Apple products are and have always been disruptive and viral. Apple's entry into a market means that market is in for a rough ride and the status-quo control freaks (IT) don't like it one bit. That's not to say IT doesn't have its work cut out for it and it IS their asses that are hung out to dry if corporate data is compromised. But a disruptive device like the iPhone will worm its way into the office like a trojan horse so they had better learn to deal with it. They can't stop it.
What all the hubbub? I love my iPhone --- and the convenience it makes for communication in the university and with other administrators easy, and a delight.
iPhone has a password, but I doubt that would stop a proficient hacker, once the thief has found one or taught themselves, from connecting it to a computer and accessing the DATA on the phone.
When the passcode is activated and locked, the iPhone won't talk to iTunes or the computer when you plug it in, it pops up and states as such. Also you can't ssh or telnet to the iPhone either (unless you have a jailbroken phone, but in that case you should change the ssh password anyways.
Why all the hate for the IT department here? I'm in IT and there seems to be a major issue from you guys, but no specifics...just that I suck.
And I went to a presentation from MS and they said they were making a profit on the xbox 360 at the moment, but that will probably change in the future. They stopped producing the xbox because it was never going to make a profit because of the way it was designed.
Also, people seem to be forgetting that consoles made by anyone but Nintendo never make a profit at launch. They make all their money on games and accessories, so even if you're losing £100 on each console sale, you'll make it all back in the first few months of the consoles ownership. You seem to think this is Microsoft's problem, but Sony dominated the market with the PS2, and they lost money on every console for a long time.
Ouch, some of those reasons are too fluffy. There are some valid reasons, but some of those aren't. Some can't be adjusted, some can be improved with updates.
#1 Data encryption can be an issue. If the device is locked then it's hard enough to get to that maybe some other means of getting info out of the company should be taken. The mention about not allowing a corporate password policy can be trouble.
#2 Corporate email, may or may not be a problem, depending on the company. Not having wireless calendar syncing can be trouble.
#3 Third party software - more of an issue for corporate use, but this is ambiguous at best right now, if you need a device to do something different *right now* rather than wait a few months, then get some other device.
#4 Not offering remote wiping can be an issue, more so given #1
#5 Is just a talking point at the moment, little evidence to back that kind of claim. Lacking a physical keyboard might be an issue, but the reasons used are speculative, I don't think there are any *good* studies out on that yet. The only one I've seen only showed that there might be a short learning curve as far as I'm concerned.
#6 Carrier locking can be a costly issue, but I don't know how it compares to other smart phones. If you have a CDMA device, then you probably can't use it in Europe.
#7 The problem with the price is way fluffy. If it's replacing another device with internet access, then the device + service can be less than competing devices.
#8 "Sound quality is less than impressive"? If they mean in terms of call quality, the tests I've seen on the web show the opposite. If it's a question of music playback, that's totally irrelevant to how the device works with the business.
#9 I really don't know about the battery issue with respect to business use. I don't think it's a problem for most consumers, but corporate users might use them heavily enough that a spare battery might be desirable.
#10 seems to be a case of wanting to have it both ways, there's no proof that it's suitable for corprate use. There's no proof that the virtual keyboard is bad for a smart phone, but they threw that in anyway. They could have mentioned 802.1X instead and that would have stood on its own.
Why all the hate for the IT department here? I'm in IT and there seems to be a major issue from you guys, but no specifics...just that I suck.
YOU may not suck, but collectively across business your bosses do.
IT policies generally serve reducing IT department workloads rather than focusing on increasing non-IT staff productivity. This becomes quite evident by reading Journals and IT related industry magazines. Of the three electronic subscriptions I that see weekly I don't remember the last time (read over 2-3 years) there was an article on increasing non IT-staff employee productivity. But they are chock full of spec-whore comparisons and IT-staff labor saving equipment and policy discussions.
Too man of your compatriots are poseurs that really aren't particularly good at what they do, but talk lingo with the best bullcrap artists out there. Most of that is the fault of your bosses again. Under trained and underpaid staff aren't motivated to be helpful and then tend to leave if they find their personal clue.
Dilert's Mordac - Preventer of Information Services isn't as make believe as most of the IT industry would like. He resonates or the vast majority of us "users" because we know someone much like him. Not so openly of course, he is a cartoon, but the cut strikes close to the mark.
Why all the hate for the IT department here? I'm in IT and there seems to be a major issue from you guys, but no specifics...just that I suck.
1. For 23 years, Mac users call IT and are told "We don't support Macs." (If it is written down, it usually looks like "We do not support the MAC operating system. Users with MACS should consider switching to an IBM-PC compatible computer running Windows.")
2. IT always recommends Windows. The guy at Dartmouth even tried to run Macs out of the college. He was getting "grants" from Intel and MS. MS knows that Windows requires huge numbers of IT staff, and IT staff recommends Windows, so everyone is happy, except the Mac users.
