#cloud mobile security

Ever used Microsoft SharePoint on a mobile device? What was that experience like? We’re guessing most users will say its performance was, well let’s just say ”suboptimal”. That’s being quite generous!

Here’s a typical workflow when using SharePoint on a smartphone or tablet today:

Begin by establishing a VPN connection.

Next launch your SharePoint application, either the native application or a web application. Before viewing even a single page of any document, you will need to download the entire document over your VPN-secured wireless connection. On slower connections this can take quite awhile. Next you must launch a mobile office productivity app such as Quickoffice to even view the document. Edits must be completed in Quickoffice, but then must be emailed or saved back to SharePoint. Along the way, Quickoffice often does destructive changes to the document, putting mobile workers like you pretty much at the mercy of these editors if you want to remain productive from the road. If you want to print the document, too bad. Mobile users of SharePoint  are pretty much out of luck. You’ll need to email it to yourself, access it on your laptop or desktop, and then finally print it.

This creates some serious limitations. Just to re-iterate the issues:

The performance is downright awful. Downloading an 8MB presentation over a 3G/4G connection using VPN is like sucking cement through a straw. Better keep your fingers crossed that your VPN doesn’t get disconnected midway through, or else you have to start the whole process again, including that 8-10 second delay re-establishing a VPN connection over low bandwidth connections. The moment you use another application like Quickoffice to view or edit the document, your IT administrator has lost visibility and control of the document. Whoops, you may have just violated your company’s compliance or mobile security policies. Not being able to print and sign the document can cause serious delays in your productivity. Downloading malicious documents (heaven forbid) can result in your device being infected with malware. This has the potential to cause irreparable damage to both corporate and personal content on your device.

Contrast this typical SharePoint mobile experience with Armor5 (see the screenshot):

Connect to your company’s remote access portal using any browser. If you are coming over a flaky network connection, don’t worry. Your virtual session is on solid ground in the Armor5 cloud. You’ll benefit from a wired VPN connection back to your corporate data center. The connection will be there waiting for you to instantly reconnect in the event of a network disruption. Click on the SharePoint homepage icon for instant access to your SharePoint server. View SharePoint documents right within your browser. You don’t need to download the entire document. Our cloud-based document converter allows you to view pages of your document within a fraction of a second. Edit documents right in your browser using Microsoft-provided editors, maintaining 100% format fidelity. Save documents straight back to the source, without the need to download or upload documents. Only the incremental changes you make need to be uploaded back from your device. Print from your browser. Yes, you can print straight from your Android, iPad, Blackberry or Kindle device! You can print to the printer next to you, or send it to your printer at home while sitting at Starbucks. Thanks to Armor5′s Google Cloud Print integration, this is all under your control, and visible to your IT administrator.

Armor5 provides high performance, secure SharePoint access, allowing IT to maintain complete control all the time. Of course this same functionality is available when you use any enterprise application through Armor5 – be it SAP or your Intranet portal.