Cloud Controller and self-configuring MR14 APs, Alvin ISD has deployed 530 APs across all of its campuses. Alvin ISD will deploy an additional 240 AP's as new campuses are added later this year.
The network will support Alvin ISD's technology initiatives, including 4,400 new netbooks being rolled out across its classrooms. Meraki's 802.11n network offers RF management and replaces HP system.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx%3Fcid%3D757834&ct=ga&cad=:s7:f1:v0:d2:i1:lt:e0:p0:t1285073436:&cd=4n_QZD_0Jxg&usg=AFQjCNEajXr_vVmwCFXqTIGJvEn-vs0PVw
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Friday, 1 October 2010
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Fwd: City of Playford reaps the benefits of optimizing VDI traffic
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"After just 5 minutes of the Expand devices being in place, six times more thin clients were able to connect to the VDI environment, allowing the council to fully utilise its resources available for the purpose of providing services to the public. We have now increased the number of clients able to connect via the VDI network 6 times over; we can now host 10-12 clients on a single link, which has dramatically improved user experience. This has enabled the council to provide a much better level of service to the users of the system who are now experiencing a 500% improvement in connection performance."
Shaun Emmott, Business Collaborator, at City of Playford Council
Date: 09/21/2010 08:00:00 AMTo download the case study, please click here
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Post-critical care using iPhone and iPad
How MobileIron iOS device management enables iPad deployments.
As a leading provider of hospital-based rehabilitation facilities, medical and surgical therapies, and outpatient services, RehabCare has one important goal: helping people regain their lives after medical treatment. Now RehabCare has turned to iPhone and iPad to make both its caregiver services and its business operations faster, more accurate, and more responsive.
At the company’s headquarters in St. Louis, MO, as well as hospitals and medical facilities throughout the U.S., iPhone gives RehabCare employees immediate access to the resources they need, from business applications to phone, email, contacts, and calendars.
“Mobility is an enormous part of the job here,” says Dick Escue, Chief Information Officer. “We have more than 1200 client hospitals and Skilled Nursing Facilities in 43 states, and we also own 34 long-term acute care and rehabilitation hospitals. So a big part of IT at RehabCare is providing solutions to a workforce spread across the country. To meet that need, we are using iPhone, and iPad.”
“By giving therapists these devices, we can share information with them that we couldn’t before,” says Jim O’Brien, Assistant Vice President of Technology Services. “iPhone excites them because they know it’s helping them provide better patient care.”
“We took that manual paper process and developed a cloud-based application in about a week,” explains Jayson R. Chitwood, Vice President of Information Services. “Collection of patient data can happen very quickly, and folks have access to it instantaneously. iPhone supports that immediate information transfer.”
RehabCare also contributed to the development of SmartTX Mobile from Casamba, a caregiver app that enables therapists to quickly record patient activities at point-of-care. With Smart TX on iPhone, therapists can record accurate, complete documentation of the time-based activities that drive their billing and compensation.
“Using a mobile device at point-of-care saves time,” says Chitwood. “We’re capturing the treatment delivered, the time spent, and any other relevant clinical information, which makes documentation more accurate and increases compliance.”
For RehabCare’s executive staff, iPad has become the preferred business tool for meetings and presentations. “I'd rather use it than anything else to bring up email or look at my calendars,” says Escue. “The speed and the battery life are fantastic. I have days where I never turn around and use the desktop. I just use iPad.”
With its large, easy-to-read screen and fast Internet access, iPad is an unbeatable mobile interface for clinical applications and documentation, from diagnostic and imaging tools to nursing notes and patient intake forms. “iPad will be the new workstation for health care workers,” says O’Brien. “With iPad and virtualization technologies, there is nothing we can’t do. It was all about the proper form factor, size, and capabilities. And it’s all there, out of the box.”
The IT team at RehabCare uses the MobileIron app to manage and monitor the company’s iPhones and iPads. MobileIron’s visually rich, intuitive interface allows them to track individual devices, perform remote wipes, and view custom reports in a management dashboard.
“We can see which devices are in compliance and which ones need updates,” says O’Brien. “MobileIron gives you better visual representation to get to the problems. This solution gives us just enough control, and also ensures that our mobile devices are functional and secure in this highly regulated industry.”
Using Citrix virtualization apps, RehabCare executives can remotely access corporate servers via iPhone or iPad. “Citrix enables us to use any enterprise application on these devices,” O’Brien says. “If I want to connect to our health information systems or get into my workstation, it’s the missing link.”
“Whether we’re documenting a patient’s treatment, showing a potential patient or family member what our facilities look like, or delivering training to our therapists, we’ve got an iPhone or an iPad in place that supports them,” Chitwood says.