3. Universities are better, since the faculty and students can tell IT what to support, rather than IT telling the users what they have to buy, what can be on their machines, what "policies" they have to obey, etc. Corporate IT is the pits for a Mac user. I made an analog recording of a PC rebooting just so I could get the gateway address and subnet mask from IT at a hospital I used to work at. The reason I had to pretend I had a PC is that they wouldn't talk to you once you say the word "Mac." When they would tell me what to right-click on, I would pretend to do it, play the PC reboot tape when they told me to reboot 5 times, and meanwhile I was entering the addresses into my Mac.
So yeah, you might conclude that based on our 23 years of being belittled, harassed, ignored, and made fun of, we might not exactly be in love with IT staff.
Well done! I was going to post that I thought Forrester Research had posted some similar criticism re an Apple product a few months ago, either on ZDNet or here at AI, but someone wised up, did some research of their own and discovered they were sponsored by Microsoft!!!!
Ouch, some of those reasons are too fluffy. There are some valid reasons, but some of those aren't. Some can't be adjusted, some can be improved with updates.
#1 Data encryption can be an issue. If the device is locked then it's hard enough to get to that maybe some other means of getting info out of the company should be taken. The mention about not allowing a corporate password policy can be trouble.
#2 Corporate email, may or may not be a problem, depending on the company. Not having wireless calendar syncing can be trouble.
#3 Third party software - more of an issue for corporate use, but this is ambiguous at best right now, if you need a device to do something different *right now* rather than wait a few months, then get some other device.
#4 Not offering remote wiping can be an issue, more so given #1
#5 Is just a talking point at the moment, little evidence to back that kind of claim. Lacking a physical keyboard might be an issue, but the reasons used are speculative, I don't think there are any *good* studies out on that yet. The only one I've seen only showed that there might be a short learning curve as far as I'm concerned.
#6 Carrier locking can be a costly issue, but I don't know how it compares to other smart phones. If you have a CDMA device, then you probably can't use it in Europe.
#7 The problem with the price is way fluffy. If it's replacing another device with internet access, then the device + service can be less than competing devices.
#8 "Sound quality is less than impressive"? If they mean in terms of call quality, the tests I've seen on the web show the opposite. If it's a question of music playback, that's totally irrelevant to how the device works with the business.
#9 I really don't know about the battery issue with respect to business use. I don't think it's a problem for most consumers, but corporate users might use them heavily enough that a spare battery might be desirable.
#10 seems to be a case of wanting to have it both ways, there's no proof that it's suitable for corprate use. There's no proof that the virtual keyboard is bad for a smart phone, but they threw that in anyway. They could have mentioned 802.1X instead and that would have stood on its own.
Check out the 2nd video in the thread below. The tester clearly prefers hsi N95, and for good reason, but is very unbiased about the comparison. He even demonstrates how the iPhone's virtual keyboard is better for typing text.
Ouch, some of those reasons are too fluffy. There are some valid reasons, but some of those aren't. Some can't be adjusted, some can be improved with updates.
#1 Data encryption can be an issue. If the device is locked then it's hard enough to get to that maybe some other means of getting info out of the company should be taken. The mention about not allowing a corporate password policy can be trouble.
#2 Corporate email, may or may not be a problem, depending on the company. Not having wireless calendar syncing can be trouble.
#3 Third party software - more of an issue for corporate use, but this is ambiguous at best right now, if you need a device to do something different *right now* rather than wait a few months, then get some other device.
#4 Not offering remote wiping can be an issue, more so given #1
#5 Is just a talking point at the moment, little evidence to back that kind of claim. Lacking a physical keyboard might be an issue, but the reasons used are speculative, I don't think there are any *good* studies out on that yet. The only one I've seen only showed that there might be a short learning curve as far as I'm concerned.
#6 Carrier locking can be a costly issue, but I don't know how it compares to other smart phones. If you have a CDMA device, then you probably can't use it in Europe.
#7 The problem with the price is way fluffy. If it's replacing another device with internet access, then the device + service can be less than competing devices.
#8 "Sound quality is less than impressive"? If they mean in terms of call quality, the tests I've seen on the web show the opposite. If it's a question of music playback, that's totally irrelevant to how the device works with the business.
#9 I really don't know about the battery issue with respect to business use. I don't think it's a problem for most consumers, but corporate users might use them heavily enough that a spare battery might be desirable.
#10 seems to be a case of wanting to have it both ways, there's no proof that it's suitable for corprate use. There's no proof that the virtual keyboard is bad for a smart phone, but they threw that in anyway. They could have mentioned 802.1X instead and that would have stood on its own.
Check out the 2nd video in the thread below. The tester clearly prefers hsi N95, and for good reason, but is very unbiased about the comparison. He even demonstrates how the iPhone's virtual keyboard is better for typing text.
YOU may not suck, but collectively across business your bosses do.
IT policies generally serve reducing IT department workloads rather than focusing on increasing non-IT staff productivity.
