Business Time for Personal Smartphones
by John Paczkowski
Posted on May 9, 2009 at 3:00 AM PT
With smartphones as apt to be running personal productivity apps as business productivity ones, the divide between enterprise devices and their consumer counterparts appears to have finally been bridged. To wit, these comments from Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers who, while talking up the Flip video camera during an earnings call this week, said that the days of the so-called corporate device are ending.
While you might think of the Flip as a consumer device it is just as useful in our business line. The number of applications enabled by this network web 2.0 device in the business world is exploding.
Again using myself as an example I carry the same two devices in my business life and my personal life. A PDA and my Flip. Another key take away is to understand in my opinion the argument about consumer devices and business devices as well as the two architectures completely blurring is over. The real question is how do the CIO’s in the enterprise business facilitate this change and that is from a number [of] recent meetings with some of the top CIO’s in the world. They get it. They understand the change and it is how they facilitate it rather than slow it down.
An interesting point. That said, I imagine it will take a while for enterprise to overcome its security concerns over such uses. And for their employees to feel comfortable conducting personal business on company-issued handsets governed by those annoying corporate communications policies….
Comments
That’s an interesting take away John, because the first thought that I had was, PDA, who still uses a PDA. And Mr. Chambers carries a Flip video camera as his second device instead of iPod. The Smartphone’s have a camera. I thought we were integrating devices.
Posted by Jeff Stevens at May 10th, 2009 at 5:24 amTheir cable customers are buying Tru2way set tops instead of the duopoly Scientific Atlanta (a CSCO company) and Motorola.
Other than Linksys, CSCO isn’t a player on the front end IMO
I’m sorry, CSCO is a tough sell on their recent decisions.
And they are sounding rather old fashioned.
That’s an interesting view and indeed, organizations with only the “Blackberry allowed” as a corporate device are coming under a lot of pressure these days with many workers asking for their own favorite like iPhone or Palm. But I guess security even more than ever will stay an issue. I do not agree many corporations to be ready to give up on controls of the “outside” connected device. I still see BES to have control over most of the corporate (BB) device for a pretty long time. OK, there is Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync, seen more and more on the non-BB devices. But EAS compared to BES is for an IT manager like comparing a quality bike with a quality car.
My guess is that we will see “only BB allowed” for a while around, simply because BES just has supports fot their own BB… and EAS may see itself as a corporate and safe email and calendar syncing alternative, it simply lacks to many controls, even for the reasonable demanding corporate IT manager.
Unless Notifylink can get out of the caves.
Notify Who you say? As a curious and interested software developer, I recently discoverd this one. On the highschool of my daughter they use Notifylink from “Notify Technology” to connect Blackberries, iPones, Palms and WM devices to MeetingMaker. While it seems mostly to be seen as one (the sole?) BES alternative for those institutions who haven’t choosen for Exchange or Lotus, but for MeetingMaker, Beehive, Mirapoint, Sun JCS, Scalix, or some other Kerio, it’s a product that can serve as the only device-mix alternative for BES as well. While BES just serves their own BB devices, Notifylink say that they can sync BB AND many other as well. Just to name a few: the iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. and it pretends to manage this with the a comparable level of control and security as a BES. If true, it sure is something to take a look at for those IT-managers who have some demands on the table, but still prefer to keep on those demands that they are holding in their own pockets as well.
At least for my daughtr it works “pretty cool” for her on an iPhone ….
Posted by Marc Beeckman at May 11th, 2009 at 4:12 am