“Everything about RehabCare is people-centric,” adds Escue. “Helping people get back on their feet and get back to work. Using iPhone and iPad, we can do a better job of getting people back home.”
http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/profiles/rehabcare/
“Mobility is an enormous part of the job here,” says Dick Escue, Chief Information Officer. “We have more than 1200 client hospitals and Skilled Nursing Facilities in 43 states, and we also own 34 long-term acute care and rehabilitation hospitals. So a big part of IT at RehabCare is providing solutions to a workforce spread across the country. To meet that need, we are using iPhone, and iPad.”
“By giving therapists these devices, we can share information with them that we couldn’t before,” says Jim O’Brien, Assistant Vice President of Technology Services. “iPhone excites them because they know it’s helping them provide better patient care.”
Streamlined Patient Services
Before iPhone, patient preadmission screening was a time-consuming process involving multiple paper forms and questionnaires. To simplify this workflow, RehabCare built a customized iPhone app based on the Force.com development platform from Salesforce.com, and deployed via the App Store.“We took that manual paper process and developed a cloud-based application in about a week,” explains Jayson R. Chitwood, Vice President of Information Services. “Collection of patient data can happen very quickly, and folks have access to it instantaneously. iPhone supports that immediate information transfer.”
RehabCare also contributed to the development of SmartTX Mobile from Casamba, a caregiver app that enables therapists to quickly record patient activities at point-of-care. With Smart TX on iPhone, therapists can record accurate, complete documentation of the time-based activities that drive their billing and compensation.
“Using a mobile device at point-of-care saves time,” says Chitwood. “We’re capturing the treatment delivered, the time spent, and any other relevant clinical information, which makes documentation more accurate and increases compliance.”
iPad Makes It Easy
Rolling out iPhone at RehabCare was straightforward — and iPad was even easier. “We knew we would be able to deploy to iPad rapidly, because the hurdles had already been cleared on the iPhone side,” Chitwood says.For RehabCare’s executive staff, iPad has become the preferred business tool for meetings and presentations. “I'd rather use it than anything else to bring up email or look at my calendars,” says Escue. “The speed and the battery life are fantastic. I have days where I never turn around and use the desktop. I just use iPad.”
With its large, easy-to-read screen and fast Internet access, iPad is an unbeatable mobile interface for clinical applications and documentation, from diagnostic and imaging tools to nursing notes and patient intake forms. “iPad will be the new workstation for health care workers,” says O’Brien. “With iPad and virtualization technologies, there is nothing we can’t do. It was all about the proper form factor, size, and capabilities. And it’s all there, out of the box.”
Managing Devices Smarter
iPhone and iPad integrate easily into RehabCare’s mobile device management infrastructure, and require only minimal training and support. “It just works,” O’Brien says. “Connecting with Exchange to deal with contacts, calendar, and email is a very simple process.”The IT team at RehabCare uses the MobileIron app to manage and monitor the company’s iPhones and iPads. MobileIron’s visually rich, intuitive interface allows them to track individual devices, perform remote wipes, and view custom reports in a management dashboard.
“We can see which devices are in compliance and which ones need updates,” says O’Brien. “MobileIron gives you better visual representation to get to the problems. This solution gives us just enough control, and also ensures that our mobile devices are functional and secure in this highly regulated industry.”
Using Citrix virtualization apps, RehabCare executives can remotely access corporate servers via iPhone or iPad. “Citrix enables us to use any enterprise application on these devices,” O’Brien says. “If I want to connect to our health information systems or get into my workstation, it’s the missing link.”
A Healthier Business
Equipping RehabCare’s staff with easy-to-use, process-driven apps on iPhone and iPad helps them improve patient care. It also makes for a more motivated workforce and a healthier bottom line. “iPhone instantly met or exceeded our most fundamental needs,” says Escue. “It reduces spending. It reduces staff requirements. It reduces our support workload significantly.”“Whether we’re documenting a patient’s treatment, showing a potential patient or family member what our facilities look like, or delivering training to our therapists, we’ve got an iPhone or an iPad in place that supports them,” Chitwood says.
“Everything about RehabCare is people-centric,” adds Escue. “Helping people get back on their feet and get back to work. Using iPhone and iPad, we can do a better job of getting people back home.”
http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/profiles/rehabcare/
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Monday, 20 September 2010
FINANCIAL GIANT EURONET SECURES $100,000 SAVINGS WITH EXPAND NETWORKS’ WAN OPTIMIZATION
Expand Networks has been chosen by a global provider of electronic payment and transaction processing solutions, Euronet Worldwide, to assure service availability and optimum network performance. This latest project, with Euronet India, demonstrates Expand Networks’ continued market dominance in the APAC region and is set to provide Euronet cost-savings of over $100,000.
“Expand could reduce traffic by up to 70% using it’s byte level caching, which is fantastic. Expand could also help guarantee security with the IP-Sec protocol - a must for a financial organization like us. The solution’s unique combination of acceleration and compression techniques was the only solution that demonstrated the ability to resolve our network performance issues.”
Ashish Mehta, Director IT & Infrastructure (Asia Pacific & Middle East)
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Tuesday, 31 August 2010
OpSource Cloud Under the hood
In business since 2002, OpSource sells hosting services, infrastructure services for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, and now VMware-based cloud services in a bid to compete with Amazon Web Services. But how does it stack up?