Too man of your compatriots are poseurs that really aren't particularly good at what they do, but talk lingo with the best bullcrap artists out there.
Dilert's Mordac - Preventer of Information Services isn't as make believe as most of the IT industry would like. He resonates or the vast majority of us "users" because we know someone much like him. Not so openly of course, he is a cartoon, but the cut strikes close to the mark.
I think the problem is that people don't understand how difficult it is to be good at IT. Of course there are people who don't know what they're talking about, and are useless. My job over the summer was supporting 20,000 machines to make sure that updates were being applied on the Mac and Windows machines. I was the one person in the hospitals whose sole job was to do this. I didn't have the time to look at increasing peoples productivity, other than saying "well, if you don't get update "x" your computer may go down in the future..."
The industry is still recovering from the dot com era, where anyone who said they were in computers could get a job paying them a ton of money with no actual skills. They also had many more people than they needed. Now most departments are so understaffed, that we aren't spending most of our time increasing productivity, but we're just fixing issues. The other part is its hard for the user to tell when we've increased their productivity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lundy
1. For 23 years, Mac users call IT and are told "We don't support Macs." (If it is written down, it usually looks like "We do not support the MAC operating system. Users with MACS should consider switching to an IBM-PC compatible computer running Windows.")
2. IT always recommends Windows. The guy at Dartmouth even tried to run Macs out of the college. He was getting "grants" from Intel and MS. MS knows that Windows requires huge numbers of IT staff, and IT staff recommends Windows, so everyone is happy, except the Mac users.
3. Universities are better, since the faculty and students can tell IT what to support, rather than IT telling the users what they have to buy, what can be on their machines, what "policies" they have to obey, etc. Corporate IT is the pits for a Mac user. I made an analog recording of a PC rebooting just so I could get the gateway address and subnet mask from IT at a hospital I used to work at. The reason I had to pretend I had a PC is that they wouldn't talk to you once you say the word "Mac." When they would tell me what to right-click on, I would pretend to do it, play the PC reboot tape when they told me to reboot 5 times, and meanwhile I was entering the addresses into my Mac.
1. I don't fully understand #1. Are you bringing in your own personal computer? If I have 10,000 PC's, and 1 mac (or the other way around) and that 1 computer isn't actually one the company owns, I'm not supporting it. Otherwise if there is a mixture, then of course I'm going to support it.
2. Not true. The last hospital I was in had a mixture, and there was the exact same amount of support for the Mac computers as there were for PC's.
3. Also not true. I'm told I have to have anti-virus, connect through a PPPoE then a VPN connection, what I can and can't download, etc, at the university I am at. If a member of staff at either a uni or corporate requires a Mac (or PC) for their project and can offer an actual reason for it, they will be allowed to run it.
That seems like a broken hospital, no one should be using static addresses. I also wouldn't be too hot on supporting anyones personal computer.
I think the problem is that people don't understand how difficult it is to be good at IT. Of course there are people who don't know what they're talking about, and are useless. My job over the summer was supporting 20,000 machines to make sure that updates were being applied on the Mac and Windows machines. I was the one person in the hospitals whose sole job was to do this. I didn't have the time to look at increasing peoples productivity, other than saying "well, if you don't get update "x" your computer may go down in the future..."
The industry is still recovering from the dot com era, where anyone who said they were in computers could get a job paying them a ton of money with no actual skills. They also had many more people than they needed. Now most departments are so understaffed, that we aren't spending most of our time increasing productivity, but we're just fixing issues. The other part is its hard for the user to tell when we've increased their productivity.
1 person for 20K machines? You make my point on bad bosses right there. It's not the line workers job to do the strategic thinking, it's the leadership and your leaders/bosses have obviously failed in that department. Hopefully they don't fail bad enough to cause the system to shit and get someone hurt, because as hard as you may be working, you can't cover that many mission critical machines.
This is the same information posted by forrester before the iphone came out. Frankly its a tired article. Reasons the iphone isn't an enterprise device such as it doesn't have a user replaceable battery or buttons is just ridiculous. Its windows weenies grabbing at straws to keep us locked into their barely supportable mess so they can keep their jobs.
Now, on to standards in IT. If IT actually deployed standards, such as secure IMAP over SSL that every phone in the world can support, then it really wouldn't be a problem. But alas we have this need to deal with exchange. So then you have things like the blackberry server that take the information in exchange and spit them out in a format the blackberry understands. How is that any different than putting up an SIMAP mail router? Effectively the blackberry server is doing about the same job. On top of this, how much extra money does IT spend on solutions like the blackberry server and goodlink? A whole lot. They are expensive to buy, and expensive to maintain.
Next off, what does the phone really contain? Music, email, contacts. Thats it folks. Is there secure remote wipe? Well, actually sort of. Lets say you lock your phone with both passlock and simlock. When simlock is enabled, you have 3 attempts before the phone card is locked out. with passlock you can continue to retry...but it won't respond with a new challenge right away. The amount of time passlock takes to come back after a failed attempt increases with every failed attempt. Now what happens when you attempt to marry that device with a new system? Ummm IT WIPES THE DATA....AS well, the phone can only hold 200 messages. I would have to add that contacts are pretty limited. I tried to put a few thousand contacts in my iphone....forget it.
