Reduce Company Expenses and Enforce Mobile Security with Exchange Active Sync

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If you don’t have an Enterprise Mobility Management #EMM solution, start with Exchange Active Sync to enforce #mobile device policies and #security.

Baby steps. While you might not say Microsoft Exchange Server in the same breath as enterprise mobility management, this product has managed more devices than any other system over the last decade. Since most enterprises already use Active Directory for identity coupled with Exchange Server on-premises or via Office 365 in the cloud for email, calendar and contacts, this is a simple way to get started. A protocol called Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) that dates back to the Pocket PC and is used by virtually every mobile operating system to allow the magic to happen.

So what does this have to do with managing devices? Well, EAS helps secure smartphones and tablets via policy enforcement. This allows you to require PINs and passwords, device and storage card encryption, remote wipe for lost or stolen phones, and S/MIME email encryption, to name a few. It also lets you disable features like a phone’s camera, removable storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SMS and others. If you’ve worked in the public sector, this probably rings a bell.

If you think managing your mobile devices via Exchange ActiveSync is unorthodox, remember this was the only way to manage iPhones until iOS 4 and Android until version 2.2 was released. I think EAS facilitated the BYOD movement more than any other factor.

Reduce expenses and risk to your company by enforcing security policies on your mobile devices using the capabilities found in an email server you probably already own. What basic steps has your organization taken to enforce mobile security on smartphones and tablets?

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Ray Ozzie sees the Dawn of a New Day for Microsoft

Ray Ozzie

Five years after Ray Ozzie penned The Internet Services Disruption, he reflects on Microsoft’s move to the cloud.

While he’s most proud of Windows Azure and SQL Azure, he also gives our competitors their due by mentioning that they have out-executed us when it comes to mobile experiences.  He harps on the subject of how complexity kills and then challenges us to close our eyes and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might actually look like.

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Ray goes on to state that those who can envision a plausible future that’s brighter than today will earn the opportunity to lead.  His ultimate dream is to move us toward a world of :

  • Cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding.  These are websites and cloud-based agents that we can rely on for more and more of what we do.  On the back end, they possess attributes enabled by our newfound world of cloud computing: They’re always-available and are capable of unbounded scale.
  • Appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services.  This goes beyond the PC and will increasingly come in a breathtaking number of shapes and sizes, tuned for a broad variety of communications, creation & consumption tasks.  Each individual will interact with a fairly good number of these connected devices on a daily basis – their phone / internet companion; their car; a shared public display in the conference room, living room, or hallway wall.

As a Mobility Architect at Microsoft, I’m excited that my commitments align with this vision in connecting the Peanut Butter of the Cloud with the Chocolate of devices.  Wireless data networks, bandwidth, latency and signal coverage are the wildcards when it comes to making this vision a reality.  That’s why you’ll always see my concern for this Wireless wildcard reveal itself in all the Cloud-connected mobile architectures I design.

Check out the rest of Ray’s new memo at http://ozzie.net/docs/dawn-of-a-new-day/.

-Rob

Sharing my knowledge and helping others never stops, so connect with me on my blog at https://robtiffany.com , follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RobTiffany and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtiffany

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