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Android
All posts tagged Android
In my ‘Consumerization of IT Collides with MEAP’ article last week, I described how to connect Android smartphones and tablets to Microsoft’s On-Premise infrastructure. In this week’s scenario, I’ll use the picture below to illustrate how Android utilizes many of Gartner’s Mobile Enterprise Application Platform Critical Capabilities to connect to Microsoft’s Cloud services in Azure:
As you can see from the picture above:
- For the Management Tools Critical Capability, there is no Cloud-based device management solution, policy-enforcement, or software distribution solution from Microsoft for Android. As I mentioned in last week’s post, consumer software distribution comes from the Android Market and the enterprise equivalent is facilitated via internal web servers and user-clickable URLs. Since Android is a wide-open system, competing markets and app stores are on the rise from Amazon and others.
- For both the Client and Server Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Multichannel Tool Critical Capability, Android uses Visual Studio. Endpoint development consists of HTML5, ECMAScript 5, and CSS3 delivered by ASP.NET via Web Roles. WCF REST + JSON Web services can also be created and consumed via Ajax calls from the browser. On the Cloud side of things, the Windows Azure SDK plugs into Visual Studio and provides Android developers with everything they need to build Cloud applications. It includes a Cloud emulator to simulate all aspects of Windows Azure and AppFabric on their development computer. In scenarios where native development is required by the customers, the Windows Azure Toolkit for Android can be used to allow Java via Eclipse to securely communicate with the Microsoft cloud.
- For the cross-platform Application Client Runtime Critical Capability, Android uses the WebKit browser called Chrome to provide HTML5 + CSS3 + ECMAScript5 capabilities. Offline storage is important to keep potentially disconnected Android smartphones and tablets working and this is facilitated by Web Storage which is accessible via JavaScript.
- For the Security Critical Capability, Android 3.0 and higher provides hardware encryption based on the user’s device passcode for data-at-rest. Data-in-transit is secured via SSL and VPN. LDAP API support allows it to access corporate directory services. Auth in the Microsoft cloud is handled via the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS).
- For the Enterprise Application Integration Tools Critical Capability, Android can reach out to servers directly via Web Services or indirectly through the Cloud via the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus to connect to other enterprise packages.
- The Multichannel Server Critical Capability to support any open protocol is handled automatically by Windows Azure. Cross-Platform wire protocols riding on top of HTTP are exposed by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and include SOAP, REST and Atompub. Cross-Platform data serialization is also provided by WCF including XML, JSON, and OData. These Multichannel capabilities support thick clients making web service calls as well as thin web clients making Ajax calls. Distributed caching to dramatically boost the performance of any client is provided by Windows Azure AppFabric Caching.
- As you might imagine, the Hosting Critical Capability is handled by Windows Azure. Beyond providing the most complete solution of any Cloud provider, Windows Azure Connect provides an IPSec-protected connection with your On-Premises network and SQL Azure Data Sync can be used to move data between SQL Server and SQL Azure. This gives you the Hybrid Cloud solution you might be looking for.
- For the Packaged Mobile Apps or Components Critical Capability, Android runs cross-platform mobile apps including Skype, Bing, MSN, Tag, Hotmail, and of course the critical ActiveSync component that makes push emails, contacts, calendars, and device management policies possible.
While Android 3.0 and higher meets many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities, it doesn’t fare very well when it comes to cloud-based device management. While other mobile device platforms also come up short in this department, I’m sure this will change in the coming year. The tidal wave of CoIT means that device management in the future will look very different from how it did 5 years ago. Expect a clear separation between corporate apps/data and personal apps/data to be managed.
Best Regards,
Rob
Since 90% of the world’s population has mobile network coverage, lets take a look at how they’re using it, where they’re using it, and what we should expect from the future…
Interesting stuff!
-Rob
In my last ‘Consumerization of IT Collides with MEAP’ article, I described how to connect iPhones and iPads to Microsoft’s Cloud servers in Azure. In this week’s scenario, I’ll use the picture below to illustrate how Android devices can utilize many of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities to connect to Microsoft’s On-Premise infrastructure:
As you can see from the picture above:
- For the Management Tools Critical Capability, Android uses Microsoft Exchange for On-Premise policy enforcement via Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) but has no private software distribution equivalent to System Center Configuration Manager 2007 from Microsoft today. Instead, in-house apps are hosted and APKs distributed via a web server over wireless by having a user click on a URL or through a variety of app stores. In the future, System Center Configuration Manager 2012 will be able to better manage Android devices.
- For both the Client and Server Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Multichannel Tool Critical Capability, Android uses Visual Studio. While the Server/EAI development functionality is the same as every other platform, endpoint development will consist of HTML5, ECMAScript 5, and CSS3 delivered by ASP.NET. WCF REST + JSON Web services can also be created and consumed via Ajax calls from the browser.
- For the cross-platform Application Client Runtime Critical Capability, we will rely on Android’s WebKit browser to provide HTML5 + CSS3 + ECMAScript5 capabilities. Offline storage is important to keep potentially disconnected Android working and this is facilitated by Web Storage which is accessible via JavaScript.
- For the Security Critical Capability, Android 3.0 and higher provides hardware encryption based on the user’s device passcode for data-at-rest. Data-in-transit is secured via SSL and VPN. LDAP API support allows it to access corporate directory services.