Now lets contrast that with windows mobile...which somehow with goodlink is secure. Nothing could be further from the truth. if that device is left in bluetooth discovery mode? you own it. if that device is accessed via serial connection? you own it. iphone? not so. If you have that mail in your exchange folders you have it on your windows phone. Now isn't there just a tiny bit more a concern with leakage there?
Windows mobile has active listening ports...which is exactly why its a good idea to use a firewall with it. iphone? does not have active listening ports. Question, isn't that basically the same thing as having a firewall in the first place? In both cases you have a device that doesn't accept incoming connections. There is no difference. So what if the iphone doesn't have a firewall. It doesn't really need one.
If you wanna load up an older version of iphone firmware so you can jailbreak it? well you have to wipe it don't you.
What this really comes down to is policy because tit for tat the iphone is probably a better and more secure device. IT wants everything to work the exact same way even if there isn't a reason or a need. Too many articles by people like Forrester, and too much software from people like good/motorola, Microsoft, and symantec, spewing all this FUD about compliance. Outside of my conjecture, the only reason the iphone isn't supported by IT is because its new. We saw this crap when the winmobile systems came out. We saw this when palm came out. Back then it had to work with the blackberry server. This is the same thing now as that was then. Change.
I'll third the comments about IT. More often than not, IT's strategic thinking goes out of whack and crosses the line between making their jobs easier as opposed to making their customers jobs easier. It's easy to do as it can easily be presented as a cost savings type of thing, but in the end, if productivity is decreasing, it doesn't save you anything, and will cost more due to lost productivity.
The whole article was obvious but this last quote is actually worth mentioning. We really need standards in the enterprise. While Exchange is needed for the iPhone to capture the smartphone marketshare that Apple wants it's a Catch 22 as Apple supporting Exchange seems to be insuring Exchange's future survival.
Why not just sell an "enterprise bundle" or something like RIM does, just some middle ware that could cost like $20/Mo/phone It wouldn't propagate exchange any further than it already is, and it would give IT guys like me a want to say "no problem" when the "big boss men" demand that we make the iPhone "just work with their shit"
Hell, apple could just dongle it, want iphone server corporate edition? $2500 for Windows version (not unusual price for stuff like this) or included with Xserver, or maybe a cheap rackable appliance...
Why not just sell an "enterprise bundle" or something like RIM does, just some middle ware that could cost like $20/Mo/phone It wouldn't propagate exchange any further than it already is, and it would give IT guys like me a want to say "no problem" when the "big boss men" demand that we make the iPhone "just work with their shit"
Hell, apple could just dongle it, want iphone server corporate edition? $2500 for Windows version (not unusual price for stuff like this) or included with Xserver, or maybe a cheap rackable appliance...
That is a solution that the *new* Apple may very well take as it will gain new sales of the iPhone in the enterprise and Xserve for iPhone (or whatever they'd call it), but it doesn't help bring down the behemoth that is Exchange and will help support it further. Hopefully, Apple will find an outside-the-box solution that will increase the sales of iPhone in the enterprise and increase Xserve sales all while demising Exchange use. One can dream.
2. IT always recommends Windows. The guy at Dartmouth even tried to run Macs out of the college. He was getting "grants" from Intel and MS. MS knows that Windows requires huge numbers of IT staff, and IT staff recommends Windows, so everyone is happy, except the Mac users.
There are plenty of reasons for this: find me a good, midsized corprate ERP and CRM solution for OSX, Where is the MS Dynamics of the Apple universe?
What about communications? Exchange, for all of its shortcommings, is a really kick ass app, show me something with an equal feature set on OSX,
And I want a directory interface with the same level of granular access control as Sctive Directory provides...where is it on OSX? If Apple has it, they should maybe mention it...
Hardware sucks and purchasing options suck with Apple...If a corparat enviornmet is to get Macs, it would need a mini tower and 17 or 19 inch LCD leased for 3 years at about $700-ish, with next business day on sight service and 4 hour response for anything in the datacenter.
Make no mistake, lots of IT guys love OSX. hell, many of us would love to replace windows next week!, windows is a pain for us too, it keeps us from driving the business forward with technology because we are fighting viruses and DLL HELLs but at this point, neither Linux or Mac can deliver the business tools of Windows...
And no, moving to a more stable platorm wouldnt mean loss of jobs, it would mean that IT guys could work 8-hour days and not the 9-12 that is the norm now
That is a solution that the *new* Apple may very well take as it will gain new sales of the iPhone in the enterprise and Xserve for iPhone (or whatever they'd call it), but it doesn't help bring down the behemoth that is Exchange and will help support it further. Hopefully, Apple will find an outside-the-box solution that will increase the sales of iPhone in the enterprise and increase Xserve sales all while demising Exchange use. One can dream.
