In the third of a regular series of articles seeking to identify growth areas for channel partners in 2013, Irish Computer asked a number of resellers, distributors and vendors for their views on the opportunities presented by BYOD and wireless.
BYOD
Kevin Bland, Citrix channel director for UK and Ireland
Rather than condemn the use of personal tablets in the office, businesses are in a position to embrace the appetite for flexible working "by enlisting the help of the channel to support the BYOD trend", Bland argues. As more devices enter the workplace, organisations will be faced with challenges that can be easily overcome with the help of the channel, he believes.
The biggest challenge will be the employee’s perception that personal devices are ‘plug and play’ and can simply connect to the corporate network over Wi-Fi and be ready to go. "The channel has a central part to play in helping businesses implement a managed BYOD policy that can address fears associated with consumerisation," he states. It can help empower employees to work to the best of their ability with the best tools available, without the IT department relinquishing governance of data, networks and connected devices.
In their role as strategic advisors with in-depth knowledge, channel partners can help businesses make BYOD a practical reality, Bland claims. Managed BYOD solutions can protect sensitive information from loss and theft (in response to privacy, compliance and risk management standards) and reduce costs through self-service provisioning and automated management.
The good news, according to Bland, is that the channel "is in a good position to help businesses recognise the challenges that BYOD brings and to tailor and implement solutions specifically for the needs of the enterprise". Channel partners can advise on a variety of workplace productivity applications that satisfy the needs of the employee and address the issue of corporate data storage and its security on roaming user devices. ‘Follow-me-data’ solutions are available to mirror consumer storage solutions and applications by providing access to fully traceable enterprise data, wherever the employee is, whatever the device. "Therein lies the opportunity for the channel in 2013," Bland adds.
Ian Moore, country manager, VMware Ireland
Moore is keen to promote the benefits of VMware’s forthcoming Horizon Suite which the vendor claims will make it easier for administrators to manage the challenges associated with mobility, cloud and employee BYOD allied to a productive and enjoyable computing experience on the devices employees use.
Moore reveals there were over 100 VMware customers at the VMworld 2012 event in Barcelona last year, a higher proportion than for lots of other countries, and many of those that saw the Horizon Suite preview were "incredibly excited about it".
The most important aspect of any successful BYOD strategy is to ensure it is not a burden to use the solution, he argues. The most common applications in the market are the ones that are easiest to use and manage. It is important to make the experience "frictionless from the user’s point of view".
Horizon Suite enables an organisation to manage any device, look at the apps published to that user based on his or her role in the organisation, see the device they are accessing the app from and ensure the user gets the best experience from that device. Moore says another exciting aspect of the technology is the ability to run a work phone and a personal phone on the same device.
The vendor has introduced a number of competencies to ensure partners meet the technical criteria and have the ability to architect the scale of the customer requirement and get the design correct. Channel partners can help ensure the process is "a lot more seamless to the user. It’s important because the user has spent his or her own money on a particular device and wants to feel he or she is using the device the way they want to".
He says there is "pent up customer demand" for VMware Horizon. "We can’t wait to get it out there," Moore adds.
Dermot Hayden, sales manager Ireland, Sophos
BYOD and BYOS (Bring Your Own Software) are "creating great difficulties" for organisations that don’t have defined processes or tools to manage employee-owned devices, Hayden observes. "Whatever you think of BYOD and however you choose to implement it, IT managers should treat it the same way as any introduction of new technology: with a controlled and predictable deployment," he adds. That deployment should address the issues of who owns the device, who manages it and who secures it. "Accountability is not something that goes away for a user just because they personally own the device," Hayden warns. "After all, the data carried on it is company owned."
Management and security of the device are key if businesses seek to adopt BYOD and the advantages it can bring. But for many small and medium businesses, the cost and complexity of purchasing and deploying another solution to manage and secure BYOD devices is a major obstacle, with the (often) relatively small number of devices involved making the management cost per device too high.
Sophos has sought to address this issue by introducing an End User Protection licence based on the number of users (not devices) in the organisation. An employee with a desktop, tablet and smartphone needs just one licence for all three, "making management and security of multiple devices, including BYOD, very affordable and easy to manage".
