[ipad] Why iPads are not for the Enterprise

[SYNACK]

Brings back 'unhappy' memories of circa 2003-4 when a client of mine (middle school), invested (wasted) 15k of ICT budget (all of their ICT budget for a year), on a provision of Compaq tablet devices. Oh how I larfed (in despair).

 

I advised the client not to buy said devices, and to strongly consider going down the laptop route, which would double the provision... Needless to say, the above text suggests I was largely ignored. The client ended up with a device which was unresponsive, with a screen so pathetic, it made the device mostly unusable.

 

Anyway, the point I'm making is this - whilst the school had a vision of the future, they had in fact invested a large some of money in what were in affect a one trick pony... The one trick part being the aesthetics, which is where the ipad ties in.

 

I look forward to Microsoft releasing the Surface, as well as the offerings from Dell and the like... Interesting times a head.

 

I still love my Compaq tc4200 and am using it now, we only got one of them though, and while great for me probably was not the best for use in a primary by students but a great little machine that still runs Windows 7 and Visual Studio fine (if slowly) to this day.

 

Have been trialing a W8 tablet in most of my schools for a while though, most are reasonably excited about it in the tablet form factor apart from the best funded but most near sighted of them.

Edited July 20, 2012 by SYNACK

[Mr_Jiminy]

I still love my Compaq tc4200 and am using it now, we only got one of them though, and while great for me probably was not the best for use in a primary by students but a great little machine that still runs Windows 7 and Visual Studio fine (if slowly) to this day.

 

Have been trialing a W8 tablet in most of my schools for a while though, most are reasonably excited about it in the tablet form factor apart from the best funded but most near sighted of them.

 

Yes, hmmm, well the 'orrible devices I'm ranting on about were not quite as advanced.

 

Compaq tablet pc tc1000

Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 - North America/U.S. QuickSpecs

 

Sent a cold shiver down my spine when I google'd it.

[SYNACK]

Yes, hmmm, well the 'orrible devices I'm ranting on about were not quite as advanced.

 

Compaq tablet pc tc1000

Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 - North America/U.S. QuickSpecs

 

Sent a cold shiver down my spine when I google'd it.

 

Eeep, transmeta, those things were the deffinition of slow when they were released let alone later. Should have been ok for extremely light weight tasks under XP but not much more.

[alttab]

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.

 

I'd argue that MDM tools have long been invested in by enterprise, precisely because of the proliferation of the blackberry. It made sense for the MDM vendors to add Windows Phone and IOS capability which existing sites rolling out iPhone and wp will take advantage of, that does not mean that MDM has to be invested in in sites without an existing MDM infrastructure....much of the MDM features for the iPhone in particular are about self-service anyway, rather than pushing out and control of mobile devices. you can add self-service aspects to allowing users secure connectivity without making major investments in mdm.

 

with proper training of staff (that's the key bit), guidelines on usage for regular users and visitors then there's no reason why an environment which supports idevices in a relatively hands-off way needs to generate a tonne of support calls or take up a silly amount of time of ICT support (the proliferation of ruddy netbooks and wireless trolleys in schools would have been a far more disruptive and challenging to IT depts.'revolution'), after all it's not as if they have to build in a infrastructure or extend to another layer of AV servers, update servers, policy servers and all the other stuff which supports a windows infrastructure.

[SYNACK]

with proper training of staff (that's the key bit), guidelines on usage for regular users and visitors then there's no reason why an environment which supports idevices in a relatively hands-off way needs to generate a tonne of support calls or take up a silly amount of time of ICT support (the proliferation of ruddy netbooks and wireless trolleys in schools would have been a far more disruptive and challenging to IT depts.'revolution'), after all it's not as if they have to build in a infrastructure or extend to another layer of AV servers, update servers, policy servers and all the other stuff which supports a windows infrastructure.

 

Ahahahaahha users taking responcibility for themselves 'we didn't sign up to teach to fix X', 'we don't have time for that', 'student x has found a way around the - non-existant - lockdowns.

 

Don't hide behind the infrastructure and AV stuff, there are still vunrabilities and malware for such devices and it is only getting worse. Sure you can outsource stuff to the 'cloud' so you don't have to do that hard clicking of buttons yourself but you still need a whole stack of infrastructure behind the scenes and a big internet link. What happens when some kid blackholes all the traffic with ARP poisoning? There's an app for that you know. Oh look there's that need for local managment again of the network if not the devices.

[alttab]

Ahahahaahha users taking responcibility for themselves 'we didn't sign up to teach to fix X', 'we don't have time for that', 'student x has found a way around the - non-existant - lockdowns.

 

Don't hide behind the infrastructure and AV stuff, there are still vunrabilities and malware for such devices and it is only getting worse. Sure you can outsource stuff to the 'cloud' so you don't have to do that hard clicking of buttons yourself but you still need a whole stack of infrastructure behind the scenes and a big internet link. What happens when some kid blackholes all the traffic with ARP poisoning? There's an app for that you know. Oh look there's that need for local managment again of the network if not the devices.