A little support would be OK, I mean no corperation is going to revamp their entire email system for the sake of one gadget...they will just say "if Apple will not support our enviornment, you may choose a Win Mobile or RIM device for corporate use"
Comments
What error? Ok the Wii does have internet capabilty. My fault- typo.
I don't think you even know what "typo" means. It certainly doesn't mean "making a statement from ignorance".
Maybe we should ask Captain Kirk if he'd like an iPhone. I know Spock would never give up his tricoder like I would not give up my iPhone. http://forums.appleinsider.com/images/smilies/1wink.gif
iPhone has a password, but I doubt that would stop a proficient hacker, once the thief has found one or taught themselves, from connecting it to a computer and accessing the DATA on the phone.
When the passcode is activated and locked, the iPhone won't talk to iTunes or the computer when you plug it in, it pops up and states as such. Also you can't ssh or telnet to the iPhone either (unless you have a jailbroken phone, but in that case you should change the ssh password anyways.
- D
And I went to a presentation from MS and they said they were making a profit on the xbox 360 at the moment, but that will probably change in the future. They stopped producing the xbox because it was never going to make a profit because of the way it was designed.
Also, people seem to be forgetting that consoles made by anyone but Nintendo never make a profit at launch. They make all their money on games and accessories, so even if you're losing £100 on each console sale, you'll make it all back in the first few months of the consoles ownership. You seem to think this is Microsoft's problem, but Sony dominated the market with the PS2, and they lost money on every console for a long time.
? CIO.com: 10 reasons IT should not support the iPhone
Ouch, some of those reasons are too fluffy. There are some valid reasons, but some of those aren't. Some can't be adjusted, some can be improved with updates.
#1 Data encryption can be an issue. If the device is locked then it's hard enough to get to that maybe some other means of getting info out of the company should be taken. The mention about not allowing a corporate password policy can be trouble.
#2 Corporate email, may or may not be a problem, depending on the company. Not having wireless calendar syncing can be trouble.
#3 Third party software - more of an issue for corporate use, but this is ambiguous at best right now, if you need a device to do something different *right now* rather than wait a few months, then get some other device.
#4 Not offering remote wiping can be an issue, more so given #1
#5 Is just a talking point at the moment, little evidence to back that kind of claim. Lacking a physical keyboard might be an issue, but the reasons used are speculative, I don't think there are any *good* studies out on that yet. The only one I've seen only showed that there might be a short learning curve as far as I'm concerned.
#6 Carrier locking can be a costly issue, but I don't know how it compares to other smart phones. If you have a CDMA device, then you probably can't use it in Europe.
#7 The problem with the price is way fluffy. If it's replacing another device with internet access, then the device + service can be less than competing devices.
#8 "Sound quality is less than impressive"? If they mean in terms of call quality, the tests I've seen on the web show the opposite. If it's a question of music playback, that's totally irrelevant to how the device works with the business.
#9 I really don't know about the battery issue with respect to business use. I don't think it's a problem for most consumers, but corporate users might use them heavily enough that a spare battery might be desirable.
#10 seems to be a case of wanting to have it both ways, there's no proof that it's suitable for corprate use. There's no proof that the virtual keyboard is bad for a smart phone, but they threw that in anyway. They could have mentioned 802.1X instead and that would have stood on its own.
Why all the hate for the IT department here? I'm in IT and there seems to be a major issue from you guys, but no specifics...just that I suck.
YOU may not suck, but collectively across business your bosses do.
IT policies generally serve reducing IT department workloads rather than focusing on increasing non-IT staff productivity. This becomes quite evident by reading Journals and IT related industry magazines. Of the three electronic subscriptions I that see weekly I don't remember the last time (read over 2-3 years) there was an article on increasing non IT-staff employee productivity. But they are chock full of spec-whore comparisons and IT-staff labor saving equipment and policy discussions.
Too man of your compatriots are poseurs that really aren't particularly good at what they do, but talk lingo with the best bullcrap artists out there. Most of that is the fault of your bosses again. Under trained and underpaid staff aren't motivated to be helpful and then tend to leave if they find their personal clue.
Dilert's Mordac - Preventer of Information Services isn't as make believe as most of the IT industry would like. He resonates or the vast majority of us "users" because we know someone much like him. Not so openly of course, he is a cartoon, but the cut strikes close to the mark.
Why all the hate for the IT department here? I'm in IT and there seems to be a major issue from you guys, but no specifics...just that I suck.
1. For 23 years, Mac users call IT and are told "We don't support Macs." (If it is written down, it usually looks like "We do not support the MAC operating system. Users with MACS should consider switching to an IBM-PC compatible computer running Windows.")
2. IT always recommends Windows. The guy at Dartmouth even tried to run Macs out of the college. He was getting "grants" from Intel and MS. MS knows that Windows requires huge numbers of IT staff, and IT staff recommends Windows, so everyone is happy, except the Mac users.
