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While BYOD was originally viewed as a cost saver for enterprises, it has often resulted in greater expenses--particularly from the added management, support and security required. Gartner forecasts that supporting BYOD will cost enterprises $300 per employee annually by 2016. Despite these additional costs and security risks, many enterprises are "embracing" BYOD, observes David Lowe, vice president for enterprise sales at Samsung Telecommunications America. In an exclusive interview with FierceMobileIT, Lowe relates how many of Samsung's enterprises customers have gone 100 percent BYOD. Samsung has introduced a number of security measures to reassure customer concerns about BYOD, particularly given the dodgy security reputation of the Android platform. Some see these products as part of Samsung's effort to gain advantage over Apple in the race to replace BlackBerry in the enterprise. FierceMobileIT: How do you see BYOD impacting the enterprise in the next couple of years? Lowe: I'm out talking to customers every day ... A pretty consistent theme is BYOD is growing much faster than corporate liable. Customers that historically have never had BYOD before are now embracing it. We are seeing customers moving completely away from corporate liable and legacy devices into 100 percent BYOD. We are also seeing hybrid models. It runs the gamut. The enterprise challenge for BYOD is what do you support? Do you just open the doors wide open and support everything? Do you let in only a small number of devices? Do you have a hybrid model? Enterprises are embracing BYOD very differently. Samsung's SAFE platform has had a huge impact on BYOD. It has enabled enterprises to embrace Android much more confidently than they have in the past. The problem with the Android operating system is that it is fragmented; there are so many different versions of Android; each device is different. How do I create a BYOD policy around that without having to certify every single device when it comes out? SAFE gives them a way to do that. If I certify on SAFE one time, I can support any device that comes out after that ... Knox makes that even stronger. So now if I support Knox I can tell my users to go purchase a Knox-enabled device. Knox works for the IT organization who now says, "I can put all of my corporate data inside that Knox container and I can manage that data effectively and deeply. So I can have complete confidence in that. Then, I can leave all the personal stuff alone." It works the same way on the other side. If I am the person using the device, I can now have confidence that I can do whatever I want on the personal side and I'm not subject to the prying eyes of my IT organization. So it feels more like two devices on one. I know that my personal photos, text, whatever websites I visit, can't be seen by IT. The stuff in the secure container is all corporate stuff. Another thing that is important is the experience. Part of the problem with the containers on the market today is the user experience. It's not seamless. The experience inside the container is very different from the native experience on the device. By creating a container solution that is built natively on the device, the Knox experience is exactly the same whether inside or outside the secure container--that means adoption is going to be easier and better and satisfaction on the user side is going to be much higher as well. FierceMobileIT: What is the essential difference between SAFE and Knox? Lowe: SAFE was essentially our first step into enterprise security management. It was a designation that the device you are holding is enterprise grade. It addressed the fundamental table stake requirement that an enterprise needed to feel confident that that device was supported in the enterprise. So that included things like Exchange ActiveSync support integration. We support 100 percent of all the Exchange IT policies, so you can have a much better email experience, MDM integration, so I can integrate well with all the MDM products. In addition, device encryption is supported so that any data on the device is encrypted and lastly it could support VPNs [virtual private networks]. So that was good for most of the market. But for our most regulated customers in financial services, government and military, they needed a more robust security solution. So Knox is a complete holistic security framework that is built from the hardware level all the way up through the user experience. It starts at the hardware level where the certification key is burned into the device, tying that device at a hardware level to a Samsung operating system. When you boot up the device, it's looking for that key. If it doesn't find it, the device won't boot. So you know at the basic level, the device cannot be rooted. From there, it goes up through the kernel using TIMA, which stands for TrustZone-based Integrity Measurement Architecture, which is constantly monitoring the kernel for any malicious activity. On top of that there is the operating system level, where we have used SE [security enhancement] for Android, which protects the operating system against any malicious activity. Then you work your way up to the user experience where you have the container. So where SAFE was a designation, Knox is truly a solution that is built into the device. FierceMobileIT: Has there been any rethinking among CIOs and IT departments regarding BYOD, given the costs of security systems and IT support? Lowe: Actually, I've seen them embracing it more. I see them recognizing that there are enough tools out there that allow them to manage the devices. At the end of the day, the IT organization wants to manage the mobile devices the way they manage all the other IT assets in their organization. So to the extent that they can utilize existing tools and extend those to mobile devices, that is enabling them to embrace BYOD. Read the rest of the Q&A with David Lowe--including translating Android's popularity to the enterprise, the next 10 years in BYOD and more--at the FierceMobileIT website
