Both the iPhone and the Blackberry line of smartphones have robust security features that make them appealing to corporations that need to be able to manage devices closely. The Android OS lacks the robust security that many enterprise customers want to see before they adopt a device.
Android has some security, but InfoWorld reports that the level of security currently in play on Android isn’t enough for the device to be trusted. Motorola Mobility is taking advantage of a startup that it purchased called 3LM.
3LM is an enterprise security and management tool development firm. Motorola plans to create APIs that Android is missing to control security and management capability at the OS level. That way the Android device will be manageable via policies and mobile device management tool like the other smartphones. Presumably, only Motorola devices would have the security features making corporations looking at Android devices for workers more likely to come to Motorola devices.
The author is mistaken about a few things. ios is amongst the least secure os’s out there. Manageable by enterprise only in a few base ways (ie wipable if you lose your device…IF you have an exchange account. There are also as many security holes if not more in ios as in Android. Any enterprise management ios has…Android also has. Not to mention a host of other third party anti-virus, remote lock and wipe, and information access solutions that don’t exist on ios. I think the author should do a little more research before making generalizations (ie ios is safe Android is not) about a platform
Thanks for noticing that! It makes me really skeptical to follow these forums or blogs and believe all they say, good or bad, about Android! I really wish they acknowledge the mistakes and do some solid research before inking opinions!
Thanks for noticing that! It makes me really skeptical to follow these forums or blogs and believe all they say, good or bad, about Android! I really wish they acknowledge the mistakes and do some solid research before inking opinions!
So, would these security APIs be added to current device via patches, or would they only be included on new devices?
Motorola, please don’t go enterprise, it is ‘fool’s gold’ or ‘fool’s paradise’. It is ‘premium’ and ‘enterprise’ that has killed best companies. Apple, the company known for ‘premium’ and the company that can go on and on and on for years in ‘premium’ space is going to come out with reasonably priced iPhones (it is all over blogospere, with Tim Cook saying ‘iPhones, not only for the rich’).
The innovations are going to come from consumer Android and that will percolate from there to enterprises. In many ways even IT in enterprises is going to go away except for the really smart core that wants to help rather than show a heavy hand. The future in many ways is going be Android (Honeycomb or otherwise) meets SlideShare’s ‘Zipcast’.
Yes, many enterprises need security and there will be enterprise apps that serve the purpose but there are many calls and chats (like, What time are you arriving in San Francisco?) do not need the heavy hand of corporate IT security and will be out of the clutches of IT.
Motorola, please compete in consumer with your phones and really give HTC a run for their money, that is where your destiny is.
P.S. Take it for whatever it is worth, a smartphone is a smartphone and not a laptop.