The OpSource Cloud is made up of these components:
Making assumptions from this graphic, one can assume that OpSource uses Dell servers running a VMware hypervisor, Cisco networking gear and both EMC and HP back-end storage for Cloud Files and the storage of the actual VMs.
OpSource also offers a 100% availability guarantee (which I'm not sure is even possible). After signing up for the OpSource cloud (a very straightforward process), the first step is to deploy a network.
OpSource Network
A network in the OpSource cloud is essentially a cloud-based LAN dedicated to a customer's environment. This cloud-based LAN is not accessible from the naked Internet; it requires the customer to establish a VPN connection into the cloud-based LAN. This network is the default network for VMs and allows the configuration of components such as firewalls, load balancing parameters, NAT rules and multicast networks.
For customers looking to host solutions with a publicly accessible address, a simple change to map a public IP address to an OpSource VM will allow anyone to hit the resource without requiring the VPN connection first.
OpSource Server
Once at least one network has been defined, it's now time to provision a VM or two. The list of available images is as follows:
For this example, I deployed a Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition 32-bit with 1 vCPU, 2 GB of RAM and a 32 GB OS drive. The VM takes 10-15 minutes to fully build and customize. Once it is ready for use, it shows up in the "Servers" section of the user interface (UI).
On first login to the VM, my first impression is that the "Preparing Desktop" phase of my Windows VM goes very quick. In other providers, I've seen this last approximately 60 seconds, but I was on my desktop in less than 10 seconds.
I also deployed a few other VM, including a 2 vCPU instance. A few basic tests were run; overall, the performance within the OpSource cloud is good but could also be characterized as "unpredictable." For example, a 2 vCPU server had low CPU utilization but high CPU % ready times and overall felt sluggish, while another VM ran effortlessly.
The OpSource Cloud experience: What's good
The OpSource cloud is fairly intuitive to use, OpSource users can import their own images, and overall the performance is acceptable. Establishing a VPN connection (via the Cisco-based solution) is very simple and worked flawlessly every time it was tested.
The OpSource Cloud experience: What's bad
The UI could use a "Tasks" area that shows pending, queued, active and completed tasks. When a user creates a VM, for example, they are clueless as to the level of progress. After 10-15 minutes, the VM shows up under "Servers," but I wasn't sure that it took properly the first time so I unnecessarily created a second. After that, I checked the logs to make sure my "create" task was working properly.
The user (if they had access) could certainly check the log to verify that the "create" task was executed, but right now there is no way to check and see how much longer it will take to complete. Finally, I occasionally received several "there has been a problem communicating with the OpSource cloud" messages when performing random tasks from within the UI.
How OpSource can improve its cloud experience
Other than what's noted in "the bad" section above, a few other changes would be nice.
First off, having the ability to hide the "VMware Tools" icon so that the underlying platform is less obvious to the end user. Along the same lines, the option to make it less obvious as to which version of the VMware hypervisor the OpSource cloud is using. Savvy customers will note the dated version of VMware tools.
It would also be beneficial to have a dashboard, similar to Vizioncore's vFoglight, to monitor all of a customer's VM in the OpSource cloud. This could certainly be a cost-based option, but if I was to move a large portion of my environment to the OpSource cloud, I would want a dashboard to monitor the health of my environment without having to tap into application programming interfaces (APIs) or other measures.
The argument could be made that an admin would monitor his OpSource virtual machines just like any other server in the environment; however, if this environment was on-premise in my own data center, I'd have vCenter or System Center to monitor my environment at a bird's eye level.
Finally, it would be great if, during a "delete" action on a VM, it was obvious that the underlying storage was zeroed out. Just because the VM's disk(s) have been deleted, it doesn't mean that the data is completely removed from the (assumedly) EMC or HP storage array(s). While the OpSource cloud meets a handful of industry compliance guidelines, it would still be nice to see and know that the underlying disks on the storage array(s) were overwritten with zeroes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jason Langone heads virtualization, cloud computing and storage for MicroTech, a service-disabled, veteran-owned and 8(a) small business. Langone won the VMware Vanguard Award in 2007 and has architected some of the largest virtualization and cloud computing implementations to date.
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The OpSource Cloud is made up of these components:
- Cloud Servers, or the virtual machines (VMs) or instances running in the OpSource cloud.
- Cloud Networks, or the private, cloud-based networks used for communication in the OpSource cloud. These private networks can be accessed via a Cisco VPN connection that OpSource offers for free (and in a very intuitive manner).
|  | ||||||||||||||||
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OpSource also offers a 100% availability guarantee (which I'm not sure is even possible). After signing up for the OpSource cloud (a very straightforward process), the first step is to deploy a network.