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Read more about: corporate liable devices, BYOD
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| This week's sponsor is CA Technologies. |  | Webinar: Rethinking Enterprise Mobility Management – Beyond BYOD
Thursday, May 29th, 12pm ET / 9am PT Our panel of experts will help you understand how to develop effective strategies that accelerate mobility transformation and prepare your organization for the mobile future. Register Today! |
Italy's antitrust and competition authority is investigating Apple, Google, Amazon and French game developer Gameloft for unfair commercial practices regarding their "free" mobile games, which use in-app purchases to generate revenue.  The Italian regulator is probing whether the companies are misleading consumers by advertising their mobile apps as free when in-app purchases are required to continue playing the games beyond a certain point.
"The probe will verify whether the conducts can be regarded as unfair commercial practices: consumers could falsely believe that the game is entirely free and, in any case, that they would know in advance the full costs of the game. Moreover, insufficient information seems to be provided to consumers about the settings needed to stop or limit the purchases within the app," the regulator said in a statement. A spokeswoman for the regulator told Reuters that the investigation would likely be concluded within seven to eight months. The maximum fine per company would be €5 million ($6.9 million), she noted. In January, the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trade issued final principles directing mobile game developers to tell consumers "upfront" about costs associated with "free" games. "The principles also make clear that in-game payments are not authorised, and should not be taken, unless the payment account holder, such as a parent, has given his or her express, informed consent," OFT said in a release. In March, the European Commission launched an investigation into whether developers of "free" mobile games where misleading consumers, especially parents and children, about the potential costs and advertising associated with the games.
For more:
- see the Italian antirust regulator's release
- read the Reuters report
- check out the OFT release
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Mobility will be a key aspect of AT&T's $49 billion acquisition of satellite TV provider DirecTV, company executives said during a conference call about the transaction on Monday. Randall Stephenson, chairman, president and CEO of AT&T, explained that the transaction "gives us the opportunity to lead the way and to redefine the video entertainment for the mobile and high-speed world. That includes delivering content to consumers across multiple screens--mobile devices, TVs, laptops, the back-seat displays of connected cars and even airplanes." Stephenson added, "We have been working on changing our wireless architecture to be able to carry video ... The next six years are going to be about delivering video over these [mobile] networks. This is the key rationale for trying to do something with DirecTV." He said that it would probably be between 12 to 18 months before "robust" mobile video offerings will be available. Michael White, chairman, president and CEO of DirecTV, said that the combined companies "will bring new innovations to market, including a wide array of satellite, mobile and broadband services--think mobile video and over the top." According to the agreement approved by the companies' respective boards on Sunday, AT&T will pay DirecTV shareholders $95 per share--$28.50 in cash and $66.50 in AT&T stock. This would be a 30 percent premium on DirecTV's closing price of $73.17 on March 25, 2014, before rumors circulated about the possible merger. Stephenson stressed that the proposed acquisition of DirecTV will not affect his firm's plans to participate in the FCC's upcoming AWS spectrum auction later this year and the mobile broadcast spectrum auction next year. "We think both of these auctions are going to be very important to the industry. We have structured this transaction in a way that ensure we will have plenty of capacity to be very active in both of those auctions ... [Our plans with DirecTV] are going to require significant blocks of contiguous spectrum." The deal still faces regulatory approval.
For more:
- check out the conference call (reg. req.)
- see the AT&T-DirecTV release
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Mobile broadband spectrum auction rules issued
DirecTV adding voice search to Android, iOS apps this summer Read more about: AT&T
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