Windows 10 for phones will boost worker productivity

The recently announced Windows 10 smartphone technical preview (http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/02/12/announcing-the-first-build-of-windows-10-technical-preview-for-phones-2/) is causing great excitement among gadget enthusiasts, but the real benefit will be to mobile, knowledge and other workers. They will soon be able to run almost fully featured Microsoft Office, productivity and unified communications apps on their phones, with seamless transition of documents, web content, messaging and other data to their desktop or laptop, swapping devices seamlessly.

With documents and contacts stored in the cloud, working on the commute, in a hotel or on a plane is becoming easier, increasing the availability of your workers and key staff and improving their productivity. Boosting communications between staff will help projects run smoother and help get decisions made faster as key reports are easier to find and talk about, by video chat, messaging or VoIP call. Naturally, Microsoft has apps for all these features, from Skype to Outlook and Lync, but it is also playing nice with iOS and Android, to encourage bring your own device (BYOD) schemes at work. Microsoft is also supposed to be bundling its apps with major future Android device launches, like the Samsung Galaxy S6, to further encourage take-up.

Currently, the Windows phone beta only runs on select Lumia devices, but the full launch will come with a range of new hardware from Microsoft (since it acquired Nokia) and hardware partners like Samsung and HTC. With a full range of tablets, portables, ultraportables and two-in-one devices, 2015 will see a major effort to get business users upgrading to new hardware and Windows 10 across all devices.

That’s all part of Microsoft’s plan to get users both upgrading and back into using its services, with many having moved on to Google, Amazon, Oracle or other business software providers. Whatever hardware and applications you use, switching to Microsoft’s will be an easy and seamless choice come the full launch of Windows 10, with handy tools like OneNote now fully free to use.

Also, Microsoft continues to buy companies that can help improve its offerings. It recently acquired N-trig, makers of the best tablet pen technology around, to make sure that Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 and future Surface tablets all benefit from a truly professional experience. Roll that all together and the Microsoft ecosystem will soon be a compelling place to be and work.

Windows 10 for phones will boost worker productivity

Amazon gets into hosted email with WorkMail

Joining the hotly contested hosted email solution market, Amazon is taking on the likes of Gmail for businesses and Office 365 with a new service called WorkMail. There are a few differences to its rival products; for a start, WorkMail allows businesses to choose on which set of Amazon AWS servers their data lies, which will help keep them within their jurisdiction and stay compliant with local data privacy laws. Something that may or may not be an advantage, depending on the level of enterprise security, is that WorkMail lets businesses manage their own sets of encryption keys.

The product is available now across the US and Europe, and is likely to roll out globally soon. This expansion will also help to cut transfer times. WorkMail costs $4 per user per month (pupm), or can be bundled with WorkDocs for document sharing and a collaboration suite for $6 pupm. It can sync with anything that uses ActiveSync, including Outlook on PCs. While Amazon may be dominating in cloud computing services, it is falling behind in adoption by enterprises for the routine tasks of business – especially when it comes to smaller businesses. So WorkMail and WorkDocs are part of a concerted effort to get those users interested in AWS, S3 and EC2, where Amazon has so much power and can offer opportunities for companies to exploit.

The trouble is that users are now happy with vibrant and full-spectrum products, like Google Docs, Outlook, OneDrive and Office 365, which all leave Amazon’s barebones and piecemeal approach looking rather hollow. We’ll find out in coming quarters just how much AWS makes for Amazon, as the company changes its reporting methods, but it is hard to see WorkMail adding more than pocket change to the numbers.

Does WorkMail sound like an option for your business, or are you already happy with your current product and unlikely to move unless there is an obvious and significant advantage? We wonder what Amazon will offer next to attract customers, but we think there’s an uphill battle ahead.

Amazon gets into hosted email with WorkMail

Public cloud reliability rankings revealed

Cloud computing is on the rise. With more and more of us relying on cloud services for business and personal use, cloud computing solutions are having to adapt to increased levels of use. 2014 saw cloud become more popular, and make lots of changes to its functions, but just how well are the public cloud solutions coping? A survey conducted throughout the year by cloud computing website tracker Cloud Harmony tested the performance of a number of public cloud solutions, arriving at total downtimes, outage incidents and uptime percentages for all those tested.

The survey tested the reliability, performance and consistency of over 30 different public cloud computing options, and came to some interesting conclusions. Out of the 30 different solutions tested, which ranged from major corporations like Google and Amazon to smaller cloud operations like Akamia and Zettagrid, the top two might not surprise you. You’ve probably guessed it already, but Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform topped the list, boasting consistently impressive performance levels and very few major outages. In fact, in the period tested by Cloud Harmony, Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud, which powers its Web Services, recorded only 20 different outages, totalling a little over two and a half hours of overall downtime throughout the year. This means that for the whole of 2014, Amazon Web Services boasted an uptime percentage of 99.074% – rather impressive. Google Cloud Platform’s statistics are even more impressive though. During 2014, users of Google’s public cloud only experienced 14 minutes of outages, giving it an uptime percentage of 99.9996%.

CEO of Cloud Harmony, Jason Reed, said of the survey: “The more established players are fine-tuning their systems and becoming quite stable”. He commented on the performance of AWS, which he said, “has been providing cloud services longer than anyone in the market” and is used by Google to run its cloud services. He praised their “long track record of managing a reliable distributed system”.

If you need advice or information about cloud computing or cloud and remote backup and storage solutions for your business, contact us at Oswin today.

Public cloud reliability rankings revealed

Cheap Android tablets increase BYOD risk

A bring your own device (BYOD) strategy can ease the burden on business IT departments by allowing demanding users to supply, and maintain, their own equipment. With increasingly tribal users strongly preferring Apple, Windows, or Android as their computing platform, bring your own device can end the need for the IT Manager to be one who makes the decision on who has what.

Any sensible BYOD strategy requires that users add anti-virus, of course, and some still restrict the use of some platforms to ensure compatibility between users’ chosen devices and core IT systems. But few BYOD strategies dictate the quality of devices that must be used. For every user who supplements their BYOD budget to make sure they have the latest and greatest gadgets, there will be a user who is looking to economise.

A cheap Android tablet is one area where a user can add an extra device to their portfolio without breaking the bank. Sadly, the openness of the Android operating system not only helps to bring down prices but can also increase the risk to users. What might look like a “stock” installation of Android can be anything but, as a recent study by BlueBox Labs revealed.

In the study, BlueBox Labs found a range of serious security problems were present on the devices that they tested “out of the box”. With no provision for upgrades or “over the air” updates on these budget tablets, these problems are never going to be fixed. Vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed, FakeID, Futux, and Masterkey were all detected.

Some of the tablets were also being shipped with the malicious software protection (the setting that prevents software from sources other than the Google Play store from being installed) switched off. Whilst this is a setting that some users might use to install in-house software, it isn’t something that should be left switched on or be there by default without the user’s knowledge.

The issues didn’t end there. Some budget tablets were found to be “rooted” out of the box, compromising Android’s security layer and making things easier for hackers. Custom versions of Android were also found, some with security features completely removed for no discernible reason.

The final blow against the budget tablets comes in BlueBox Lab’s claims to have found dubious software on some devices, including custom versions of “Angry Birds” that collected extra user data.

If you’re currently allowing Android tablets as part of your BYOD strategy, it may be time to make sure that your users are checking their devices are secure, or maybe to offer a list of recommended devices that are proven to be safe.

Cheap Android tablets increase BYOD risk