3. Universities are better, since the faculty and students can tell IT what to support, rather than IT telling the users what they have to buy, what can be on their machines, what "policies" they have to obey, etc. Corporate IT is the pits for a Mac user. I made an analog recording of a PC rebooting just so I could get the gateway address and subnet mask from IT at a hospital I used to work at. The reason I had to pretend I had a PC is that they wouldn't talk to you once you say the word "Mac." When they would tell me what to right-click on, I would pretend to do it, play the PC reboot tape when they told me to reboot 5 times, and meanwhile I was entering the addresses into my Mac.
So yeah, you might conclude that based on our 23 years of being belittled, harassed, ignored, and made fun of, we might not exactly be in love with IT staff.
Forrester Research = Funded by Microsoft.
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-5490241.html
Well done! I was going to post that I thought Forrester Research had posted some similar criticism re an Apple product a few months ago, either on ZDNet or here at AI, but someone wised up, did some research of their own and discovered they were sponsored by Microsoft!!!!
What a surprise.......
Ouch, some of those reasons are too fluffy. There are some valid reasons, but some of those aren't. Some can't be adjusted, some can be improved with updates.
#1 Data encryption can be an issue. If the device is locked then it's hard enough to get to that maybe some other means of getting info out of the company should be taken. The mention about not allowing a corporate password policy can be trouble.
#2 Corporate email, may or may not be a problem, depending on the company. Not having wireless calendar syncing can be trouble.
#3 Third party software - more of an issue for corporate use, but this is ambiguous at best right now, if you need a device to do something different *right now* rather than wait a few months, then get some other device.
#4 Not offering remote wiping can be an issue, more so given #1
#5 Is just a talking point at the moment, little evidence to back that kind of claim. Lacking a physical keyboard might be an issue, but the reasons used are speculative, I don't think there are any *good* studies out on that yet. The only one I've seen only showed that there might be a short learning curve as far as I'm concerned.
#6 Carrier locking can be a costly issue, but I don't know how it compares to other smart phones. If you have a CDMA device, then you probably can't use it in Europe.
#7 The problem with the price is way fluffy. If it's replacing another device with internet access, then the device + service can be less than competing devices.
#8 "Sound quality is less than impressive"? If they mean in terms of call quality, the tests I've seen on the web show the opposite. If it's a question of music playback, that's totally irrelevant to how the device works with the business.
#9 I really don't know about the battery issue with respect to business use. I don't think it's a problem for most consumers, but corporate users might use them heavily enough that a spare battery might be desirable.
#10 seems to be a case of wanting to have it both ways, there's no proof that it's suitable for corprate use. There's no proof that the virtual keyboard is bad for a smart phone, but they threw that in anyway. They could have mentioned 802.1X instead and that would have stood on its own.
Check out the 2nd video in the thread below. The tester clearly prefers hsi N95, and for good reason, but is very unbiased about the comparison. He even demonstrates how the iPhone's virtual keyboard is better for typing text.
Ouch, some of those reasons are too fluffy. There are some valid reasons, but some of those aren't. Some can't be adjusted, some can be improved with updates.
#1 Data encryption can be an issue. If the device is locked then it's hard enough to get to that maybe some other means of getting info out of the company should be taken. The mention about not allowing a corporate password policy can be trouble.
#2 Corporate email, may or may not be a problem, depending on the company. Not having wireless calendar syncing can be trouble.
#3 Third party software - more of an issue for corporate use, but this is ambiguous at best right now, if you need a device to do something different *right now* rather than wait a few months, then get some other device.
#4 Not offering remote wiping can be an issue, more so given #1
#5 Is just a talking point at the moment, little evidence to back that kind of claim. Lacking a physical keyboard might be an issue, but the reasons used are speculative, I don't think there are any *good* studies out on that yet. The only one I've seen only showed that there might be a short learning curve as far as I'm concerned.
#6 Carrier locking can be a costly issue, but I don't know how it compares to other smart phones. If you have a CDMA device, then you probably can't use it in Europe.
#7 The problem with the price is way fluffy. If it's replacing another device with internet access, then the device + service can be less than competing devices.
#8 "Sound quality is less than impressive"? If they mean in terms of call quality, the tests I've seen on the web show the opposite. If it's a question of music playback, that's totally irrelevant to how the device works with the business.
#9 I really don't know about the battery issue with respect to business use. I don't think it's a problem for most consumers, but corporate users might use them heavily enough that a spare battery might be desirable.
#10 seems to be a case of wanting to have it both ways, there's no proof that it's suitable for corprate use. There's no proof that the virtual keyboard is bad for a smart phone, but they threw that in anyway. They could have mentioned 802.1X instead and that would have stood on its own.
Check out the 2nd video in the thread below. The tester clearly prefers hsi N95, and for good reason, but is very unbiased about the comparison. He even demonstrates how the iPhone's virtual keyboard is better for typing text.
