[ipad] Why iPads are not for the Enterprise

[GrumbleDook]

GD Have you used W8, the ui is completely different and designed for touch. The hardware is also more suited, low power usage and heat for longer battery life, lighter weight etc. along with ssds for data access speed and robustness. It is a completely different proposition than XP or 7.

 

And you can use the same argument for iOS and Android devices. Yet previous schemes using Tablets do mention the battery issue but not as much as some other problems that arose.

[Michael]

Tablet devices failed with XP as they didn't really market it, no one understood it and the interface was not tablet friendly. It was keyboard and mouse friendly. Active Directory was still there ready to manage it, but this wasn't the issue.

 

Windows 8 has been designed for tablets from the beginning, but then there's a big question mark just how it'll fit in with desktops/notebooks (but that's irrelevant to this discussion). Active Directory is bigger than it ever has been and will offer even more policies to tweak devices (of different types) out the box.

[SYNACK]

And you can use the same argument for iOS and Android devices. Yet previous schemes using Tablets do mention the battery issue but not as much as some other problems that arose.

What other problems, I was referring to the issues brought up by you about the previous 'failure' of tablets. Technically these are slates but apple went and stuffed up that term too refusing to call their device what it was and leading to the terms changing. Apple's priority is not manageability and they continue to prove how they will flush corporate tools down the toilet if it goes outside their scope of interest, just look at the dropping of servers, the lack of good documentation, the redaction of server editions and tools. The webifying of installers and tools making everything hit the web to work. The inability to downgrade or site licence. How many examples do I need to provide.

[GrumbleDook]

What other problems, I was referring to the issues brought up by you about the previous 'failure' of tablets. Technically these are slates but apple went and stuffed up that term too refusing to call their device what it was and leading to the terms changing. Apple's priority is not manageability and they continue to prove how they will flush corporate tools down the toilet if it goes outside their scope of interest, just look at the dropping of servers, the lack of good documentation, the redaction of server editions and tools. The webifying of installers and tools making everything hit the web to work. The inability to downgrade or site licence. How many examples do I need to provide.

 

You said

GD Have you used W8, the ui is completely different and designed for touch. The hardware is also more suited, low power usage and heat for longer battery life, lighter weight etc. along with ssds for data access speed and robustness. It is a completely different proposition than XP or 7.

and all of the above are things you could say about iOS and Android devices over XP / 7 on a tablet / slate. Previous schemes had issues with batteries, in the same way that previous laptop setups (1:1 or class sets) have had problems so there limited difference between tablet and laptop for that problem, just different ways of dealing with it. Other reported problems included problems with wireless infrastructure, storage of files (arguments about mandatory vs roaming profiles, syncing of offline folders, etc), damage to students / staff responsible devices (hard to say 'owned' as people tend to say that to mean BYOD rather than devices bought / leased via the school), etc. Are some of these still relevant and are they more relevant to W8 or iOS or Android ... or equally relevant?

[zag]

There will be a move away from active directory. Individual devices are the way forward even in education.

 

The only reason we needed to manage(restrict) things was because Windows was so damn complicated.

 

One thing we have learned from our school ipad deployment is that it doesn't _need_ to be managed. Users are quite happy and capable of doing it their selves.

[3s-gtech]

See, we're one school where the 'old school' tablet is popular. We have a few dotted around the place, Toshiba Portege M400s, Tecra M700 and a HP TC4400. The hardware is decent inside (Core 2 Duo T7200 with 3GB+ RAM etc) running Windows 7 on all. The teachers that use them chose them specifically - they love using the stylus with Journal as it gives them the ability to make notes etc in front of the class, like a mini IWB. We certainly don't see them as a failure - they're designed for a very specific purpose, which doesn't fit many of these new ideas. Planning to get more though!

[localzuk]

The only reason we needed to manage(restrict) things was because Windows was so damn complicated.

 

Will post a response to Grumbledook later, but this needs a slight correction I feel. The only reason we needed to manage(restrict) things was because Windows was so damn flexible...

 

Flexibility brings with it complexity. I've yet to find an incomplex system which was as flexible as I wanted.