OpSource Network
A network in the OpSource cloud is essentially a cloud-based LAN dedicated to a customer's environment. This cloud-based LAN is not accessible from the naked Internet; it requires the customer to establish a VPN connection into the cloud-based LAN. This network is the default network for VMs and allows the configuration of components such as firewalls, load balancing parameters, NAT rules and multicast networks.
For customers looking to host solutions with a publicly accessible address, a simple change to map a public IP address to an OpSource VM will allow anyone to hit the resource without requiring the VPN connection first.
OpSource Server
Once at least one network has been defined, it's now time to provision a VM or two. The list of available images is as follows:
- Red Hat 5 Standard
- 64-bit 1 vCPU
- 64-bit 2 vCPU
- 64-bit 4 vCPU
- Windows 2008 Server Standard
- 32bit 1 vCPU
For this example, I deployed a Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition 32-bit with 1 vCPU, 2 GB of RAM and a 32 GB OS drive. The VM takes 10-15 minutes to fully build and customize. Once it is ready for use, it shows up in the "Servers" section of the user interface (UI).
| ||||
| | |||
| ||||
I also deployed a few other VM, including a 2 vCPU instance. A few basic tests were run; overall, the performance within the OpSource cloud is good but could also be characterized as "unpredictable." For example, a 2 vCPU server had low CPU utilization but high CPU % ready times and overall felt sluggish, while another VM ran effortlessly.
The OpSource Cloud experience: What's good
The OpSource cloud is fairly intuitive to use, OpSource users can import their own images, and overall the performance is acceptable. Establishing a VPN connection (via the Cisco-based solution) is very simple and worked flawlessly every time it was tested.
The OpSource Cloud experience: What's bad
The UI could use a "Tasks" area that shows pending, queued, active and completed tasks. When a user creates a VM, for example, they are clueless as to the level of progress. After 10-15 minutes, the VM shows up under "Servers," but I wasn't sure that it took properly the first time so I unnecessarily created a second. After that, I checked the logs to make sure my "create" task was working properly.
The user (if they had access) could certainly check the log to verify that the "create" task was executed, but right now there is no way to check and see how much longer it will take to complete. Finally, I occasionally received several "there has been a problem communicating with the OpSource cloud" messages when performing random tasks from within the UI.
How OpSource can improve its cloud experience
Other than what's noted in "the bad" section above, a few other changes would be nice.
First off, having the ability to hide the "VMware Tools" icon so that the underlying platform is less obvious to the end user. Along the same lines, the option to make it less obvious as to which version of the VMware hypervisor the OpSource cloud is using. Savvy customers will note the dated version of VMware tools.
It would also be beneficial to have a dashboard, similar to Vizioncore's vFoglight, to monitor all of a customer's VM in the OpSource cloud. This could certainly be a cost-based option, but if I was to move a large portion of my environment to the OpSource cloud, I would want a dashboard to monitor the health of my environment without having to tap into application programming interfaces (APIs) or other measures.
The argument could be made that an admin would monitor his OpSource virtual machines just like any other server in the environment; however, if this environment was on-premise in my own data center, I'd have vCenter or System Center to monitor my environment at a bird's eye level.
Finally, it would be great if, during a "delete" action on a VM, it was obvious that the underlying storage was zeroed out. Just because the VM's disk(s) have been deleted, it doesn't mean that the data is completely removed from the (assumedly) EMC or HP storage array(s). While the OpSource cloud meets a handful of industry compliance guidelines, it would still be nice to see and know that the underlying disks on the storage array(s) were overwritten with zeroes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jason Langone heads virtualization, cloud computing and storage for MicroTech, a service-disabled, veteran-owned and 8(a) small business. Langone won the VMware Vanguard Award in 2007 and has architected some of the largest virtualization and cloud computing implementations to date.
Join Us: http://bit.ly/joincloud
Friday, 27 August 2010
Meraki Webinar: 5 Success Factors for Upgrading Your Wireless ...
Meraki Webinar:
5 Success Factors for Upgrading to 802.11n
Thursday, September 2 11:00 am PDT
Deploying and maintaining a wireless network need not be a challenge. During this webinar, we will explore how advancements in radio technologies, wireless management, and network automation have enabled small, leveraged IT staffs to deploy wireless, and meet employee's needs for bandwidth and mobility.
Join us as we examine the components of successful wireless deployments:
- Radio technologies, including 802.11n
- Safe, isolated Internet access for guests
- Secure LAN access for employees with WPA2
- Centralized management and remote administration
- Simple, cost-effective scalability
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Thursday, 19 August 2010
Managing and securing iOS 4 devices at work | Phones | iPhone Central | Macworld
Apple’s iPhone has always had something of an image problem in the workplace, which isn’t surprising given that Apple has always marketed its smartphone more to consumers than to the business world.
In fact, when the iPhone debuted in 2007, there was no way to put third-party apps on one without jailbreaking the device, it didn’t support 3G data networks, it didn’t integrate with Microsoft’s Exchange, and you had to use iTunes to activate it initially and back up or sync data later on. Plus, there were security concerns, since there was no way to require a passcode, encrypt business data or remotely wipe an iPhone if it was lost or stolen.
