BYOD 2.0 – Moving Beyond MDM with F5 Mobile App Manager

BYOD has quickly transformed IT, offering a revolutionary way to support the mobile workforce. The first wave of BYOD featured MDM solutions that controlled the entire device. In the next wave, BYOD 2.0, control applies only to those apps necessary for business, enforcing corporate policy while maintaining personal privacy. The #F5 Mobile App Manager is a complete mobile application management platform built for BYOD 2.0.

As more smartphones, tablets, and other types of mobile devices make their way into employees’ hands, requests for corporate access from those devices are increasing, which represents a huge challenge for IT departments. Not only has IT lost the ability to fully control and manage these devices, but employees are now demanding that they be able to conduct company business from multiple personal devices. Initially resistant to the idea due to security concerns, IT teams are slowly adopting the concept, but hesitantly, still concerned about the inherent risks of allowing personal devices to access and store sensitive corporate information.

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Gartner predicts infrastructure services will accelerate cloud computing growth

As public cloud computing gains greater adoption across enterprises, there’s an increased level of spending occurring on infrastructure-related services including Infrastructure-as-a-Service(IaaS).  Enterprises are prioritizing how to get cloud platforms integrated with legacy systems to make use of the years of data they have accumulated. 

From legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, integrating legacy systems of record to cloud-based platforms will accelerate through 2016.  I’ve seen this in conversations with resellers and enterprise customers, and this trend is also reflected in Gartner’s latest report on public cloud computing adoption, Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 4Q12 Update Published: 8 February 2013.  Below are the key take-aways from the report:

  • Global spending on public cloud services is expected to grow 18.6% in 2012 to $110.3B, achieving a CAGR of 17.7% from 2011 through 2016. The total market is expected …

Book Excerpt | The New World of Work: From the Cube to the Cloud

Thereʼs a popular childrenʼs book called Whereʼs Waldo, in which the lead character – with his signature red-and-white striped shirt and somewhat goofy expression – is obscured by various collections of people and things. Heʼs hidden, but in plain sight (if youʼll excuse the oxymoron) and itʼs the young readerʼs task to locate him in every illustration. By the end of the book, children become adept at locating the enigmatic Waldo in a glance.
We can only hope that this instructional parable reminds us of how sometimes the simplest truth can be obstructed by our need to make things complex. And so it is with the new world of work. If you want to know where the jobs are, hereʼs a hint: Theyʼre in plain sight.
You might call this new, adult game Whereʼs the Work. And the stakes couldnʼt be higher.

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Life in a Startup: Getting Above the Noise

Today at AppZero, we are fortunate enough to have been selected as one of the 25 Hot Cloud Startups by Startup 50, published by Jeff Vance. The list was published on February 9, 2013 as a prelude to his upcoming story “10 Hot Cloud Startups to Watch” for CIO.
One of the biggest challenges in a startup is that there are so many things you have to do. In the very beginning, the company must progress from idea to product. Then the original product idea for some reason does not make grade (not compelling enough, too competitive a market, etc.) and the company has to pivot from the original premise.
The other foundational ingredient needed to create a great company is the team. The team is critical — they test, scrutinize and kick around the original idea, which more often than not, pivots or morphs into a better one. Only a tight-knit team can distill the benefits and core value lurking underneath the surface of an immature prototype while dealing with time pressures. Running out of cash, proving the viability of the product, acquiring customers and closing financing are just a few of the time pressures that can tear a team apart.

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Health Care Companies Moving to the Cloud

Reading an article by Cloud prognosticator David Linthicum, we were very happy to see another market move aggressively towards the cloud.
According to the research collected by Markets and Markets, the cloud computing market in the health care sector is expected to grow to $5.4 billion by 2017.
While privacy and security are still cited as reasons to be cautious, users of the cloud are finding security models and technology that they can use today in the cloud.

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Wired Profiles a New Breed of Internet Hero, the Data Center Guru

The whole idea of cloud computing is that mere mortals can stop worrying about hardware and focus on delivering applications. But cloud services like Amazon’s AWS, and the amazingly complex hardware and software that underpins all that power and flexibility, do not happen by chance. This Wired article about James Hamilton paints of a picture of a new breed of folks the Internet has come to rely on:

…with this enormous success comes a whole new set of computing problems, and James Hamilton is one of the key thinkers charged with solving such problems, striving to rethink the data center for the age of cloud computing. Much like two other cloud computing giants — Google and Microsoft — Amazon says very little about the particulars of its data center work, viewing this as the most important of trade secrets, but Hamilton is held in such high regard, he’s one of the few Amazon employees permitted to blog about his big ideas, and the fifty-something Canadian has developed a reputation across the industry as a guru of distributing systems — the kind of massive online operations that Amazon builds to support thousands of companies across the globe.

Read the article.

 

Cloud Expo New York: Best CIO Practices Shared from SHI’s Customers

In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Richard Taggart, CTO of SHI, will share a collection of best Information Technology Practices and Innovation Programs that have been proven to work in real life situations. These practices are some of the best ideas taken from SHI’s database of customer submissions. These programs include those designed to solve business to technology alignment issues, technology effectiveness, and new ways to stimulate true innovation in IT. Taggart is the former SVP and Corporate CIO of the Walt Disney Company.
Rich Taggart is CTO at SHI. He has over 25 years of experience in a variety of roles in IT and management. Prior to joining SHI, he was the Senior Vice President and Corporate CIO at the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California. In this role, he was responsible for support of the Disney Corporate organization which included brand management, finance, human resources, legal, and other corporate functions and for support of departmental and global shared services applications.

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