 

iPad and Android computing is one size fits all computing. Problem being is that one size never fits all. (That's made me annoyed about my hat now, as that's a one size fits all and it doesn't cover my ears properly).

Edited July 13, 2012 by localzuk

[zag]

Will post a response to Grumbledook later, but this needs a slight correction I feel. The only reason we needed to manage(restrict) things was because Windows was so damn flexible...

 

Flexibility brings with it complexity. I've yet to find an incomplex system which was as flexible as I wanted.

 

Very good point.

 

I would argue most users don't want the flexibility though. All they want is to browse the internet, take registers, write reports, lookup data. 95% of people dont care about flexibility in a work enviroment.

 

I don't even think I have had more than 10 jobs logged for ipads in the year we have been using them.

 

Windows 8 is going to be one massive fail. Microsoft just haven't got the idea that people want things simple and easy to use. Not just a new start menu on top of old windows.

[localzuk]

Very good point.

 

I would argue most users don't want the flexibility though. All they want is to browse the internet, take registers, write reports, lookup data. 95% of people dont care about flexibility in a work enviroment.

 

I don't even think I have had more than 10 jobs logged for ipads in the year we have been using them.

 

Windows 8 is going to be one massive fail. Microsoft just haven't got the idea that people want things simple and easy to use. Not just a new start menu on top of old windows.

 

I'd disagree vehemently with that. No-one wants flexibility when they get their device at first, then a little while down the road they suddenly need to do a task that isn't there by default and now they want flexibility.

[sonofsanta]

Another important point - that iOS and Android really, really should have sorted long ago - will be ease of applying proxy settings to ensure web connections are filtered. Full-fat Windows 8 will make that one less nightmare to deal with.

 

As said, though, that's more a failing of the existing players than necessarily an advantage of Win8.

[SYNACK]

@GrumbleDook - You are right, taken in isolation those things do apply but it was more an addition to the existing thread of discussion than an isolated statement. Most of the issues you meantion are political rather than technical, breakage, ownership etc. Wireless is a good one but you'll need that for any of the others too. Profiles can be managed via local or mandatory, offline files should not be needed if the wireless is up to it and documents will be faster from a local source rather than a small 100mbit internet pipe. If you want the online stuff it will work with liveids which should tie into 365 just like Live@EDU so they can just log in to any of them with their school email and password and it will tie everything in. Politics are always the downfall, everyone doing their best to take no responcibility for anything and do the least they can. Truth be told the users are generally the biggest problem in any of these programs with users using them as coasters and plates. To those who are hell bent on simplicity, you are the reason why the start menu is gone. They are listening to you as the 'average consumer' and throwing out the edge case of the technical users.

[GrumbleDook]

@SYNACK

Previous schemes raised offline folders as an issue, and mandatory / roaming profiles, because they are linked with what you do if you have a school controlled device which is allowed to leave the building. Whilst slightly more relevant to 1:1 schemes for students than class sets, it is very relevant to staff allocated tablets. The advent of cloud / hosted facilities can you give you methods of dealing with this and this is one of the differences between what was done on the previous setups compared to what can be done with the present tablets (including future devices running W8). As @zag has pointed out, the user responsibility can be of benefit, and access to individual cloud accounts is a factor here. Poor or no connectivity is a factor which has to be considered in this as part of the planning ... and fits into the infrastructure section ... as we also need to consider the infrastructure outside of school for some schemes.

Wireless is a very good point to consider with the infrastructure. In previous research / reports problems with WiFi had a significant impact on faith in the technology as well as functionality. We know that management of wireless has come considerable way since those earlier schemes ... but does that reflect the WLANs in schools or are many still set up in a similar way to how they were in 2003-6? The bands used might have changed, but has management of it changed that much? Is there a difference in that between primary, secondary and special (and the other variants in between)?