A lot has changed for the iPhone, its operating system and the smartphone industry as a whole in three years. For people who want to use the iPhone at work and the IT departments that support them, the changes have been good. In fact, some of the major updates in each new iteration of the iPhone operating system (now called iOS) were the ones that made it easier to manage and secure Apple’s mobile platform.
With each passing summer, Apple has polished the business and enterprise features of iOS. It has added Exchange support, support for remote wipe, security and configuration policies (either through Exchange or with configuration profiles that can be loaded onto each device), VPN options and encryption—both whole-device encryption on the iPhone 3GS and targeted app data encryption in iOS 4.
While each of the changes was an improvement, it wasn’t until this year’s arrival of iOS 4—and the iPhone 4 itself—in June that Apple included a new mobile device management (MDM) service that companies could use. As a result, businesses finally got something sorely needed for enterprise iPhone adoption to make sense: the ability to more easily deploy, manage and monitor iPhones used by employees — a capability that has long made Research In Motion’s BlackBerry one of the most trusted mobile platforms.
Note: Although iOS 4 has been rolled out for the iPhone, the iPad won’t get the operating system upgrade until this fall.
Whether or not Apple comes out with its own management server, there are advantages for companies looking to support iOS devices in a secure and managed way. The most obvious one is competition. With seven different options either already on the market or slated to be available by year’s end, companies can choose the one that works best for them. Although many of the core management features of iOS 4 and the MDM service offered by each vendor are essentially the same, there’s still plenty of differentiation among them.
In some cases, the main difference may simply be the management interface. Or it can mean different levels of integration with other technologies such as Active Directory. Other variables run the gamut from the type and format of reports about mobile device use to system requirements (one option is completely Mac-based), cost, existing relationships with providers and the number of non-iOS platforms each can manage.
Getting hardware is also easy, since most purchases are made in bulk and typically from a single vendor. If you’re a Mac shop, you’re buying Apple hardware; if you opt for Windows, hardware choices are plentiful.
That kind of standardization doesn’t work as well for smartphones and tablets. Even if your company pays for a smartphone for each employee, IT shops are still apt to encounter problems. Being tied to a single carrier may not be a good choice for all workplaces; different phone models may sport different features (and potentially different management capabilities); phones might only run certain versions of operating systems or offer different sets of bundled or available apps; and there may be varying levels of integration with other systems like VPN, mail servers and intranets.
When workers bring their personal devices to work—as more of us are doing these days—there’s even more potential for problems. IT shops may not even know what devices employees are using, or for what purpose—to say nothing about how secure they are.
A few years ago, companies could afford to buy mobile hardware for their employees. That’s no longer true, and many organizations are embracing the concept of bring-your-own-hardware-to-work. That saves a lot of money, since there’s no hardware to buy and no monthly cell phone bill (for the company). But then you have to manage and secure those devices—or try to dictate what your workers use. (Good luck with that one.)
The most important advantage to Apple’s approach to MDM is that all but one of the third-party companies that have announced or released management servers offer support for platforms beyond iOS. Two of them, Absolute Manage and AirWatch, offer management capabilities for devices other than smartphones or tablets.
Apple would be hard-pressed to develop its own such multiplatform system, as would any smartphone manufacturer. Of course, the specific mix of supported platforms varies with each product, as does the extent of supported features. But that’s the advantage of competition: You should be able to get the one that best meets corporate needs.
A single configuration file can contain all of the available settings for an iPhone—complete with user credentials for various network resources—or it may contain just a single value that’s not user-specific, such as the details for accessing your mail server, VPN or wireless network. If you put in a server or network-related configuration without specific user credentials, the user will be asked to authenticate the first time they access the resource.
You can assign as many separate granular profiles as you like to any or all phones and they’ll all be enforced. This is helpful if you need to assign configuration data based on job function or department.
The most important features you can set using configuration profiles involve security: requiring a passcode, setting passcode restrictions and forcing employees to use long and complex passcodes. You can also specify how quickly a device locks when not in use and how many failed attempts to unlock it with a passcode are allowed before the device automatically wipes data.
Another security-related option allows you to disable an iPhone’s built-in camera(s). Since it is common for employers to ban camera-enabled devices to avoid sensitive information from leaking, this is an important option in many organizations.
Beyond the security options, there are a number of ways to customize an iOS device for use with your company’s network and resources. You can preconfigure access to Wi-Fi networks, VPN and e-mail servers. You can also pre-populate bookmarks for the mobile Safari browser to ensure that users can easily access internal (or external) Web-based resources. You can even specify Web pages or Web apps to appear as icons on a devices home screen for easier access.
In short, you can do a lot with configuration files to lock down an iPhone.
For more details about configuration profiles, check out Apple’s documentation of the iPhone Configuration Utility. This is the free tool (available for Mac and Windows) that Apple developed for creating and testing configuration profiles. Apple also offers information about various management and deployment scenarios as well as overviews for iOS 4 business integration.