Hayden claims this gives partners "a great proposition" to help customers embrace BYOD in a secure and cost effective manner "with great upsell opportunities in all existing customers that use Sophos Endpoint Security or UTM solutions".
Michael Conway, director, Renaissance
Tongue in cheek, Conway describes BYOD as "the new four letter three letter acronym of the year". Unfortunately, he thinks most partners have not embraced BYOD very effectively or enthusiastically. Conway says the reason is that most solutions proposed for BYOD have not been "clear, granular or easily implemented and understood".
He believes BYOD should become a lot clearer this year as it matures. In terms of products and services for BYOD, most people want to be able to manage web access as standard throughout all the devices they use (laptop, smartphone or desktop), inside or outside the business premises "with a single granular structure for usability and manageability". All the devices need to be managed no matter where they are. Changes in technology, with solutions such as cloud-based web filtering on an individual rather than a per device basis, will make BYOD more manageable.
Conway complains BYOD solutions have often been intrusive to the point where they have "almost been an invasion of privacy". Modern solutions such as cloud-based web filtering and containerisation for mobile devices have provided a less intrusive way forward. These types of products "will bring the market to the reseller community and should be great for growth in 2013".
Dermot Williams, managing director, Threatscape
It would take a brave IT manager to stand in the way of "the relentless march of user mobility", Williams acknowledges. But with the arrival of BYOD, effective strategies to secure and manage mobile devices are vital "since watching not only your users but also their mobile devices, apps and data leaving the building is a sobering sight".
He argues the challenge needs to be broken down into a number of different categories. Is a device company-owned or user owned? Is it managed or unmanaged? "Asking these two questions about any device will place it in one of four categories," Williams says, "and there are subtly different approaches required to manage and secure each one (and any one customer may have devices fitting into more than one of these categories)."
The opportunity for the channel is "to engage with customers, understand the type of mobility strategy they are adopting and offer them compelling options when it comes to enabling their users to access sensitive business information in a secure and seamless manner". These include provisioning devices, deploying apps from private corporate app stores, enforcing corporate security standards such as encryption and authentication and locating or wiping lost or stolen devices. "All this and more is possible and makes the safe enablement of BYOD a possibility," Williams concludes.
WIRELESS
Ray O’Connor, HP networking, country manager Ireland
O’Connor starts by presenting some statistics around the huge growth in BYOD, including the claim by Apple CEO Tim Cook that 80% of Fortune 100 businesses are deploying iPads and research from Forrester claiming 80% of enterprises would be supporting BYOD services by the end of 2012 and 36% of education was planning to launch tablet services.
Gartner has produced research suggesting 90% of net new growth in device adoption in education over the coming four years will be represented by smartphones and tablets. Approximately 5 billion personal client devices will be on the network in 2015. "Concern about, and regulations controlling, the type of content available to children increase over time, and BYOD strategies will need to address them," Gartner states. "[BYOD] will become the prevalent practice in educational settings at all levels within 5 years."
Based on Gartner’s research, O’Connor believes the wireless opportunity is set to explode. "Security and management around BYOD will be key for all sectors, particularly early adopters like education," he argues. "Resellers that can offer a secure managed reliable solution with a clear plan around BYOD will lead the pack." To do so, skill sets will be key. Wireless and BYOD management tools are a key focus for HP Networking, he adds.
While there are plenty of skills in wireless, there is a gap and an opportunity around BYOD and the various tools required to manage access to a wireless network.
Vendors have a "key role" to play in helping users and resellers "understand how to implement a BYOD ready wireless network". O’Connor adds that HP is "working closely with key partners to ensure they are ready to meet these demands, offering professional services to design and implement managed wireless and BYOD management solutions".
Justin Owens, managing director, Commtech
As a distributor for SonicWALL and Quest (both of which were acquired by Dell last year), Owens thinks Commtech is in a good position to see the way that BYOD and wireless are becoming interconnected. While BYOD is "great from a working point of view, it also beings a lot of headaches to IT" which has to try and support multiple operating systems and multiple devices for employees.
These devices are being brought onto the network but, by their very nature, most tablets and smartphones need to connect wirelessly. This is driving the demand for managed wireless because in addition to connectivity, the devices need to be authenticated, made secure and subject to policy.