[SYNACK]

@GrumbleDook - most of the issues you speak of will effect all the platforms, wireless etc. W8 has very tight integration with MS cloud stuff, it can also tie into google calanders/email but not so much with integration of docs although I am sure they'll release an app. You are right that none of the research exists because it has not been done yet, the only way for this to exist is for someone to actually try it and see how it works. This is why we are getting a couple of W8 tablets - after a short trial of one - so that we can spend the time configuring it and making sure that it works well. Our wireless manages with class sets of laptops and it is understood that more wireless devices should have another WAP or two included in the order to up the coverage in order to compensate.

[PiqueABoo]

Previous schemes raised offline folders as an issue, and mandatory / roaming profiles, because they are linked with what you do if you have a school controlled device which is allowed to leave the building.

 

It took some research/work but I managed to sort that scenario out very nicely indeed for XP SP2+ - it just works and has done for multiple systems for quite a while. Sadly being one of Win7's "improvements" made this significantly harder for both me and users.

 

In previous research / reports problems with WiFi had a significant impact on faith in the technology as well as functionality. The bands used might have changed, but has management of it changed that much? Is there a difference in that between primary, secondary and special (and the other variants in between)?

 

Primary: I've seen some spectacularly dim/harmful 'old' wireless solutions largely because the science, that there actually is a science you need to grok, went right over their tech-support's heads. Tech comprehension has slowly improved though and if they move from old cheap 2.4GHz kit then it's inevitably to managed wireless - there's been quite a lot of that moving in the last couple of years.

Edited July 13, 2012 by PiqueABoo

[alttab]

I'd disagree vehemently with that. No-one wants flexibility when they get their device at first, then a little while down the road they suddenly need to do a task that isn't there by default and now they want flexibility.

 

yeah, well that's why users tend to have more than one device. If they want the flexibility of running a more powerful application or accessing corporate apps then they can turn to a notebook. The thing i've always wondered about is why an iPad is a personal, single user device, but somehow - as far as IT are concerned - the laptop isn't. That a laptop computer that should be customisable, personalizable but is infact 'managed' or locked down like a computer lab. That's probably because the Windows laptop was incredibly successful at exposing less-experienced users to all sorts of nasties than a better designed tool without the inherent shortcomings would have.

 

in industries where people are using macbook notebooks and apple idevices, they are comfortable with webmail, web apps, syncing to cloud services, and their productive with full desktop apps. In the windows world, you have OS'es [windows 7 and windows 8] which are increasingly steering toward being a more 'consumer' product but with an ever increasing array of policies in a losing battle to control all these bells and whistles features in the school/workplace and provide additional layers of security.

 

I just see it as exercise in pointlessness to criticise the iPad for not being enterprise-enough, when the nature of how people should work in the enterprise as applied to their more powerful machines should be changing anyway. The very nature of Windows has in the past created problems that needed solutions that were 'enterprise' if folk move to OSX, iPads, or open source OS they might not need half the stuff that IT justifies for managing a windows-centric world.

[glennda]

My personal view is that BYOD is yes the future but with the inability to use a mouse on an ipad it rules them out.

 

My vision is: user brings x device in whether is be android, osx, windows, Linux, chromeos anything. User can do the stand alone basic stuff but when teachers/bosses want them to do advanced stuff or use specialist software they will remotely connect to terminal servers/VDI clients.

 

VDI clients are supported on pretty much any os you want or through and HTML5 browser using softwares like ericom vpn etc.

 

Just my 2p

[CyberNerd]

Anyone using anything like this?

Android HDMI Dongle Mini PC Android 4.0 ICS Telechips 8925 1.2GHz Dual Core WiFi HDMI 1080P Full HD-in Set-top Boxes from Consumer Electronics on Aliexpress.com

 

I can see a lot of mileage in giving every student their own computer.

If it goes wrong just re-image it using google apps and let the kids use the computer as it was intended.

[SYNACK]

I just see it as exercise in pointlessness to criticise the iPad for not being enterprise-enough, when the nature of how people should work in the enterprise as applied to their more powerful machines should be changing anyway. The very nature of Windows has in the past created problems that needed solutions that were 'enterprise' if folk move to OSX, iPads, or open source OS they might not need half the stuff that IT justifies for managing a windows-centric world.