 

i take your point, but the threats from users using 1:1 devices as a tool to wreak havoc by launching such attacks is why for user-controlled or user owned devices which aren't under your control you'd already have implemented network segmentation - not saying the proliferation of these devices themselves don't create a need for additional infrastructure and i don't think for a minute you'd want to throw out any of the the existing windows infrastructure, but i don't think it needs to be the case that it has to be locked down to the nth degree or wholly managed which is the situation we've got after years of windows administration despite everything being under IT control and very little accommodation of BYOD - and which people seem to want out of Windows 8 tablets, which i just cannot fathom really. IT seems a rather expensive way of operating which netbooks already do at far cheaper cost.

 

....plus users need to authenticate to your network first before they try and launch such nasties so there it's a clear case of inappropriate use...you wouldn't bother to have use policies if you could guarantee that no pupil could install unauthorised software or try and initiate a network attack from a pc. a linux liveCD and usb wifi dongles can also be used as weapons, i know the argument about disabling access to boot from Cd/DVD, network infrastructure lockdown mechanisms etc. are better rehearsed vs tablets and wifi connectivity....and to be fair i think that's still something people are working out and trying to get their heads around so as not to limit the potential of such devices without compromising security. mitigating risk from introducing idevices is just as important as is the case in the pc domain. The good thing about such internet-centric devices is that allowing internet only through a VLAN or VPN doesn't limit the devices as much because as you say so much of it is internet and cloud based anyway.

Edited July 22, 2012 by alttab

[SYNACK]

i take your point, but the threats from users using 1:1 devices as a tool to wreak havoc by launching such attacks is why for user-controlled or user owned devices which aren't under your control you'd already have implemented network segmentation - not saying the proliferation of these devices themselves don't create a need for additional infrastructure and i don't think for a minute you'd want to throw out any of the the existing windows infrastructure, but i don't think it needs to be the case that it has to be locked down to the nth degree or wholly managed which is the situation we've got after years of windows administration despite everything being under IT control and very little accommodation of BYOD - and which people seem to want out of Windows 8 tablets, which i just cannot fathom really. IT seems a rather expensive way of operating which netbooks already do at far cheaper cost.

 

....plus users need to authenticate to your network first before they try and launch such nasties so there it's a clear case of inappropriate use...you wouldn't bother to have use policies if you could guarantee that no pupil could install unauthorised software or try and initiate a network attack from a pc. a linux liveCD and usb wifi dongles can also be used as weapons, i know the argument about disabling access to boot from Cd/DVD, network infrastructure lockdown mechanisms etc. are better rehearsed vs tablets and wifi connectivity....and to be fair i think that's still something people are working out and trying to get their heads around so as not to limit the potential of such devices without compromising security. mitigating risk from introducing idevices is just as important as is the case in the pc domain. The good thing about such internet-centric devices is that allowing internet only through a VLAN or VPN doesn't limit the devices as much because as you say so much of it is internet and cloud based anyway.

 

It depends on how much you lock down your current gear too, its not all about locking down but about preconfiguring stuff so that it just works. Isn't that the siren call, it must 'just work' otherwise it will 'compromise learning', blah, blah, blah... rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. If you can prestage everything so that it has the best chance of working off the bat then things do go smoother and you don't get as much of ICT being used as an excuse instead of a tool. Not all managment of devices is a bad un-nessisary thing desinged to pollute the environment with unfairly exerted power, a big chunk is to fix stuff before it 'breaks'. No matter how easy it is some users will always run to tech support about this problem that is 'not their job' that they have 'no time' to look into themselves - despite wasting more time winging about it than it woud take to look it up and fix it.

 

Document templates, report writing tools, SMS systems are all templated handeling of inputs as not every user can do it by themselves. The managment tools for an OS can also be seen as this, they take care of the little things so that even those that can't are able to get good results. Apples version is simply removing choice and givving you a happy little groupthink world that is vaguely customisable where the hammer dictates the builder rather than the builder dictating the hammer.

 

How does it go, any user that can be replaced by a small shell script...

[Sean-OC04]

Or indeed Enterprise, as the thread title.

 

We've not been able to see any value above a laptop. So we're looking at more expensive, less useful and far less powerful devices? awesome.

 

Bear in mind, we're in the City of London, right in amongst all the bankers, headgefunds, etc that all usually jump in on new flashy toys. And we've yet to see a single one used in any kind of business situation, other than maybe reading email. And most people would rather use a smartphone it seems.

 

So, until there's a reason to get one other than 'apps' (ooooh, software ) then I'm staying well clear.

 

You've really never seen or heard of iPads being used in a business, where have you been looking?

 

Benetton uses iPad to improve sales process - Retail Gazette

 

Analytics from SAP – Run Better Anywhere with Mobile BI for iPad

 

Standard Chartered Bank Goes Mobile With Apple - Finovate