"Over the last couple of years, the BYOD trend has driven sales of managed wireless up," Owens contends. Previously, it was confined to industrial settings, to large enterprises or locations such as hotels. But the massive increase in devices connected to wireless networks as the use of tablets and smartphones surges is driving the need for networks that can be brought into the overall corporate network.
Many partners can roll out a wireless infrastructure for a customer but relatively few have much expertise in rolling out that infrastructure properly, Owens argues. Doing it properly is a completely different ball game involving site survey tools, access point placements, looking at the construction of the building itself and understanding the factors that can influence the quality of the signal.
Owens believes managed wireless networks could become pervasive and if standards improve, they could even replace wired connections over time. A number of SMB network vendors are already providing low cost managed wireless solutions and the price of 802.11n access points is coming down significantly.
The opportunity is significant because it plays across the SME and enterprise spaces.
Steve Docherty, partner & commercial manager, Ireland, Cisco
Wireless is one of the major opportunities for the channel in 2013, Docherty states. The insatiable demand for smartphones, tablets and other devices is generating "staggering amounts of mobile data" and the use of wireless for Internet access is exploding as more mobile devices are Wi-Fi enabled, the number of public hotspots expands, and user acceptance grows.
"Until recently, most technologists and industry executives viewed Wi-Fi as the ‘poor cousin’ to mobile networks," Docherty says. "They most certainly never saw any role for Wi-Fi in mobile networks or their business. The explosion of mobile data traffic has changed all of that."
With the exception of smartphones, Wi-Fi is now the predominant access technology for mobile devices. Laptops, tablets, and eReaders "almost exclusively connect to the Internet through Wi-Fi, with only approximately 20 per cent of these devices having any mobile connectivity capability".
As the use of mobile devices continues to grow and the requirement for network connectivity increases, Wi-Fi and traditional mobile networks "will be critical to meeting the needs of mobility enabled consumers. The channel is in the enviable position of being able to successfully integrate these networks and transform the experience of their customers", Docherty adds.
Partners have a "tremendous opportunity" to assist customers in getting to grips with the productivity gains offered by mobile devices within their businesses. He highlights security as an important areas to look at. "Our partners must advise customers on effective security policies that embrace the flexibility offered by allowing employees to bring their own devices (BYOD) onto the corporate network while, at the same time, ensuring the safety of company information."
David Keating, security sales manager, Data Solutions
Like Docherty and Owens, Keating sees a number of factors "coming together that are driving wireless and the need for wireless". The most obvious one is the popularity of iPads and tablets. "They can’t plug into the network because they don’t have an ethernet port," he says. Also, with many people using smartphones, it is much more efficient for them to access data using wireless in the office than using their data plans.
"On the surface of it, there is a massive opportunity and there’s a lot of demand for it," Keating observes, but it’s not as clear-cut as that because "there is a lot of wireless out there". The opportunity is in moving businesses from the "unsophisticated wireless" they might have with their modem from Eircom or UPC that operates from a single access point to a more sophisticated wireless that is part of the infrastructure rather than an add on. It might "even become your infrastructure".
Sophisticated wireless networks can give people access to different applications depending on the device they are using, who they are or where they are in the building. Keating defines this as second generation wireless or intelligent wireless and it’s where there’s a real opportunity for resellers in the next year to 18 months. He says there’s a growing recognition wireless is becoming part of the network infrastructure. It’s no longer being seen as separate anymore, something recognised by the way in which Gartner has merged its Wireless LAN and LAN reports.
It costs extra for more sophisticated wireless networks "but not vastly more" and it brings security, intrusion prevention and other features with it. It’s only a matter of time before wireless expands further. "You’ll start to see a swing towards more wireless and less wired as time goes on," Keating predicts. BYOD is based on being able to get access to the network from the user’s chosen device and wireless is the method of choice for doing that.
For resellers, it’s not complicated to get up and running with wireless but things like sophisticated user fingerprinting can get a bit trickier. To get proper coverage within a building they need to conduct a proper survey to discover how many access points are going to be required. Nevertheless, an Aruba access point can be "configured faster than it takes to make a slice of toast. You can have a wireless access point up and running within two or three minutes".
Data Solutions has a good group of resellers for the Aruba products and it is growing. "It’s definitely worth people having a look at," Keating says.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers