We’re a little more than 24 hours away from Applepalooza and the rumors have hit the fan. Shiny new toy syndrome is about to kick in at work and hundreds of devices are accidentally going to fall from pockets or into toilets etc in the next few days in hopes of getting one of these new toys before anyone else. While I am hugely excited to see what Apple has to offer, a few phones I’m sure, a wearable maybe an iPad or a Mac, working in enterprise mobility, I am even more excited by the possibilities that the new season brings us.
To be sure, it’s not just Apple’s announcements that have me excited, Google has a big role to play as well. Enterprise mobility is truly entering the phase of secure enablement for all of our users. If we start by looking at Google’s announcements from June about Android L, we will finally see Android devices that can be secured for work. We will get to spend a lot less time worrying about which manufacturer we are looking at (this hurts Samsung) when we allow Android phones into the enterprise and we will get to start concentrating on what we can securely enable people to do with their Android devices now. This will be a huge weapon in our arsenal for moving away from the department of no and becoming the department of know.
Apple has been on this doorstep for awhile but with their announcements from WWDC, also in June, around iOS8 we see them moving even closer to the enterprise. The volume purchasing program is now easy to use (and cost effective). The APIs available for deep linking and extensibility are key to creating awesome business workflows and yet still being able to concentrate on what the users need. The fact that Apple’s ‘widgets’ allow material to be quickly edited and moved between apps means that data becomes information and knowledge must faster moving us closer to true enablement of our users.
Apple has gone further, if rumors are to believed, with both their wearable and their new payments system. If we start with their wearable, it may give organizations the ability to implement two factor authentication (2FA), even while using SSO in a way that is almost transparent. We only need to look at devices like the forthcoming Nymiauthentication wearable that checks your EKG to make sure that you are you and can we begin to see the possibilities for 2FA that truly authenticates you as you. If this type of authentication is available with the Apple wearable it will be a boon to the enterprise. We are also hearing rumors of their new payment system which leads one to believe that NFC might finally become part of the apple device ecosystem. This has uses beyond just payments and can replace things such as company ID cards (I’ve never left my phone in my car or at home, I have left my ID though) and also enable other forms of 2FA for company use.
One also expects that the TouchID capability that was introduced in the iPhone 5S will spread across the Apple ecosystem, to include iPads and maybe even Macs. This will allow more options in the identity and access management arena as the capability will be opened up to third party app use. Imagine pairing that with your business apps and SSO strategy.
One of the bigger issues that many enterprises have is that their folks just cant remember their passwords, even when SSO works well, they may still have 4 or 5 passwords although some people have orders of magnitude more. We only need to look at 1Password’s iOS8 implementation to see that we can make it easier through widgets and API calls to actually reduce the burden on our users and make work almost fun.
So while I am looking forward to tomorrow’s Apple announcements just so I can enjoy the sheer ludicrousness and number of excuses of how people have manage to break, destroy, or otherwise lose their devices so they can get a new toy, I am even more excited by the new possibilities we will see to improve our users’ experiences around their everyday work through mobile.