In addition to setting configurations through profiles, the MDM service allows you to query any managed device for more than 20 different pieces of data (including device- and carrier-specific details, as well as usage and verification that security policies are being enforced).
Beyond setting configuration profiles and querying devices, the MDM service allows you to take certain actions on managed devices. You can, for instance, force the device to lock and/or wipe all data. And you can temporarily remove a passcode (in case a remote user has forgotten it). If a passcode is required, the user will be required to create a new one.
You can also install or update configuration profiles as well as installed apps and enterprise application provisioning profiles and in-house apps. All this can be done in the background without user intervention, allowing you to make sure that software, configuration and security policies are in place.
(See below for a full list of the available management and monitoring capabilities of iOS 4.)
Using that identity certificate and the user’s credentials to establish a secure connection, the device then processes the list of assigned configurations and presents them to the user. When the user agrees to the configurations, the device will download and install the related profiles and can be fully managed.
You can also mandate a variety of security policies, such as requiring an unlock passcode; allowing a simple passcode or requiring an alphanumeric passcode with a special characters; setting how long a passcode can be used; specifying the length of time before automatic screen locking takes place; setting the number of failed passcode attempts allowed before the device is wiped automatically; requiring that the backup created when syncing to iTunes be encrypted; and indicating whether users can remove configuration profiles.
When it comes to locking down an iOS device, you can restrict access to the following: app installation, the camera, screen captures, automatic mail sync while roaming, voice dialing while the device is locked, in-app purchases, items tagged by iTunes as explicit and access to the security settings for the mobile Safari browser. You can also keep users from launching Safari, YouTube, the iTunes Store and the App Store.
The goal is simple: You want to set as many parameters as needed to ensure that the device is as locked down as your company needs.
In addition to device management, MDM is a service that relies on Apple’s push notification system to receive queries and instructions from a management server to interact with any iOS 4 device in the background. That it runs as an always-on background process is the reason third-party vendors couldn’t create such a solution on their own.
You can build queries for a single device or multiple devices that encompass the following areas: unique device identifier (a value unique to each iOS device); the device name; iOS version; model name and hardware version; serial number; total storage capacity and available free space; IMEI number; the modem firmware version; SIM card ICCID; MAC addresses for both the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth receivers; current carrier (home carrier or roaming); the carrier identified by the installed SIM card as the primary carrier; the version of the carrier settings (APN) data; phone number; whether data roaming is allowed; the installed profiles; installed security certificates and their expiration dates; enforced restrictions; hardware encryption capability; whether a passcode is set; installed applications (including app identifier, name, version, and size); and any application provisioning profiles and their expiration dates—something that’s required for internal corporate iPhone apps distributed outside of the App Store.
Being able to effectively support and manage multiple platforms is crucial for any organization that wants an effective mobile strategy. For iOS 4 devices, and others, these tools offer ways to make the coming diversification easier to manage and secure. And while they certainly don’t ensure that Apple’s devices will be welcomed by IT shops, they do make them increasingly viable options for companies in the years ahead.
[Ryan Faas is a freelance writer and technology consultant specializing in Mac and multiplatform network issues. He has been a Computerworld columnist since 2003 and is a frequent contributor to Peachpit.com. Ryan was also the co-author of O’Reilly’s Essential Mac OS X Panther Server Administration.]
http://www.macworld.com/article/153316/2010/08/ios4_devices_workplace.html?lsrc=rss_weblogs_iphonecentral
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In fact, when the iPhone debuted in 2007, there was no way to put third-party apps on one without jailbreaking the device, it didn’t support 3G data networks, it didn’t integrate with Microsoft’s Exchange, and you had to use iTunes to activate it initially and back up or sync data later on. Plus, there were security concerns, since there was no way to require a passcode, encrypt business data or remotely wipe an iPhone if it was lost or stolen.
A lot has changed for the iPhone, its operating system and the smartphone industry as a whole in three years. For people who want to use the iPhone at work and the IT departments that support them, the changes have been good. In fact, some of the major updates in each new iteration of the iPhone operating system (now called iOS) were the ones that made it easier to manage and secure Apple’s mobile platform.
With each passing summer, Apple has polished the business and enterprise features of iOS. It has added Exchange support, support for remote wipe, security and configuration policies (either through Exchange or with configuration profiles that can be loaded onto each device), VPN options and encryption—both whole-device encryption on the iPhone 3GS and targeted app data encryption in iOS 4.
While each of the changes was an improvement, it wasn’t until this year’s arrival of iOS 4—and the iPhone 4 itself—in June that Apple included a new mobile device management (MDM) service that companies could use. As a result, businesses finally got something sorely needed for enterprise iPhone adoption to make sense: the ability to more easily deploy, manage and monitor iPhones used by employees — a capability that has long made Research In Motion’s BlackBerry one of the most trusted mobile platforms.
