Con Android at Work, Google quiere afianzarse en empresas, ya que al funcionar  en smartphones y tablets se puede tener un perfil corporativo y uno personal en un mismo dispositivo.

Tanto las empresas como los usuarios-empleados tendrán un control más exhaustivo sobre el uso que le dan a los dispositivos móviles.

Google anunció oficialmente que Android at Work está en su fase final incorporando herramientas de Enterproid (para separar perfiles en el Android), una compañía que adquirió en marzo del año anterior y utilizaría parte de Samsung Knox (ofrece protección completa para sus dispositivos separando datos privados de datos laborales).

Básicamente Android at Work crea dos ambientes: uno personal y otro laboral, donde cada uno cuenta con sus propias aplicaciones, contactos, servicios de mensajería y con contenidos encriptados, no se puede transferir información entre uno y otro.

Las empresas pueden estar seguras que los datos confidenciales que brinda a sus empleados para el trabajo, se pueden administrar en forma totalmente remota para realizar resguardos, mientras que el usuario por otro lado está seguro que la empresa no puede acceder a su información personal, la ventaja además de estar usando un mismo dispositivo con lo que se evitaría el fenómeno BYOD (Bring Your Own Device,  los empleados usan sus dispositivos para tareas laborales y no los  brindados por la empresa). .

Los fabricantes de software como Citrix, SAP, Adobe, Cisco, y Salesforce apoyan a Google en el acceso multiplataforma para el acceso remoto, y también los fabricantes de hardware como HP, Motorola, Lenovo y Samsung colaboran con este proyecto.

Visitar: Samsung Knox

"The people you work with

define the work you do"

I am very pleased to announce my new position as Global Creative Director for Enterproid. 

After the acquisition of Lightbox by Facebook I had a number of opportunities and seriously considered them all. After meeting the incredibly talented, smart team at Enterproid I fell in love with their product (divide), they understand the importance of design as a key differentiator in a world gone app crazy.

I believe that 'Divide' has the potential to become a hugely cherished brand, up there with the greats in the B2B space. I am really excited to be playing a role in the development of the brand and product,  I can't wait to get my teeth stuck in.

One of the best parts of covering companies that provide enterprise mobility management is I get to hear about the many cracks and crevices that need filling in order to provide organizations and users a smooth mobile experience. My most recent conversation on this topic was with Nick Turner, VP of Business Development at Enterproid. Enterproid developed Divide, a dual persona mobile virtualization solution that segments your personal and corporate experience on Android devices. The goal of Divide is to create a secure environment for IT, while maintaining an excellent user-experience for end-users.

“BYOD is an inevitable, marvelous thing,” Turner explained. However, mobile devices are not a PC endpoint. “Security assumptions are fundamentally changing and IT administrators don't have a decade to figure it out. The challenge is there is going to be ten times more endpoints out there and we need to figure out how to secure it in a compressed timeframe.” The problem facing IT is how can they secure these devices today.

Turner recounted that many IT organizations they talk to face pressure from executive mandates to mobile-enable the company as a way of advantaging the workforce and improving productivity. They also face pressure from user demand. Android, with its cost advantages over iOS, is increasingly finding its way into the enterprise. However, in Turner’s experience, IT managers are hesitant about Android in a corporate environment because “they don’t have time to document all the fragmented use-cases of Android, such as OS versions, devices, GUIs, etc. There are too many variations to write up.” As well, IT managers are concerned with the trend of sharpening privacy laws. “How do you secure and manage something you are not allowed to look at?” Turner said. In some scenarios enterprises aren’t even allowed to wipe the employee’s devices.

Divide has solved these issues by creating a dual persona, virtualized environment that can be deployed after-market. With the touch-of-a-button, users can switch between the corporate and personal context. In having one environment for personal and another for business, Enterproid has figured out how to eliminate many of the friction issues that existing between corporate and business. This is done by keeping the environments clean and separate. Their solution is so robust that they can even deploy to the Kindle Fire; what Turner calls “the least enterprise-grade device on the planet.”

Turner attributes the success of Enterproid to their focus on the user-experience. “CoIT [Consumerization of IT] is about users voting based on a seamless user-experience. If a user can’t instantly understand what they are dealing with they won’t use it.” Turner believes that user-experience should be at the top of the heap of all the functional points for mobility management solutions. Divide maintains a great personal experience through allowing a company to bind policy and apps to the business environment without affecting the personal side. Turner believes that users of Divide “are able to enter an environment and quickly understand it to be either my personal or business environment without logically having to think about it.” Beyond that, Turner thinks that the experience on the business environment should be as close the same as possible as on the native Android experience.

Enterproid’s focus on user-experience bodes well for their future outlook. While Android’s fragmentation is an excellent starting point for Enterproid’s solution, Enterproid wants to extend the virtualization experience to other mobile platforms. Look for exciting things to come from Enterproid!

I've officially joined the Enterproid team this week, and I could not be more excited. I've worked closely with the founders over the past year since our investment, and have just been blown away. The technology is impressive, and the guys are among the brightest I've ever worked with. (Comcast, Qualcomm, & Google Ventures agree.)

While I'm moving back to the light side, I will remain a partner of BOLDstart Ventures (so please keep sending opportunities my way!), continuing to work with Eliot and Ed, who have both been awesome mentors for the past few years. I'm totally committed to continuing to actively support our entrepreneurs – I am, as always, still happy to hop on a call or meet up at any time to help out. Several of the projects I will be working on for Enterproid will be highly relevant to other mobile startups (more on this soon), and should enable me to provide a lot more of that elusive venture capital 'value-add' to the companies we work with.