YOU may not suck, but collectively across business your bosses do.
IT policies generally serve reducing IT department workloads rather than focusing on increasing non-IT staff productivity.
Too man of your compatriots are poseurs that really aren't particularly good at what they do, but talk lingo with the best bullcrap artists out there.
Dilert's Mordac - Preventer of Information Services isn't as make believe as most of the IT industry would like. He resonates or the vast majority of us "users" because we know someone much like him. Not so openly of course, he is a cartoon, but the cut strikes close to the mark.
I think the problem is that people don't understand how difficult it is to be good at IT. Of course there are people who don't know what they're talking about, and are useless. My job over the summer was supporting 20,000 machines to make sure that updates were being applied on the Mac and Windows machines. I was the one person in the hospitals whose sole job was to do this. I didn't have the time to look at increasing peoples productivity, other than saying "well, if you don't get update "x" your computer may go down in the future..."
The industry is still recovering from the dot com era, where anyone who said they were in computers could get a job paying them a ton of money with no actual skills. They also had many more people than they needed. Now most departments are so understaffed, that we aren't spending most of our time increasing productivity, but we're just fixing issues. The other part is its hard for the user to tell when we've increased their productivity.
1. For 23 years, Mac users call IT and are told "We don't support Macs." (If it is written down, it usually looks like "We do not support the MAC operating system. Users with MACS should consider switching to an IBM-PC compatible computer running Windows.")
2. IT always recommends Windows. The guy at Dartmouth even tried to run Macs out of the college. He was getting "grants" from Intel and MS. MS knows that Windows requires huge numbers of IT staff, and IT staff recommends Windows, so everyone is happy, except the Mac users.
3. Universities are better, since the faculty and students can tell IT what to support, rather than IT telling the users what they have to buy, what can be on their machines, what "policies" they have to obey, etc. Corporate IT is the pits for a Mac user. I made an analog recording of a PC rebooting just so I could get the gateway address and subnet mask from IT at a hospital I used to work at. The reason I had to pretend I had a PC is that they wouldn't talk to you once you say the word "Mac." When they would tell me what to right-click on, I would pretend to do it, play the PC reboot tape when they told me to reboot 5 times, and meanwhile I was entering the addresses into my Mac.
1. I don't fully understand #1. Are you bringing in your own personal computer? If I have 10,000 PC's, and 1 mac (or the other way around) and that 1 computer isn't actually one the company owns, I'm not supporting it. Otherwise if there is a mixture, then of course I'm going to support it.
2. Not true. The last hospital I was in had a mixture, and there was the exact same amount of support for the Mac computers as there were for PC's.
3. Also not true. I'm told I have to have anti-virus, connect through a PPPoE then a VPN connection, what I can and can't download, etc, at the university I am at. If a member of staff at either a uni or corporate requires a Mac (or PC) for their project and can offer an actual reason for it, they will be allowed to run it.
That seems like a broken hospital, no one should be using static addresses. I also wouldn't be too hot on supporting anyones personal computer.
I think the problem is that people don't understand how difficult it is to be good at IT. Of course there are people who don't know what they're talking about, and are useless. My job over the summer was supporting 20,000 machines to make sure that updates were being applied on the Mac and Windows machines. I was the one person in the hospitals whose sole job was to do this. I didn't have the time to look at increasing peoples productivity, other than saying "well, if you don't get update "x" your computer may go down in the future..."
The industry is still recovering from the dot com era, where anyone who said they were in computers could get a job paying them a ton of money with no actual skills. They also had many more people than they needed. Now most departments are so understaffed, that we aren't spending most of our time increasing productivity, but we're just fixing issues. The other part is its hard for the user to tell when we've increased their productivity.
1 person for 20K machines? You make my point on bad bosses right there. It's not the line workers job to do the strategic thinking, it's the leadership and your leaders/bosses have obviously failed in that department. Hopefully they don't fail bad enough to cause the system to shit and get someone hurt, because as hard as you may be working, you can't cover that many mission critical machines.
Now, on to standards in IT. If IT actually deployed standards, such as secure IMAP over SSL that every phone in the world can support, then it really wouldn't be a problem. But alas we have this need to deal with exchange. So then you have things like the blackberry server that take the information in exchange and spit them out in a format the blackberry understands. How is that any different than putting up an SIMAP mail router? Effectively the blackberry server is doing about the same job. On top of this, how much extra money does IT spend on solutions like the blackberry server and goodlink? A whole lot. They are expensive to buy, and expensive to maintain.
Next off, what does the phone really contain? Music, email, contacts. Thats it folks. Is there secure remote wipe? Well, actually sort of. Lets say you lock your phone with both passlock and simlock. When simlock is enabled, you have 3 attempts before the phone card is locked out. with passlock you can continue to retry...but it won't respond with a new challenge right away. The amount of time passlock takes to come back after a failed attempt increases with every failed attempt. Now what happens when you attempt to marry that device with a new system? Ummm IT WIPES THE DATA....AS well, the phone can only hold 200 messages. I would have to add that contacts are pretty limited. I tried to put a few thousand contacts in my iphone....forget it.