Note: Although iOS 4 has been rolled out for the iPhone, the iPad won’t get the operating system upgrade until this fall.
Third-party vendors are part of the equation
One surprising thing about how Apple rolled out MDM is that the company largely left implementing it via a server up to other companies. Considering Apple’s penchant for secrecy about upcoming products and its tight control over the App Store, this move seemed out of character. Most people, myself included, figured Apple would offer a robust over-the-air device management solution. And we expected Apple to take a page from RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server and ship something as part of its own Mac OS X Server platform. (That could still happen in the next major OS X Server release.)Whether or not Apple comes out with its own management server, there are advantages for companies looking to support iOS devices in a secure and managed way. The most obvious one is competition. With seven different options either already on the market or slated to be available by year’s end, companies can choose the one that works best for them. Although many of the core management features of iOS 4 and the MDM service offered by each vendor are essentially the same, there’s still plenty of differentiation among them.
In some cases, the main difference may simply be the management interface. Or it can mean different levels of integration with other technologies such as Active Directory. Other variables run the gamut from the type and format of reports about mobile device use to system requirements (one option is completely Mac-based), cost, existing relationships with providers and the number of non-iOS platforms each can manage.
Standardizing on a mobile platform is tough
Having a standard computing platform is a relatively simple task for most businesses, partly because there’s a limited set of choices: some variation of Windows or Mac OS X. (Yes, Linux and Unix are options, but they typically aren’t chosen for people outside of IT.)Getting hardware is also easy, since most purchases are made in bulk and typically from a single vendor. If you’re a Mac shop, you’re buying Apple hardware; if you opt for Windows, hardware choices are plentiful.
That kind of standardization doesn’t work as well for smartphones and tablets. Even if your company pays for a smartphone for each employee, IT shops are still apt to encounter problems. Being tied to a single carrier may not be a good choice for all workplaces; different phone models may sport different features (and potentially different management capabilities); phones might only run certain versions of operating systems or offer different sets of bundled or available apps; and there may be varying levels of integration with other systems like VPN, mail servers and intranets.
When workers bring their personal devices to work—as more of us are doing these days—there’s even more potential for problems. IT shops may not even know what devices employees are using, or for what purpose—to say nothing about how secure they are.
A few years ago, companies could afford to buy mobile hardware for their employees. That’s no longer true, and many organizations are embracing the concept of bring-your-own-hardware-to-work. That saves a lot of money, since there’s no hardware to buy and no monthly cell phone bill (for the company). But then you have to manage and secure those devices—or try to dictate what your workers use. (Good luck with that one.)
The most important advantage to Apple’s approach to MDM is that all but one of the third-party companies that have announced or released management servers offer support for platforms beyond iOS. Two of them, Absolute Manage and AirWatch, offer management capabilities for devices other than smartphones or tablets.
Apple would be hard-pressed to develop its own such multiplatform system, as would any smartphone manufacturer. Of course, the specific mix of supported platforms varies with each product, as does the extent of supported features. But that’s the advantage of competition: You should be able to get the one that best meets corporate needs.
Understanding configuration profiles in iOS
A central component to managing mobile devices involves what Apple calls configuration profiles. These are XML lists of different configuration features and optional restrictions that automatically configure an iOS device.A single configuration file can contain all of the available settings for an iPhone—complete with user credentials for various network resources—or it may contain just a single value that’s not user-specific, such as the details for accessing your mail server, VPN or wireless network. If you put in a server or network-related configuration without specific user credentials, the user will be asked to authenticate the first time they access the resource.
You can assign as many separate granular profiles as you like to any or all phones and they’ll all be enforced. This is helpful if you need to assign configuration data based on job function or department.
The most important features you can set using configuration profiles involve security: requiring a passcode, setting passcode restrictions and forcing employees to use long and complex passcodes. You can also specify how quickly a device locks when not in use and how many failed attempts to unlock it with a passcode are allowed before the device automatically wipes data.
Another security-related option allows you to disable an iPhone’s built-in camera(s). Since it is common for employers to ban camera-enabled devices to avoid sensitive information from leaking, this is an important option in many organizations.
Beyond the security options, there are a number of ways to customize an iOS device for use with your company’s network and resources. You can preconfigure access to Wi-Fi networks, VPN and e-mail servers. You can also pre-populate bookmarks for the mobile Safari browser to ensure that users can easily access internal (or external) Web-based resources. You can even specify Web pages or Web apps to appear as icons on a devices home screen for easier access.
In short, you can do a lot with configuration files to lock down an iPhone.
For more details about configuration profiles, check out Apple’s documentation of the iPhone Configuration Utility. This is the free tool (available for Mac and Windows) that Apple developed for creating and testing configuration profiles. Apple also offers information about various management and deployment scenarios as well as overviews for iOS 4 business integration.
In addition to setting configurations through profiles, the MDM service allows you to query any managed device for more than 20 different pieces of data (including device- and carrier-specific details, as well as usage and verification that security policies are being enforced).