 

If this is the case then why do all these MDM tools exist and are being invested in by organisations. Is it the case that tools like these are needed when dealing with large amounts of them and is this not a missing feature. Should tech staffing be increased 10-20 fold so that these devices can be handled individually.

 

Users can to a certain extent manage their devices but things still go wrong and this also denies the existance of users acting in nefarious ways like filling them with games, hacking tools and the like.

 

By all means, lets go back to having each and every user having their own web id and password, we can keep them all in a big spreadsheet. It'll be great.

 

Or we can use tools to automate what can be automated, make the devices self repair as much as possible and apply as much sanity to their usage as is nessisary in each environment.

[Michael]

There will be a move away from active directory. Individual devices are the way forward even in education.

 

The only reason we needed to manage(restrict) things was because Windows was so damn complicated.

 

One thing we have learned from our school ipad deployment is that it doesn't _need_ to be managed. Users are quite happy and capable of doing it their selves.

 

I couldn't disagree more I'm afraid Active Directory for schools and businesses will play an even bigger role and the fact is, it still exists in Windows Server 2012.

 

iPads do need managing - silly things such as internet/proxy settings, application management, file management.

 

So are you saying you've never had to re-image an iPad? (For whatever reason) and that users never require assistance? If it were that simple, Apple would be the market leaders overall, but clearly they're not.

Edited July 14, 2012 by Michael

[zag]

So are you saying you've never had to re-image an iPad? (For whatever reason) and that users never require assistance?

 

Pretty much yeh. I've just looked at our job sheet and the only jobs I've ever had for the ipad is to send someone instructions for setting up their school email. I've never had to re-image or re-install an ipad. ever.....

 

Thats what's so impressive about them, they just work. We have over half of our teachers using them now as their main machines. I do a 5 minute basic setup of Emerge, the wireless key and Proxy settings and never see them again.

 

I think Active directory and mice will be a distant memory in 5 years time. Microsoft have also realized this but are a little late to the party. What they are doing with Windows 8 seems madness but they know simple touch screen devices are the future and are trying desperately to take their users with them.

[glennda]

 

Thats what's so impressive about them, they just work.

 

Somebody has been listening to the apple machine too much

[CyberNerd]

So are you saying you've never had to re-image an iPad? (For whatever reason)

 

Not an Ipad - but I've re imaged several android devices as simple as Devices -> device name -> remote wipe. Done/

Much simpler than AD. Users can pretty much manage themselves which is great from a support point of view.

[SYNACK]

I think Active directory and mice will be a distant memory in 5 years time. Microsoft have also realized this but are a little late to the party. What they are doing with Windows 8 seems madness but they know simple touch screen devices are the future and are trying desperately to take their users with them.

 

Thats a bit brave new world there, no new software, books, documentation. A massive uptick in OOS/RSI and postural issues thanks to the horrifying form factor for long spells of work. The death of the USB key and USB itself, no local large scale storeage meaning the first internet outage shuts down the world.

 

Its nice to know that no-one will need to do any indepth and long winded work in the future, are we outsourcing it all to china. All that precision and dealing with large datasets is far too difficult and should be left to those people in other countries do all that low level grunt work of thinking, making decisions and processing information.

[SYNACK]

Not an Ipad - but I've re imaged several android devices as simple as Devices -> device name -> remote wipe. Done/

Much simpler than AD. Users can pretty much manage themselves which is great from a support point of view.

 

SCCM and altris offered this kind of reimage on next reboot stuff long before android even existed. As with everything, it depends at what level they are using the devices, if they are just bashing out an email or to and editing a few text documents they are effectivly typewriter users anyway and not much intellect is required on either side of the equation.

[Theblacksheep]

SCCM and altris offered this kind of reimage on next reboot stuff long before android even existed. As with everything, it depends at what level they are using the devices, if they are just bashing out an email or to and editing a few text documents they are effectivly typewriter users anyway and not much intellect is required on either side of the equation.

 

SCCM2012 is supporting Windows8/RT and will have the ability to remote wipe.

 

knock out the ability to install their own rubbish with remote restore to predefined settings (SCCM2012sp1) and these will be very useful.