- For the Enterprise Application Integration Tools Critical Capability, Android can reach out to servers directly via Web Services or indirectly via SQL Server (JDBC) or BizTalk using SSIS/Adapters to connect to other enterprise packages.
- The Multichannel Server Critical Capability to support any open protocol directly, via Reverse Proxy, or VPN is facilitated by ISA/TMG/UAG/IIS. Cross-Platform wire protocols riding on top of HTTP are exposed by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and include SOAP, REST and Atompub. Cross-Platform data serialization is also provided by WCF including XML, JSON, and OData. These Multichannel capabilities support thick clients making web service calls as well as thin web clients making Ajax calls. Distributed caching to dramatically boost the performance of any client is provided by Windows Server AppFabric Caching.
- While the Hosting Critical Capability may not be as relevant in an on-premises scenario, Windows Azure Connect provides an IPSec-protected connection to the Cloud and SQL Azure Data Sync can be used to move data between SQL Server and SQL Azure.
- For the Packaged Mobile Apps or Components Critical Capability, Android runs cross-platform mobile apps including Skype, Bing, MSN, Tag, Hotmail, and of course the critical ActiveSync component that makes push emails, contacts, calendars, and device management policies possible.
Newer versions of Android (3.x/4.0) are beginning to meet more of Gartner’s Critical Capabilities. It’s really improved in the last year in areas of encryption, but device fragmentation makes this improvement uneven. The app story is still the ‘Wild West’ since the Android Market is an un-vetted free-for-all. This big ‘red flag’ has given rise to curated app stores like the one from Amazon. As you can see from the picture, the big gap is with the client application runtime critical capability. Native development via Java/Eclipse is where Google wants to steer you and Microsoft doesn’t make native tools, runtimes or languages for this platform. You can definitely perform your own due diligence on Mono for Android from our friend Miguel de Icaza and his colleagues in order to reuse your existing .NET and C# skills. From a Microsoft perspective though, you’re definitely looking at HTML5 delivered via ASP.NET.
Next week, I’ll cover how Android connects to the Cloud.
Best Regards,
Rob
Run, don’t walk, and download the new SyncFx bits to sync your connected devices with SQL Server and SQL Azure! Below is a quick rundown of all the features from the Microsoft Download Center page:
Microsoft Sync Framework 4.0 October 2010 CTP Overview
The Microsoft Sync Framework 4.0 October 2010 CTP is built on top of Sync Framework 2.1. It defines Odata + Sync, a sync protocol that makes it easy to build offline applications on any client platform capable of caching data. The CTP enables synchronization of data stored in Sql Server/Sql Azure over an open standard network format by a remote synchronization service handling all sync specific computations. Moving all synchronization logic off the client enables clients, which do not have the Sync Framework runtime installed, to cache data and participate in a synchronization topology. Earlier versions of Sync Framework required Windows systems with Sync Framework runtime installed on them as clients. This CTP allows other Microsoft platforms such as Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, and Windows Mobile and non-Microsoft platforms such as HTML5, iPhone, Android and other devices with no Sync Framework runtime installed on them as clients. The CTP release includes:
- Protocol: In this release, we apply the principles of OData to the problem of data-sync and adds synchronization semantics to the protocol format. Clients and the service use the protocol to perform synchronization, where a full synchronization is performed the first time subsequently followed by smaller incremental synchronization. The protocol is designed with the goal to make it easy to implement the client-side of the protocol and all the synchronization logic will be running on the service side. It is intended to be used to enable synchronization for a variety of sources including, but not limited to, relational databases and file systems.
- Server and Client Components: The release includes server components that make it easy for you to build a synchronization Web service that exposes data from SQL Server or SQL Azure via the Sync protocol. The CTP release includes client component’s that make it easy for you to build offline applications on Silverlight for desktop and Windows Phone 7 platforms.
- SyncSvcUtil.exe utility: The release includes a command-line tool, SyncSvcUtil.exe, which helps you with defining and developing sync services and clients.
- Business Logic Extensibility on Server: The release allows you to plug in to the synchronization runtime on the service and enable custom business logic configuration using SyncInterceptors.
- Diagnostic Dashboard: The release supports a diagnostic dashboard to diagnose the health of the deployed sync services.
- Samples and Tutorials: The CTP ships with samples that include a sample service exposing a ToDo list data model as a Odata + Sync service. It also ships the Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile 6.5 and HTML5 clients that synchronize with the service to show you how to use the components and the protocol. The documentation for CTP contains tutorials, which walk you through creating and consuming a sync service that you can deploy to an on-premise Windows Server or Windows Azure.
Upcoming Release Refresh in Few Weeks
The following features will be available in few weeks after PDC10 as a refresh to this release. We will keep you updated on this release on Sync Framework forums and on Sync Framework Blog.
- Tooling Wizard UI: This adds a UI wizard on top of the command line based SyncSvcUtil utility. This wizard allows you to select tables, columns, and even rows to define a sync scope, provision/de-provision a database and generate server-side/client-side code based on the data schema that you have. This minimizes the amount of code that you have to write yourself to build sync services or offline applications.
- iPhone Sample: This sample shows you how to develop an offline application on iPhone/iPad with SQLite for a particular remote schema by consuming the protocol directly.
Version Change Notice
In this release we decided to bump the version of all binaries to 4.0, skipping version 3.0 to keep the version number consistent across all components in the release.
Keep Synching!
-Rob
