T-Mobile G1's Enterprise Mobility Is Lost in the Cloud - Is Android Viable in the Enterprise? (
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I love the cloud, but it sure is hard to know what's going to happen to your
data once it's fed into some Internet repository. Rosenthal explained:
The G1 has some compelling ideas in
it. It has a nice interface. Certainly the open-source nature is interesting.
The challenge for enterprises is that it's not even vaguely enterprise-ready.
In fact, it's, I would say, enterprise-frustrating at this point. Certainly the
Exchange constraint is a big one. It's just so steeped in the world of connecting
to the cloud, which is compelling for a consumer but not at all compelling for
an enterprise. An enterprise needs to control or disseminate its proprietary
information to its employees and there's not an mechanism for that to happen in
the cloud.
I reminded Rosenthal that a lot of people said the iPhone was not acceptable
for enterprise use early on. He said the iPhone went nowhere until Apple
released Exchange support, which included a basic level of security through the
device management capability of Exchange 2007.
Of course, Rosenthal said the iPhone is still lacking enterprise juice in the
areas of security, management, application integration and application
distribution.
Now the G1 finds itself in the same boat, requiring not only Exchange
integration but some degree of device management, which would allow a lost
device to be wiped, as well as ways to control what is and isn't put on the
device. Rosenthal added:
Google's strength is not really in
enterprise-specific tools. It's not clear whether that will ever emerge from
Google. It certainly may emerge from people who take the open-source [Android
platform] and build on top of it. No one will say the cloud is the most secure
environment.
One company that might help with securing Android devices
is Mocana, which Oct. 22 unveiled
its NanoPhone Suite for Android, which lets developers build firewall, VPN and
encryption features for Android handsets. But Mocana is not enough.
Rosenthal said the ideal scenario for the G1 would be a range of integration
that involves applications and connection to back-end enterprise systems.
Wanted: Programmers who can and will build enterprise apps to help push Android
at the forefront of enterprise mobility with Research In Motion's operating
system, Windows Mobile and Symbian.
Until then, the G1 might as well be labeled "for consumers only." If
developers don't step up to the plate, Android will get the same label.
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