Beyond setting configuration profiles and querying devices, the MDM service allows you to take certain actions on managed devices. You can, for instance, force the device to lock and/or wipe all data. And you can temporarily remove a passcode (in case a remote user has forgotten it). If a passcode is required, the user will be required to create a new one.
You can also install or update configuration profiles as well as installed apps and enterprise application provisioning profiles and in-house apps. All this can be done in the background without user intervention, allowing you to make sure that software, configuration and security policies are in place.
(See below for a full list of the available management and monitoring capabilities of iOS 4.)
Enrolling iOS devices for management
Apple made the process of setting up device management pretty simple using SCEP. A user is instructed to visit a secure Web site and authenticate with his or her user account (typically an Active Directory account or some other LDAP-based directory service). This allows the iPhone to generate a certificate enrollment request and then an identity certificate for the device.Using that identity certificate and the user’s credentials to establish a secure connection, the device then processes the list of assigned configurations and presents them to the user. When the user agrees to the configurations, the device will download and install the related profiles and can be fully managed.
Management server options
Now that we’ve covered the what and the how of enterprise management, here’s the list of vendors and the expected ship dates for their products:- Absolute Manage: Expected availability in the third quarter of this year.
- Afaria by Sybase: iOS 4 beta program now in progress, with availability also expected in the third quarter.
- AirWatch: Availability listed as summer 2010.
- Good for Enterprise: Now available.
- MobileIron: Now available, and offering discounts to existing Good customers.
- Tangoe Mobile Device Manager: Now available.
- Tarmac by Equinux: Now available.
Management and monitoring options for iOS devices
When building configurations, you can specify details about the following: Exchange or POP/IMAP mail servers; VPN configurations; Wi-Fi networks (including hidden networks and networks requiring a passcode or radius authentication); LDAP directories for contacts, access to a CalDAV and/or CardDAV server, public or private calendars that support iCal (.ics) subscriptions; carrier (APN) settings; digital certificates; and Web clips.You can also mandate a variety of security policies, such as requiring an unlock passcode; allowing a simple passcode or requiring an alphanumeric passcode with a special characters; setting how long a passcode can be used; specifying the length of time before automatic screen locking takes place; setting the number of failed passcode attempts allowed before the device is wiped automatically; requiring that the backup created when syncing to iTunes be encrypted; and indicating whether users can remove configuration profiles.
When it comes to locking down an iOS device, you can restrict access to the following: app installation, the camera, screen captures, automatic mail sync while roaming, voice dialing while the device is locked, in-app purchases, items tagged by iTunes as explicit and access to the security settings for the mobile Safari browser. You can also keep users from launching Safari, YouTube, the iTunes Store and the App Store.
The goal is simple: You want to set as many parameters as needed to ensure that the device is as locked down as your company needs.
In addition to device management, MDM is a service that relies on Apple’s push notification system to receive queries and instructions from a management server to interact with any iOS 4 device in the background. That it runs as an always-on background process is the reason third-party vendors couldn’t create such a solution on their own.
You can build queries for a single device or multiple devices that encompass the following areas: unique device identifier (a value unique to each iOS device); the device name; iOS version; model name and hardware version; serial number; total storage capacity and available free space; IMEI number; the modem firmware version; SIM card ICCID; MAC addresses for both the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth receivers; current carrier (home carrier or roaming); the carrier identified by the installed SIM card as the primary carrier; the version of the carrier settings (APN) data; phone number; whether data roaming is allowed; the installed profiles; installed security certificates and their expiration dates; enforced restrictions; hardware encryption capability; whether a passcode is set; installed applications (including app identifier, name, version, and size); and any application provisioning profiles and their expiration dates—something that’s required for internal corporate iPhone apps distributed outside of the App Store.
Some final thoughts
It’s still unclear whether iOS 4 will truly end the belief that the iPhone (and iPad) platform is more about personal entertainment than workplace functionality. It’s also hard to know for now which smartphone and tablet platforms will have the staying power to dominate the market — though I wouldn’t bet against Apple. For now, it seems clear that workers and businesses will have a wide variety of choices over the next few years, with Apple being just one of many players trying to get their feet in the enterprise door.Being able to effectively support and manage multiple platforms is crucial for any organization that wants an effective mobile strategy. For iOS 4 devices, and others, these tools offer ways to make the coming diversification easier to manage and secure. And while they certainly don’t ensure that Apple’s devices will be welcomed by IT shops, they do make them increasingly viable options for companies in the years ahead.
[Ryan Faas is a freelance writer and technology consultant specializing in Mac and multiplatform network issues. He has been a Computerworld columnist since 2003 and is a frequent contributor to Peachpit.com. Ryan was also the co-author of O’Reilly’s Essential Mac OS X Panther Server Administration.]
http://www.macworld.com/article/153316/2010/08/ios4_devices_workplace.html?lsrc=rss_weblogs_iphonecentral
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