Now lets contrast that with windows mobile...which somehow with goodlink is secure. Nothing could be further from the truth. if that device is left in bluetooth discovery mode? you own it. if that device is accessed via serial connection? you own it. iphone? not so. If you have that mail in your exchange folders you have it on your windows phone. Now isn't there just a tiny bit more a concern with leakage there?
Windows mobile has active listening ports...which is exactly why its a good idea to use a firewall with it. iphone? does not have active listening ports. Question, isn't that basically the same thing as having a firewall in the first place? In both cases you have a device that doesn't accept incoming connections. There is no difference. So what if the iphone doesn't have a firewall. It doesn't really need one.
If you wanna load up an older version of iphone firmware so you can jailbreak it? well you have to wipe it don't you.
What this really comes down to is policy because tit for tat the iphone is probably a better and more secure device. IT wants everything to work the exact same way even if there isn't a reason or a need. Too many articles by people like Forrester, and too much software from people like good/motorola, Microsoft, and symantec, spewing all this FUD about compliance. Outside of my conjecture, the only reason the iphone isn't supported by IT is because its new. We saw this crap when the winmobile systems came out. We saw this when palm came out. Back then it had to work with the blackberry server. This is the same thing now as that was then. Change.
let the ms fanboy flames begin.
The whole article was obvious but this last quote is actually worth mentioning. We really need standards in the enterprise. While Exchange is needed for the iPhone to capture the smartphone marketshare that Apple wants it's a Catch 22 as Apple supporting Exchange seems to be insuring Exchange's future survival.
Why not just sell an "enterprise bundle" or something like RIM does, just some middle ware that could cost like $20/Mo/phone It wouldn't propagate exchange any further than it already is, and it would give IT guys like me a want to say "no problem" when the "big boss men" demand that we make the iPhone "just work with their shit"
Hell, apple could just dongle it, want iphone server corporate edition? $2500 for Windows version (not unusual price for stuff like this) or included with Xserver, or maybe a cheap rackable appliance...
Why not just sell an "enterprise bundle" or something like RIM does, just some middle ware that could cost like $20/Mo/phone It wouldn't propagate exchange any further than it already is, and it would give IT guys like me a want to say "no problem" when the "big boss men" demand that we make the iPhone "just work with their shit"
Hell, apple could just dongle it, want iphone server corporate edition? $2500 for Windows version (not unusual price for stuff like this) or included with Xserver, or maybe a cheap rackable appliance...
That is a solution that the *new* Apple may very well take as it will gain new sales of the iPhone in the enterprise and Xserve for iPhone (or whatever they'd call it), but it doesn't help bring down the behemoth that is Exchange and will help support it further. Hopefully, Apple will find an outside-the-box solution that will increase the sales of iPhone in the enterprise and increase Xserve sales all while demising Exchange use. One can dream.
1.
2. IT always recommends Windows. The guy at Dartmouth even tried to run Macs out of the college. He was getting "grants" from Intel and MS. MS knows that Windows requires huge numbers of IT staff, and IT staff recommends Windows, so everyone is happy, except the Mac users.
There are plenty of reasons for this: find me a good, midsized corprate ERP and CRM solution for OSX, Where is the MS Dynamics of the Apple universe?
What about communications? Exchange, for all of its shortcommings, is a really kick ass app, show me something with an equal feature set on OSX,
And I want a directory interface with the same level of granular access control as Sctive Directory provides...where is it on OSX? If Apple has it, they should maybe mention it...
Hardware sucks and purchasing options suck with Apple...If a corparat enviornmet is to get Macs, it would need a mini tower and 17 or 19 inch LCD leased for 3 years at about $700-ish, with next business day on sight service and 4 hour response for anything in the datacenter.
Make no mistake, lots of IT guys love OSX. hell, many of us would love to replace windows next week!, windows is a pain for us too, it keeps us from driving the business forward with technology because we are fighting viruses and DLL HELLs but at this point, neither Linux or Mac can deliver the business tools of Windows...
And no, moving to a more stable platorm wouldnt mean loss of jobs, it would mean that IT guys could work 8-hour days and not the 9-12 that is the norm now
That is a solution that the *new* Apple may very well take as it will gain new sales of the iPhone in the enterprise and Xserve for iPhone (or whatever they'd call it), but it doesn't help bring down the behemoth that is Exchange and will help support it further. Hopefully, Apple will find an outside-the-box solution that will increase the sales of iPhone in the enterprise and increase Xserve sales all while demising Exchange use. One can dream.
A little support would be OK, I mean no corperation is going to revamp their entire email system for the sake of one gadget...they will just say "if Apple will not support our enviornment, you may choose a Win Mobile or RIM device for corporate use"