Enterproid Splits Personal, Work Profiles on Android Smartphones

Startup Enterproid revealed itself to the enterprise mobile management market Feb. 28 with Divide, a software platform that lets corporate road warriors create and keep personal and professional profiles on one Android smartphone or tablet.

Available in private beta for Android handsets and slates running version 2.2 or later, Divide lets users keep corporate data locked up within the professional profile, which provides data encryption and access control for e-mail, the Web browser, instant messaging and SMS.

This “work” side will ideally safeguard sensitive data generated by CRM (customer relationship management) and enterprise resource management applications.

While designed to let users consume any application and browse any Website, the personal side is still kept private for a user of, for example, a Motorola Xoom tablet or a Samsung Galaxy S smartphone.

Users can tap a button to toggle between their professional and personal profiles without fear of data crossing the “Divide,” to compromise corporate data, the company claimed.

Divide partitions the personal and professional sides by creating a virtual work profile on a device that contains professional data and apps.

“This means that you can define different levels of security for your work and personal profiles; for example, if you like you can set a strong password for work while having no password at all for personal,” Enterproid co-founder and CEO Andrew Toy said in a blog post. “And because the Divide platform walls off your work data, no app you download from an app store can access it.”

A cloud-based solution hosted by Enterproid, the Divide platform is constantly connected to Enterproid servers. If users need to locate a device or see reports on how much of the data plan work apps have used, they may check this info from a personal console.

IT admins can also track devices from their IT console and remotely wipe corporate data in the case of lost handsets or tablets.

Why Enterproid in a sea of enterprise mobility players that include Good Technology, Zenprise and others? Toy said that despite the burgeoning of mobile devices and apps, the mobile enterprise market has lagged, forcing companies to make difficult choices between the security and control of legacy mobile platforms and newer platforms such as Android and Apple iOS.

This is a fair assessment. Forrester Research earlier this month said IT managers have underestimated the demand for mobile solutions in the enterprise as “mobile mavericks” are taking their Android smartphones and Apple iPads in-house for work purposes.

Companies and professionals interested in signing up for the beta can do so here. Divide will be offered for free during the beta period; interested companies must subscribe to the platform once testing is completed.

Enterproid plans to expand Divide to Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone 7 in the future, and will also release an API to let customers and third-party developers write apps for its platform.